Trump wasn’t on the ballot and Republicans would have won in a landslide if he had been, the US president wrote on Truth Social after Democrats took the Senate in the midterms on Tuesday, 3 November 2026.
According to the Associated Press, Democrats have won control of the House of Representatives in the US midterm elections held on Tuesday, 3 November 2026, adding it to the Senate majority secured hours earlier. The president responded with a post and an image of a red cap stencilled with the word “veto”, signalling he would block Democratic legislation.
Trump wasn’t on the ballot: what the president posted
Trump posted on Truth Social after Democrats took control of the Senate, attributing the Republican losses to the fact that his name was not on any ballot in the 2026 midterms. His post, which carried his usual sign-off, read:
I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE! Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Trump’s ‘pretend I’m on the ballot’ campaign pitch
The message followed a different pitch in the closing days of the campaign. Speaking to host Sean Hannity in a television interview on Monday, 2 November 2026, Trump asked Republican supporters to treat the midterms as though he were a candidate, saying:
I’m just asking everybody to pretend that I’m on the ballot.
If our people vote, we win in a landslide.
After the results, Trump struck a more conciliatory note in a newspaper interview. Asked whether he would repeat his refusal to accept defeat in 2020, he said he would accept the outcome and expected to cooperate with the incoming Democratic majority, adding that the two sides would “probably work something out”. He said:
I am absolutely willing to accept those results.
We’ll work with the Democrats.
Republican and Democratic leaders respond
House Speaker Mike Johnson said he was disappointed by the result and told supporters that Republicans had faced difficult conditions, before pledging to win the chamber back at the next House elections in 2028. He said:
We faced some real odds here.
Come 2028, we will take back the House and we will finish this job.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Republicans would work with Trump to counter what he called “Democrat extremism”. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer described the result as a “generational remake of the Senate map”, and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said:
the American people are crying out for transformational change.
Where Democrats flipped the Senate
Democrats reached 51 of the 100 Senate seats, the net gain of four they needed. Roy Cooper beat Michael Whatley in North Carolina, Sherrod Brown won in Ohio, Adam Hamilton won in Kansas, James Talarico beat Ken Paxton in Texas and Josh Turek beat Ashley Hinson in Iowa. Annie Andrews also won in South Carolina.
Trump signed an executive order at a rally in Grand Island, Nebraska, on Monday, 5 October 2026, four weeks before the vote. It allowed anyone to buy tax-free red-dyed diesel for any reason and deferred the federal diesel excise tax on road use until the end of the year.
Sources
- Associated Press via PBS NewsHour, Democrats win control of the U.S. House
- Forbes, Live midterm election results: Democrats win House and Senate
- RTÉ, Trump deflects blame for election rout but accepts result
- Newsweek, Donald Trump reacts to disastrous midterms for GOP
- Yahoo News (dpa), Trump's Republicans lose control of both US House and Senate
- Anadolu Agency, Trump says Republicans would have won midterms in landslide if he had been on ballot
- Swisher Post, US midterm elections: When results land in South Africa
- Swisher Post, Trump tax-free diesel order: What it means for truckers
