WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — Democrats flipped a first US Senate seat Tuesday in early midterm election results that boosted their push to win control of Congress in what would be a stinging rebuke of President Donald Trump.

Popular Democratic former governor Roy Cooper defeated Trump’s handpicked candidate for the Senate in North Carolina, while rising Democratic star Jon Ossoff won reelection to the Senate in Georgia, according to media projections.

The early victories for Democrats boosted the party’s hopes of taking both chambers of Congress.

The elections are seen as a referendum on Trump’s tumultuous and divisive two years in power.

And amid soaring anger over living costs, Trump’s trade disputes and the war he started against Iran, polls show the president is one of the most unpopular in US history.

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said the country was “on the brink of a dramatic change of direction,” predicting his party would reclaim the chamber.

Trump was watching results at the White House, officials said, but his only public statements were a series of angry social media posts attacking coverage by Fox News.

Results from Florida demonstrated Republican vulnerability in the battle for the House of Representatives, with Democrats projected to win several seats that had been redrawn to favor Trump’s party.

In one striking example, Republican congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna was clinging to a razor-thin lead in a district Trump won by 13 points in 2024.

– Senate breakthrough –
While Democrats are widely forecast to defeat Republicans and win control of the House of Representatives, the battle for the Senate, where Republicans hold a narrow majority, is expected to be very close.

Cooper, 69, defeated former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Whatley in North Carolina, a state Trump carried in all three of his presidential campaigns.

That result handed Democrats a crucial gain in their bid to overcome the Republicans’ 53-47 Senate majority.

Cooper, who served two terms as governor and has never lost an election in nearly four decades in politics, becomes the first Democrat elected to the Senate from North Carolina since 2008.

He campaigned on reducing living costs against Whatley, a staunch Trump loyalist, and will replace retiring Republican Senator Thom Tillis, who often clashed with the president.

In Georgia, Ossoff defeated Republican Mike Collins, safeguarding a Democratic seat that Republicans had hoped to capture.

The 39-year-old senator is widely regarded as a possible contender for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028.

All 435 House seats and 35 of the 100 Senate seats were at stake, along with 36 governorships. Democrats needed three House gains and a net four Senate seats to take both chambers.

– Consequences –

The consequences for Trump could be profound.

Losing the House would allow Democrats to block his legislative agenda and launch sweeping investigations into his administration, including the Iran war, mass deportations of undocumented migrants, and alleged corruption.

A Democratic Senate could also thwart his judicial and senior government appointments.

“Rent, groceries, utility bills, and property taxes keep climbing, and I want people in Congress who will actually do something about costs,” Taylor Cook, a 24-year-old Los Angeles voter, told AFP.

Trump defended his record in a final television appearance Tuesday, praising his tariffs, immigration crackdown and military campaign against Iran.

“We have to keep America great. We’re great now. We were terrible two years ago,” the 80-year-old told Fox News.

Republican voter Maru Restrepo, 70, told AFP in Miami that Democrats had become “very socialist.”

Concerns lingered that Trump could challenge an unfavorable outcome, having previously tried to overturn his 2020 presidential defeat.