U.S. Midterms key takeaways: Voters punish Trump, and the GOP suffers historic losses

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump re­peat­ed­ly en­cour­aged vot­ers to pre­tend he was on the midterm bal­lot. They did. And it’s hard to imag­ine a worse out­come for the Re­pub­li­can pres­i­dent and his par­ty.

Vot­ers ab­solute­ly pun­ished Trump’s al­lies al­most every­where. De­moc­rats won in swing states like Geor­gia, Michi­gan, New Hamp­shire and North Car­oli­na and in Re­pub­li­can strong­holds of Iowa, Kansas, Texas and even South Car­oli­na. Trump’s con­tro­ver­sial mid-decade re­dis­trict­ing plan ap­peared to back­fire. And Re­pub­li­can loss­es al­lowed De­moc­rats to make his­to­ry in Geor­gia, where De­mo­c­rat Keisha Lance Bot­toms be­came the first Black woman elect­ed gov­er­nor in U.S. his­to­ry, while in Texas, De­mo­c­rat Gi­na Hi­no­josa will be­come its first Lati­na gov­er­nor.

Vot­ers na­tion­wide were in the mood for change, ac­cord­ing to The AP Vot­er Poll, which found that rough­ly three-quar­ters of vot­ers feel “an­gry” or “dis­sat­is­fied” with the di­rec­tion of the coun­try.