US President Donald Trump asked voters to pretend he was on the ballot in the midterm elections and handpicked Republican candidates in some of the country’s most consequential Senate races. By Tuesday night, voters had rejected them.

Trump-backed candidates in South Carolina, North Carolina and Texas all lost, while the president’s preferred pick trailed in early results in Michigan. The defeats handed Democrats control of the chamber and exposed the limits of Trump’s political power.

Trump has spent more than a decade reshaping the Republican Party around his ‘Make America Great Again’ (MAGA) movement, dictating primary matchups and pushing aside conservative figures he felt were insufficiently loyal or not aligned with his vision.

Trump repeatedly favoured loyalists and ideological allies over more established Republicans with stronger statewide networks and proven electoral track records, betting that his endorsement could overcome their political liabilities.

Tuesday’s results revealed he was unable to persuade the broader electorate to back his choices.

One of the most stunning repudiations came in South Carolina, which had not elected a Democratic senator since 1998 and which Trump won by 18 percentage points in 2024. Trump backed Darline Graham, the sister of late Republican Senator Lindsey Graham. But Democrat Annie Andrews won the seat in a stunning upset.

In North Carolina, Trump endorsed former national Republican campaign official Michael Whatley, who lost in a rout to former Democratic Governor Roy Cooper.

In Texas, Trump intervened in a messy Republican primary election to promote scandal-plagued Attorney General Ken Paxton over Senator John Cornyn, a Trump ally who some in the party considered a safer pick in the general election. Democrat James Talarico glided to a victory on Tuesday night, delivering Democrats a seat the party had not won since 1988.

Former US Representative Mike Rogers, Trump’s choice in Michigan, trailed Democrat Abdul El-Sayed in an uncalled race. El-Sayed would be the first Muslim to serve in the Senate.

The losses came as Trump’s popularity was lower heading into Tuesday’s vote than in the aftermath of the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, according to Reuters/Ipsos polls. That helped fuel concerns among Republicans that the president had become a drag on the party he remade around himself.

This is a “Trump Quake”, said Doug Heye, a veteran Republican strategist, pointing to voter frustration over high prices caused by tariffs and the war in Iran.

“Trump spent the year telling voters what was important to him, not to them.”

Trump struck a defiant tone as election returns arrived.

“I wasn’t on the ballot, and if I was, we would have won in a landslide!” Trump wrote in a Tuesday night social media post.

One White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Trump did a better job promoting many of the candidates on the ballot than the candidates did themselves.

A senior White House official, also speaking anonymously, told Reuters the administration had polling data as far back as six weeks ago showing Republicans would lose both the House of Representatives and Senate, and Trump embarked on a month-long nationwide campaign to try to salvage Republicans’ prospects.

‘Gave that seat away’

Some independent analysts said the Senate losses bore Trump’s fingerprints specifically.

Thomas Kahn, a professor at American University, said the president’s intervention in the Texas Republican primary had cost his party a safe seat, arguing that a nomination for Senator John Cornyn “would have been a slam dunk for Republicans to win.”

North Carolina, Kahn said, was another clear case. The Republican incumbent senator, Thom Tillis, said he would not seek re-election last year after a public split with Trump, who threatened to back a primary challenger against him after Tillis baulked at Medicaid cuts in the president’s tax-and-spending bill.

“He essentially gave that seat away to Democrats,” Kahn said. “Roy Cooper would not have run if Thom Tillis had run for re-election.” Former North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory, a Republican, said Trump’s interventions in his party’s primaries had divided Republicans in state after state.

In South Carolina, McCrory said, the president went against two local congressmen, a fight that “really divided the party”, an example, in his telling, of a president spending his political capital against his own side.

McCrory’s sharpest criticism was aimed at Trump’s connection with the voters who built his coalition.

“I think President Trump’s greatest strength was that he had a common touch with the working-class people,” McCrory said. “He lost that skill. He better regain that skill for the good of the country.”