Trump and Vance lead GOP blame game as fingers point at Iran war

Hello! Well, yesterday was huge!

The Democrats have emerged victorious from the midterm elections, claiming massive gains in both the US House of Representatives and the US Senate.

Click here to read a quick catch-up on how the results panned out, click here to see how popular Trump is today,and click here for a breakdown on what the midterms are all about.

Here's what you need to know today

• GOP blame game: In the aftermath of their huge losses, Republicans have turned to examining what went wrong. "I don't blame anybody," Trump told Politico. Earlier, he acknowledged that the Iran war played a role, but stood by his decision to attack Iran — something Vice-President JD Vance has echoed. "The reason we lost is the war," Vance said on X. "If you'd like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next six years was worth it, then do so." Trump also said if he had been on the ballot, "we would have won". "But they just, you couldn't transfer that love. There was such love at those rallies, it was incredible, and we weren't able to transfer the love to candidates," he said. But with Trump's approval rating sitting below 40 per cent since April, many Republicans feel differently. "Trump spent the year telling voters what was important to him, not them," veteran Republican strategist Doug Heye told Reuters.
• A potential dummymander: Going into the election, Trump encouraged Republican states to redraw their electoral maps in a bid to give the party an advantage in House races, leading to a proverbial arms race between the two parties. For the most part, that gambit failed to net Republicans any extra seats. But there's also a chance it may have cost the party a once-safe seat where a comfortable majority was shaved down to bolster other areas. At the time of writing, the race for Tennessee's fourth congressional district is separated by just 280 votes, with the Democrats in the lead. Still, experts have said the new maps had some impact, stifling Democrats' abilities to flip even more seats across the country.
• Looking ahead: The new make-up is scheduled to be sworn in on January 3, but the work starts now. Parties in both chambers are expected to choose their leadership teams when Congress returns next week. Hakeem Jeffries, who is currently the House Democratic leader, is expected to remain the party leader for the chamber for the next two years. That would make him the first Black speaker in the 237-year history of the House. The current speaker, Mike Johnson, has announced he will not serve as House minority leader next year, opening the way for a Republican leadership bid. In the Senate, Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Majority Leader John Thune are expected to remain leaders of their respective parties.

Answering some of your questions

We had plenty of questions come through on yesterday's live blog. Here are some of the most frequently asked, and how our ABC staff answered.

Liz

How does this affect Australia?

Riley Stuart

The US is one of Australia's closest allies, so any political changes there could have an effect in the medium to long term.

Rosemary

Can Donald Trump be impeached now?

Elissa Fitzgerald

For those not familiar, impeachment means to formally charge a public official with misconduct. Democrats do now have the numbers in the House to pass articles of impeachment — only a simple majority of 51 per cent is required.

Elissa Fitzgerald

But that doesn't mean they will. Even if they put forward a solid case alleging Trump has engaged in misconduct, they need a two-thirds majority vote in the Senate to convict. Democrats won't be leaving this election with that big a margin, so Republicans would need to cross the floor to do so. You might remember this was where the two impeachment motions in Trump's first term ended up getting stuck.

Elissa Fitzgerald

And as my colleague, Casey Briggs,wrote on Tuesday: "[Democrats] would need to have a reason to [impeach] as well. You would think that Democrats would want to have an issue that would be seen as worthy of impeachment by the American public. The risk is that Democrats are seen as overplaying their hand. Of course, people will disagree on exactly what the threshold is for 'high crimes and misdemeanours'."

Matt

Can a Democrat-controlled Congress put an end to US involvement in the Iran war?

Jade Macmillan

Trump did not seek permission from Congress when he launched strikes on Iran in the first place. I think from his point of view, he certainly wouldn't expect that the Democrats would affect what he's going to do here. He has hinted in the lead-up today that the strikes on Iran might resume once these midterms are over. But he's kind of backed away from that and come back to it again. So, with Trump, we never know exactly what he is going to do.

Got a question of your own? Submit it to our live blog running today! We can't promise to answer them all, but we'll do our best to get to as many as possible throughout the day.

Democrats stormed to victory in the midterms, winning control of both the US House of Representatives and the US Senate as tens of millions of voters delivered a scathing rebuke of Trump.

The party scored sweeping victories in several Republican strongholds for the first time in generations, including in Texas and Kansas.

In the Senate, Democrats have flipped at least seven seats. Mississippi could become an unexpected addition to the party's spoils as the count continues in an extraordinarily tight race that has at times been separated by less than 50 votes.

Going into the election, almost all forecasters had tipped the House would turn blue, making the Democrats' emphatic victory somewhat less of a surprise. Still, the party has won at least 237 races — 19 more than the minimum needed to form the majority.

Once seated next year, Democrats are expected to use their new power to investigate Trump's administration and family.

Despite concerns from Democrats that Trump might seek to overturn the results of the election, as he did in 2020, the president accepted the outcome and congratulated the party in an interview with Fox News.

Here's how the results are looking this morning.

You can get the latest on every House and Senate race here. 

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How popular is Donald Trump today?

US President Donald Trump might not be up for election at the midterms, but his popularity will have a strong influence over the outcome. 

The president's party almost always loses House seats in midterm elections and that trend gets steeper when the president is unpopular. 

Historic polling data collated by analytics firm Gallup shows presidents with approval ratings below 50 per cent have seen their party lose an average of 37 House seats. 

Presidents with approval ratings above 50 per cent have netted smaller loses, with an average of 14 seats. 

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Your crash course on the midterms

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And here's how to stay up to date

You can keep track of the latest out of the US here.

Thanks for joining me! This is the last edition of the daily midterms briefing, but ABC News will continue covering the latest updates across its network.

ABC/Reuters