Senate balance of power shifts after key election wins

Peggy Flanagan will be one of several freshman Democrat lawmakers as the party picked up a number of seats in both chambers of Congress. Yeah, Democrats saw numerous wins across a lot of states. Shane Wells is standing by in our live center right now taking a closer look at what this means for the balance of power in D.C. Good morning. Good morning. Democrats have taken control of both the House and the Senate. And here's what it looks like right now, the balance of power. At the moment, Democrats have 54 seats to Republicans, 44. Two races are yet to be decided. In total, Democrats flipped seven Senate seats last night, many of them in states long held by Republicans. In South Carolina, they're sending their first Democrat to Washington in more than 20 years. In Texas, where James Tallarico won, there hasn't been a Democratic senator since 1988. And in Kansas, they haven't had a Democratic senator since 1932. Alaska is also in play for Democrats for the first time in years. Right now, the race is too close to call. Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan has a bit of a lead with 48.5% of the vote to Democrat Mary Peltola's 47.7%. Now remember, this was the state where there was an independent candidate also named Dan Sullivan. He got more than 1% of the vote, around 3,400 votes. In Maine, major upset as Troy Jackson defeated Susan Collins, who had held the seat since 1997. Thank you for joining us. Jackson is a fifth-generation logger. He replaced Graham Platner in July. After controversy surrounding Platner and his campaign, Jackson previously served as president of the Maine Senate and represented parts of Maine in the state legislature. Now in a statement, Susan Collins says it has been the honor of my life to serve the people of Maine and the United States Senate. I'm proud of all I've been able to accomplish for our state and for our country in the past 30 years. Now, earlier I mentioned Alaska hasn't been called yet. Mississippi is the other Senate race that we're waiting on right now. The Democratic candidate, Scott Collum, is only leading by 43 votes, with 96% of the votes counted. Tom, Hannah, back to you. All right, Shane Wells with our big-picture look here. Thank you. 8.33 now, and last night's results sending a message across the state and the entire country. Nationwide Democrats racked up many wins, taking over leadership in the House and Senate. In Minnesota, the DFL has set up the, basically, trifecta now for control of both the legislature and the governor's office. And political analyst Lois Olson joins us this morning. Yeah. Good morning, Lois. Not only Minnesota with now both of our houses of legislature and the governor swinging Democrat. You have that Wisconsin, too, which it's been a long time over a decade since they've had that. So what do you think has led to this? What do you think the Democrats got right in campaigning this time around? I don't think there's ever just one thing. I think it's the unpopularity of the president. He has the lowest approval rating on the economy of any president in history. Kind of some of the motivating issues for progressives, metro surge, ICE, things like that. And so it becomes this kind of mix. And if you look at one group of voters, farmers. They just flipped. And when some group flips en masse, that's going to mean change. The last time we saw something like this was 1994, when Republicans did this to Democrats. It was the first Clinton midterm. Democrats did not see this coming. Republicans had tapped into a nerve. Democrats this time tapped into a nerve. The real question is, is it that they're for something, or were they just against President Trump? It's somewhat of a mea culpa from President Trump saying that he's willing to work now with the other side. All right. Blois, thanks so much. Appreciate it. We're out of time, as per usual, but we'll check in again a little later on. You're not done yet, Blois. One more. Yeah. You can't leave yet. Okay. You need to pick that brain some more. Yeah. Thank you.