Republican wins in Ohio and West Virginia hand party Senate control | US elections 2024

Republicans have seized majority control of the Senate.

The Trump-backed auto magnate Bernie Moreno has ousted three-term Democratic senator Sherrod Brown in Ohio, and Republican Ted Cruz has defeated Democratic challenger Colin Allred in Texas, according to the Associated Press.

With the re-election of Republican Deb Fisher in Nebraska, Republicans now have at least 51 seats in the senate, as well as the chance to pick up a few remaining wins in battleground states, according to the Associated Press.

Democrats have held the Senate majority for the past four years. Republican control of the Senate gives the party crucial power in confirming the next president’s cabinet members and future supreme court justices, providing a check on Kamala Harris if she is elected, or boosting Donald Trump’s power.

Earlier, Trump loyalist Jim Justice won the US senate seat in West Virginia previously held by Joe Manchin, giving Republicans two additional seats, according to the Associated Press.

Several hotly contested Senate seats remain to be called, including a race between Democratic incumbent Jon Tester and Republican challenger Tim Sheehy in Montana.

Ahead of election night, the most vulnerable incumbent Democrat was widely deemed to be the three-term Montana senator Jon Tester, who – if polls are accurate – faces likely defeat at the hands of a Republican challenger, Tim Sheehy, an ex-navy Seal endorsed by Trump.

A win for Sheehy, whose campaign has faced allegations that he made racist comments about the state’s Indigenous community, would tip the Senate further into Republican hands.

The race between Sherrod and Moreno was the most expensive in Senate history, with about $500m has been ploughed into ad spending.

Thirty-four seats in the US Senate – one-third of the 100-member chamber – were up for grabs on Tuesday in contests that could influence the makeup of the new administration, impact the balance on the supreme court and shape policy on areas ranging from foreign affairs to abortion.

Democrats made some historic wins in safe districts: Andy Kim of New Jersey will become the first Korean American elected to the US Senate, while Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland and Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware will be the first two Black women to serve in the Senate at the same time.

In other early races to be called, the independent Bernie Sanders won re-election in Vermont, and the Republican congressman Jim Banks of Indiana won his first Senate challenge comfortably.

The victory for Sanders, who caucuses with Democrats, was called by the AP with less than 10% of the vote in. It will be the 83-year-old’s fourth Senate term.

Democrats were trying to cling to a one-seat majority with the knowledge that the odds appeared stacked against them, given Manchin’s retirement and the fall of his seat to a Republican.

Elsewhere, the party faced uphill struggles, with incumbents trying to hold 23 seats, often in states that have become increasingly pro-GOP as Trump has strengthened his grip over the party.

By contrast, only 11 Republican senatorswere up for re-election, all in solidly GOP states, thus giving the Democrats much less scope for making gains.

Facing off against a Trump-backed candidate in an increasingly Republican state, Brown had tried to emphasise shared policy goals with Trump – including supporting anti-fentanyl legislation – in a one-time battleground state that the Republican presidential nomineeheld on comfortably.

Key races that remain up in the air are those in the Democrats’ three blue wall states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, the closeness of which mirror the knife-edge presidential contest between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.

In Pennsylvania, the Democratic incumbent Bob Casey – a senator for 18 years – is seeking a fourth term against a challenge from the Republican Dave McCormick. McCormick, who has funded his own campaign, has sought to tie Casey to the same policies that Trump has attacked Harris for, namely immigration and a past support for a fracking ban.

The race has been designated a toss-up by the Cook Political Report, as has that in Wisconsin between another incumbent Democrat, the two-term senator Tammy Baldwin, and her GOP challenger, Eric Hovde, a wealthy banker and property developer who is another campaign self-funder.

Democrats are also on the defensive in Michigan where Elissa Slotkin, a member of the House of Representatives, is running to fill the seat left vacant by the retirement of a fellow Democrat, Debbie Stabenow. Her Republican opponent is Mike Rogers, a former GOP House member and ex-FBI agent, who was once a critic of Trump but has now received his endorsement.

Another Democratic soft spot is Nevada, where the party’s sitting senator, Jacky Rosen, is in a tight race with Sam Brown, a decorated army veteran who was badly wounded in Afghanistan. Brown has tried to fend off Rosen’s attacks on his abortion stance by saying he would not support a nationwide ban and acknowledging that his wife once underwent the procedure.

In Arizona, Ruben Gallego, a US Marine Corps veteran, is trying to keep a seat in the Democratic camp following the retirement of the independent senator, Kyrsten Sinema, who voted with the party in the chamber. Up against him is Kari Lake, a Trump ally who baselessly claimed that her failed 2022 bid for the state’s governorship had been derailed by Democratic cheating.

Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage

Chris Stein contributed reporting