US stocks surge, and the Dow soars 1,500 points as Brent oil's price drops below $95 per barrel

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are soaring Wednesday after President Donald Trump’s party lost its sole control of Washington in the midterm elections.

Stocks generally do well in the months following any midterm U.S. election, regardless of who wins, and the S&P 500 jumped 1.8%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 1,524 points, or 2.9%, as of noon Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 2.1% higher.

Stocks of solar-power companies, dollar stores and hospital owners helped lead the way as Wall Street tried to sort the winners from losers following the widespread losses for Republicans. Investors, meanwhile, see risks ahead for Trump’s social-media company, the artificial-intelligence industry and businesses owned by Elon Musk, who donated heavily to Republicans.

The price for a barrel of Brent crude oil fell below $100 for the first time in nearly a month. Vice President JD Vance blamed the war with Iran, which caused a spike in oil prices, for Republicans’ midterm losses.

Strategists along Wall Street had been urging investors not to get swept up in the election because it may not matter much for the broad market in the long term. Prices for stocks depend more on where profits for companies and interest rates are heading than on who controls what in Washington.

“Earnings trump elections,” according to Brian Jacobsen, chief economic strategist at Annex Wealth Management.

Still, Wall Street may have gotten a preferred political scenario as Democrats are set to take control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives. Wall Street generally prefers split control of Washington because it lessens the risk of transformative changes to the economy.

Much remains impossible to predict, of course, and Trump retains executive authority over key areas such as defense, foreign policy and in some instances trade.

A downbeat forecast could be that “Trump is not now a lame duck, but an angry duck” who might restart tensions over tariffs and NATO allies’ levels of military spending, said Carsten Brzeski, global chief of macro at ING Bank.

An optimistic view, Brzeski said, is that Trump becomes “a tame duck ... that he will slow down any disruptive efforts and that he will put more focus on trying to win the Nobel Peace Prize by ending the two big wars without big disruption, and on trade, nothing happens but a few words.”

Here’s a look at some of the moves rippling through financial markets:

Trump’s social-media company, Trump Media & Technology Group, was one of the market’s bigger losers, down 12.2%.

Since briefly touching a peak of $175 five years ago, it’s dropped toward $5. Its main business is Truth Social, which is most well known for Trump’s postings on the platform.

Elon Musk’s businesses also struggled. Tesla fell 3.4%, and SpaceX sank 3%. Musk, a former top Trump adviser, is among the possible targets for investigations by a Democratic-controlled Congress.

Trump has been a big backer of the AI industry, and Democratic victories across the country could mean more regulation or restrictions. Concerns have grown across political parties about AI in general.

Investors see Democratic wins in Texas in particular as possibly slowing the build out of further AI data centers. AI-related stocks came into Election Day already under pressure because of worries their prices had shot too high.

Nvidia, the chip company that quickly became the poster child of the frenzy around AI-related stocks, sank 1.3% and was the heaviest weight on the S&P 500. CoreWeave, a company that rents out access to AI chips to customers over the cloud, dropped 9.2%

Advanced Micro Devices, another chip giant, held up better. It added 1% after reporting much stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected.

Companies that have been spending heavily on AI chips also did better. Alphabet rose 4.2%, for example, after it tumbled more than 12% Thursday to its worst loss ever on worries that it was spending too much on AI investments.

A Democratic-led Congress could push Trump to pull back on the war with Iran.

That helped send down stocks of companies that make weapons and other equipment for the U.S. military, including drops of 6.6% for Lockheed Martin, 4.6% for Northrop Grumman and 2.5% for General Dynamics.

Democratic control of Congress could light the way for companies in the solar and wind industries. First Solar jumped 9.4%, and Enphase Energy climbed 9.8%.

Stocks of big oil companies, meanwhile, sank. ExxonMobil fell 4.8%, and ConocoPhillips dropped 5.9%. They had been rallying for much of the year after Trump and Israel began the war with Iran, which sent crude prices much higher.

The price for a barrel of Brent crude, the international standard, plunged 9.2% Wednesday to $94.11.

The price for the most actively traded contract in the Brent market has been veering between roughly $70 and $120 per barrel since just before the war with Iran began.

A Democratic-led Congress could try to reverse some of the cuts to federal healthcare and food assistance that Republicans approved during the summer in their “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”

That helped stocks climb across the healthcare industry, including a rise of 9.8% for HCA Healthcare, which runs hospitals and ambulatory sites.

Retailers also benefited on hopes that Democrats may push policies to help Americans struggling to keep up with the fast-rising cost of living. DollarTree, which focuses in particular on lower-income Americans, had one of the market's bigger leaps and rose 10%.

In the bond market, Treasury yields eased. That could be a signal investors see less risk of Washington piling even more debt onto its already big mountain with the coming end to one-party control.

Treasury yields had surged through the summer and reached their highest levels in decades because of worries about the U.S. government’s big debt, along with higher inflation and other concerns. A Congress controlled by Democrats could provide a check against more spending and cuts to taxes that would widen Washington’s deficit.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.90% from 4.95% late Tuesday.

Indexes climbed across most of the world. Stocks leaped 2% in Paris, 2.2% in Shanghai and 1.8% in London. Japan’s Nikkei 225 was an outlier and fell 1.4%.

AP Writer Elaine Lai contributed to this report from Hong Kong, and McHugh contributed from Frankfurt, Germany.

FILE - Options traders Ilya Bosinzon, left, and Justin Kanda work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Wednesday, June 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)

Dillard University students participate in a "March to the Polls" event on campus on Election Day Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026, in New Orleans. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

FILE - Traders Drew Cohen, left, and Dylan Halvorsan work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Monday, Jan. 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)

Poll workers sit as people vote in the Queens borough of New York on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Heather Khalifa)

A person walks near an electronic stock board showing Japan's Nikkei index at a securities firm Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

A person looks at an electronic stock board showing Japan's stock prices at a securities firm Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

A person walks past at an electronic stock board showing Japan's Nikkei, right, and New York Dow indexes at a securities firm Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

A person walks in front of an electronic stock board showing Japan's Nikkei index at a securities firm Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

A person walks past an electronic stock board showing Japan's Nikkei index at a securities firm Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

Democrats have won control of Congress in Tuesday’s 2026 midterm elections in a widespread repudiation of President Donald Trump and the Republican Party, a drubbing that reached deep into reliable GOP territory.

Democrats flipped at least seven Senate seats in ruby-red states and battlegrounds alike: Kansas, which hasn’t elected a Democratic senator in nearly a century, Iowa, Texas, Ohio, Maine, North Carolina and South Carolina. They held on to battleground seats in Georgia and Michigan. In the House, Democrats flipped more than two dozen districts, some that voted for Trump by double digits in 2024.

Democrats Keisha Lance Bottoms in Georgia, Amy Acton in Ohio, Rob Sand in Iowa and Gina Hinojosa in Texas won races for governor, flipping GOP-held offices.

Trump faces a profoundly reshaped Washington for the last two years of his presidency. Democrats will have the power to block his legislative agenda, reject his appointees and investigate his administration.

After telling voters repeatedly to “pretend I’m on the ballot,” Trump tried to shift the blame away from himself, saying Democrats “did a good job” in their campaigns and blaming GOP candidates for losses. Most voters appear to blame his administration for high costs and want Congress to impose more checks on him, according to The AP Voter Poll.

Here's the latest:

Talarico said Wednesday on CNN that he believes voters handed Democrats “one last chance to deliver for them.”

“They didn’t send us to Washington for political retribution,” he said in response to a question about whether the incoming Democratic-controlled Congress should impeach Trump administration officials. “They sent us to Washington to lower costs, to root out corruption, to get this economy back on track.”

The Associated Press has not called Colom’s race against Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith. But Colom said Wednesday that outstanding ballots will go his way.

“Unlike all the people across the country that might be surprised, our campaign, our volunteers, the people of Mississippi are not surprised,” he said. “We have already shown the country that Mississippi matters.”

Colom said his campaign has volunteers in every county to monitor the vote certification and help voters who cast affidavit ballots. Often, that involves voters who did not satisfy voter ID requirements. Colom said those voters have until Nov. 10 to visit local elections offices and present valid ID to have their ballot counted.

In the 2022 midterms, Mississippi had 7,612 affidavit ballots cast; 5,710 were counted.

Colom asked his team to help any provisional ballot voter who needs assistance.

“We will protect the integrity of this election,” he said.

State Sen. Cindy Holscher issued a statement Wednesday referring to herself as governor-elect and looking forward to working with term-limited Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly on the transition into office.

But her Republican opponent, Kansas Senate President Ty Masterson, had not conceded, and The Associated Press had not called the race.

A Holscher victory would be an upset after the Republican Governors Association poured $19 million into television and digital advertising in an attempt to flip the office back to the GOP, according to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact. Democrats have never held the Kansas governor’s office longer than Kelly’s eight-year tenure.

Democratic attorney and ex-police officer Chris Mann declared himself the next attorney general over Republican incumbent Kris Kobach even though the AP had not called that race either. The race was a rematch of their 2022 contest, which Kobach narrowly won.

Some world leaders who have sparred with Trump are expressing hope that Republicans’ rout in the midterms will herald a less combative U.S. foreign policy but caution that it might not end the conflict with Iran or boost U.S. support for Ukraine.

Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide said the majority of Americans had sent a clear message that “they have had enough of MAGA and now want a different course,” referring to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan.

Progressive politicians cast the results as part of a trend of liberal comebacks around the world.

Spain’s social democratic Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said Americans had voted “Against hate. Against machismo. Against climate denialism and against the privileges of the elites.”

But others in Europe cautioned that, with Trump in power for two more years, there would be no quick change to American foreign policy.

Republican Byron Donalds, a staunch Trump ally, succeeds Ron DeSantis, who used the office to fan presidential ambitions and steer the nation’s third-most populous state further to the right.

“Over the next four years we’re going to take Florida to a whole new level,” Donalds said in his victory speech.

The race was a test of whether Trump’s unpopularity would extend to his backyard. Donalds balanced his support for Trump with efforts to create some distance, including minimizing references to the president on his website.

“Mr. President, I want you to hear from Florida that we are still red,” Donalds said. “Thank you for your support and thank you for being in my corner.”

Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff’s reelection has made him a national star for Democrats looking to stymie Trump’s final White House years.

A top Republican target and the only Senate Democrat seeking reelection in a state Trump carried in 2024, Ossoff became a staple of social media feeds as he raised more than $100 million, sparking speculation that he could run for the presidency in 2028.

“The American people have rebuked the depravity, corruption and incompetence of the failed lame duck president, Donald J. Trump,” Ossoff said. He added: “Together, we’ve affirmed that our task is not just to contain one president’s wickedness, but to heal the brokenness beneath.”

Democrat Kristina Knickerbocker has declared victory in her challenge to 12-term Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Turner of southwest Ohio.

The 35-year-old nurse practitioner delivered her remarks to supporters early Wednesday in the tight contest, whose result has not yet been called by The Associated Press. Turner has not conceded.

Knickerbocker said Tuesday’s election results represented everyday people standing up to the status quo in Washington.

“As an Air Force veteran and a mom of two young kids, I was so tired of watching families suffer needlessly because policies were built to hurt them, not protect them,” she said, adding she wants to see Ohio families “thrive, not just survive.”

Scalise will seek the leadership post after Speaker Johnson decided not to stay on as leader after Democrats trounced the GOP.

That’s according to a person familiar with Scalise’s thinking who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private plans.

Scalise, who represents Louisiana, is currently the House Majority Leader and is likely to face rival Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, who is also eyeing the leadership position.

Republicans are expected to hold their internal party elections next week.

Asked if he’d support Schumer to continue as leader in the new Congress, Van Hollen said Democrats needed to have a “full, open and honest discussion” about “where we want to take the party.”

“Whoever runs for leader should be able to lay out a clear vision about how we’re going to use this power for good,” the second-term Maryland senator told the AP in a telephone interview Wednesday.

Van Hollen has become a prominent voice among progressives, and he endorsed candidates in Democratic primaries over Schumer’s preferred picks.

He has talked about running for president and told AP that he was still “very actively kicking the tires on 2028.”

Sen.-elect James Talarico invoked a Biblical reference to describe how Democrats overcame money and other challenges to win in Texas.

“David wasn’t as big or as strong as Goliath, he didn’t have as many weapons, but he had hope, he had faith, and he had a slingshot,” he told a crowd of supporters in Austin. “The people of Texas were my slingshot. And tonight we defeated Goliath.”

“We just took back Texas. We just proved that all the money in the world is no match for the people of Texas. We just showed that a politics of division is no match for a politics of love,” he added.

In a lengthy online post, the vice president seemingly sought to distance himself from election results seen as a referendum on Trump that featured big Republican losses across the country.

“The reason we lost is the war,” Vance wrote, adding, “If you’d like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that’s at least honest.”

Speaking on CNN Wednesday, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand — who has chaired Democrats’ Senate campaign arm for the midterms — expressed confidence that her party would work with Republicans to put an end to Trump-backed efforts like the war in Iran, which she called “unnecessary, unauthorized, unwanted.”

Asked how Democrats would turn back the president’s efforts without a veto-proof majority in the Senate, Gillibrand called Democratic efforts to clamp down on tariffs and improve elevated costs she traced to the war “common sense, arguably bipartisan ideas.”

Voters, she added, showed they are “fed up” by supporting Democratic candidates in states where Republicans had long held Senate seats, including Texas, Iowa and South Carolina.

Gillibrand said she “certainly” would back fellow New York Sen. Chuck Schumer as her party’s leader in the chamber.

Democrat Cindy Holscher has a lead of less than a percentage point over Republican Ty Masterson in the Kansas governor’s race.

Holscher’s 5,557-vote lead, with an estimated 98% of votes counted, comes after Democrat Adam Hamilton became the first member of his party to win a Senate seat in nearly a century.

Both Holscher and Masterson serve in the state Senate, where the latter serves as its president.

The Associated Press will only declare a winner when it’s determined there is no scenario that would allow the trailing candidate to close the gap.

Democrat Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins has a 20-percentage-point lead over Republican Bernadette Wilson in Alaska’s governor’s race.

Kreiss-Tomkins’ share of the vote is 49.2% with an estimated 74% of ballots counted.

Under Alaska’s ranked choice voting system, the election advances to another round if no candidate gets more than 50% of the votes.

Troy Jackson, 58, a fifth-generation logger and former state Senate president, had a little more than 100 days to sell himself to Maine voters after he replaced Graham Platner as the party’s nominee in July.

“We had a party to unite, a movement to build and a senator to defeat,” Jackson said in his victory speech. “This morning, the people of Maine have elected that logger to the United States Senate.”

Democrat Mary Peltola has a 626-vote lead over Republican incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan in Alaska.

The Associated Press has not called the contest yet. If neither candidate gets more than 50% of the vote, then it will go to ranked choice voting under Alaska law.

Peltola’s share of the votes stood at 48.2% compared with 47.9% for Sullivan, with an estimated 74% of ballots counted.

The AP does not make projections and will only declare a winner when it’s determined there is no scenario that would allow the trailing candidate to close the gap.

In his victory speech in Michigan’s Senate race, Abdul El-Sayed used the middle name Trump often invoked while telling voters they should fear the progressive Democrat.

“My name is Abdulrahman Mohamed Sayed, and I am so proud and honored to stand here as your senator-elect from the great state of Michigan,” he said.

Ron DeSantis, the outgoing Republican governor of Florida, said his state demonstrated how the GOP can win in a tough political environment.

“People can look at Florida and show how you can deliver big results and how you can build a durable coalition,” he said.

The state avoided the brunt of Democratic victories, electing Republicans to the governor’s office and U.S. Senate. But DeSantis, a potential 2028 presidential candidate, was clear about the party’s struggles nationally.

“It’s going to take time to dig out of the hole that was there,” he said.

DeSantis, a former congressman, added, “You’re going to see a lot more conflict between the Congress and the executive.”

He said the chances of a Democratic Congress approving Trump’s nominations to the Supreme Court or Cabinet agencies were “zero.”

Mississippi’s contest is one of two Senate races in which the outcome is still unclear.

Democratic candidate Scott Colom leads Republican incumbent Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith by 43 votes with an estimated 96% of votes counted.

The Associated Press has not declared a winner in the race yet.

The AP does not make projections and will only declare a winner when it’s determined there is no scenario that would allow the trailing candidate to close the gap.

Mississippi does not have an automatic recount process, but a challenger can seek a court order for one.

The Associated Press has also not called Alaska’s Senate contest between incumbent Republican Dan Sullivan and Democrat Mary Peltola.

Speaking in Italian, Pope Leo XIV told hundreds of faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square that “the political community exists for the sake of the common good.”

“The exercise of political authority must always be directed towards the common good, which must be structured and operate according to local and historical circumstances, but always with the good of the entire human family at heart,” said Leo, the first pope to vote in a U.S. election.

“Oh man, wow, wow, wow,” the Senate minority leader said in his victory speech. “Against all odds, we Democrats have won the Senate!”

Schumer said Democrats recruited great candidates who focused their campaigns on costs, chaos and corruption, while Republicans embraced “the worst president ever.”

“Republicans made a choice and followed Trump over the cliff,” Schumer said. “We listened, they didn’t. And the American people reduced the red brick wall to a pile of bricks.”

Schumer closed with a warning to his own party: “Americans voted for change and now, Democrats must deliver.”

Methodist megachurch pastor Adam Hamilton’s defeat of Republican Sen. Roger Marshall is the first Democratic Senate win in Kansas since 1932.

“It’s pretty exciting to make history … but to me it’s really more a statement of what’s wrong,” Hamilton said. “Kansans voted overwhelmingly to say this is not OK.”

“I think the people in Kansas, Republicans and Democrats, are saying that what’s happening in Washington is not OK,” Hamilton said. “Kansans are also fed up with the way politicians divide us.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson will not seek election as House Republican leader following the Democrats’ win. That’s according to a person who spoke on condition of anonymity to disclose the plans.

Democrats are riding their sweep of Congress into a new era. They’re eager to meet voter demands for change with plans to tackle high costs of living and confront President Donald Trump’s final years in the White House.

The results of Tuesday’s midterm elections set up a moment of divided government. Democrats ousted Republicans from coast to coast and in many surprising places in between. Voters rejected the president’s party for the promise of something different.

Democrats increased their support with moderate voters, particularly in key Senate races where Democrats flipped Republican-held seats.

Roughly two-thirds of moderates supported the Democratic candidate in their local U.S. House race, an uptick from the approximately 6 in 10 moderate voters who backed Harris.

A large majority of moderate voters, about 8 in 10, said Congress was not doing enough to provide checks and balances on the presidency, and a similarly high share said they had experienced at least a “moderate” hardship in the past year because of inflation.

Many Democratic candidates benefited from significant moderate support. In Kansas, Democrat Adam Hamilton won about 7 in 10 moderate voters, a substantial rise from the roughly half that Harris won in 2024. There was a similar pattern in Iowa as Democrat Josh Turek won about two-thirds of moderates, up from about half for Harris.

Supporters cheer as Democratic gubernatorial candidate Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford speaks at an election night event Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher)

Guests attend an election night event for Republican Senate candidate Mike Collins, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Ryan Murphy)

Supporters check a phone at an election night event for Republican gubernatorial candidate Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026, in Hollywood, Fla. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

A supporter of Wisconsin Democratic gubernatorial candidate David Crowley touches an "I voted" sticker at an election night event Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

Jerry Lorimer votes at the Kanwaka township hall Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026, near Lawrence, Kan. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)