Republicans won control of the U.S. Senate amid a slew of victories by allies of Donald Trump, giving the GOP powerful leverage in high-stakes tax and spending battles next year.
GOP candidates defeated Banking Chairman Sherrod Brown in Ohio, unseated Montana's Jon Tester and picked up the open Senate seat in West Virginia.
Nebraska Republican Deb Fischer also fended off an unexpectedly tough challenge, giving the party at least 52 seats in the 100-member Senate. That means the GOP will have the final say in the Trump's executive and judicial nominations.
Republican control of the Senate, projected by the Associated Press, dashes progressives' hopes of dramatically shifting the burden of U.S. taxation toward corporations and wealthy individuals as trillions of dollars worth of provisions in the 2017 tax law expire at the end of next year.
The announcement of Trump's presidential victory extended a sharp selloff in the bond market, with traders speculating that his tax-cut and tariff policies would fan inflation pressures and keep interest rates elevated.
Rates on the 30-year Treasury rose as much as 24 basis points, the most since 2020.
Any new tax law would need approval from the GOP-led Senate. But the balance of power going into the fight over how to handle tax cuts' expiration will also depend on control of the U.S. House, which still is unclear.
Competitive Senate races in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona and Nevada haven't yet been called.
Democrats went into the election with a slender Senate majority and had to defend far more seats than the GOP in this cycle, including three states won twice by Trump and several more he took in 2016. Only a third of the Senate is up for reelection because members serve six-year terms.
