On Tuesday, Nov. 3, Democrats won control of both the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate.

Indiana is not a swing state. Donald Trump won it by 19 points two years ago. But on Tuesday Republicans here lost a seat in Congress, two statewide offices, the speaker of the Indiana House and the supermajority they had held there since 2012. Every Republican on this site who won here won by less, most of them by about 10 points less than in 2024. And the fight that shaped the year, Trump's push to redraw the state's congressional map, ended with the people who backed it in charge of the Legislature.

Here's the good, the bad and the ugly.

The good: Spartz is out, and so is the supermajority

Victoria Spartz lost

Democratic state Sen. J.D. Ford beat Victoria Spartz in the 5th District, which runs from the northern suburbs of Indianapolis up through Anderson, Muncie, Marion and Kokomo. With 99% of the vote counted as of Nov. 13, Ford had 134,476 votes (51.7%) to Spartz's 125,851 (48.3%), a margin of 8,625. Two years ago Spartz won the same district with 56.6%, beating her opponent by more than 18 points.

The two took opposite sides on Trump's map. Spartz supported the new lines. Ford voted against them in the state Senate.

Spartz didn't blame her record. She blamed the voters: "An influx of liberal voters has turned Hamilton County, once one of the top 20 most conservative counties in the country, blue," she said in a statement, adding that Democrats "ran a very dishonest campaign." In the last weeks of the race, Ford questioned Spartz's financial disclosures and her family's stock trades. Earlier this year we reported that her campaign paid her husband $30,000 in "rent" for a house in Westfield.

Ford promised to hold regular town halls. He was Indiana's first openly gay state legislator. Indiana's delegation goes from seven Republicans and two Democrats to six and three.

The Indiana House supermajority is gone

For 14 years, Republicans held more than two-thirds of the seats in the Indiana House. That let them take action on bills even if no Democrat showed up. Democrats had tried to break it in seven straight elections. Now it's gone.

Democrats flipped 16 seats on Tuesday. Republicans go from a 70–30 majority to 54–46. The Capital Chronicle says that's the most seats either party has gained in one election since 1974.

Some of the wins:

• The speaker lost. House Speaker Todd Huston of Fishers lost to Democrat Lauren Cole, who got 51.5% of the vote. Huston hadn't had a Democratic opponent in 2022 or 2024.
• A challenger with less than $10,000. Misti Meehan beat eight-term Rep. Bob Morris of Fort Wayne with 51% of the vote. Morris had more than $200,000. Meehan said she ran after "watching all the money get sucked out of public schools" and safety-net programs while Republicans bragged about the state's budget surplus.
• Three upsets no one saw coming. In southern Marion County, three Democrats beat Reps. Bob Behning, Julie McGuire and Andrew Ireland in what had been safe Republican seats. Together the three raised less than $20,000 and got nothing from the state party.
• The suburbs. Tiffany Stoner beat Rep. Becky Cash of Zionsville 59% to 41%. Two years ago she had lost to Cash by 64 votes. Next door, Racheal Bleicher beat Rep. Hunter Smith, and in Hendricks County, William Colteryahn beat Rep. Greg Steuerwald, who had been in the House since 2007.

Democrats also picked up five seats in the state Senate. Republicans keep their supermajority there, 35 to 15. One of the five was Fort Wayne's Liz Brown, a Republican who supported redistricting and had Trump's endorsement. She lost to Democrat Julie McGill, about 52% to 48%.

Two statewide offices

Democrat Beau Bayh beat Republican Max Engling for secretary of state, 51.8% to 42.6%. It's the first statewide race a Democrat has won in Indiana since 2012.

The race was about the man leaving the office. Secretary of State Diego Morales is accused of spending taxpayer money on luxury vehicles and promotional materials, hiring family members and giving no-bid contracts to donors. Bayh says his first job will be an independent audit of the office.

He'll have help. Democrat Jessica Bailey beat Comptroller Elise Nieshalla, 50% to 47%, while spending about $169,000 by her latest report. The comptroller keeps many of the financial records Bayh's audit will need.

The bad: they won, by less

Six Republicans on this site won Tuesday. Every one of them got a smaller share of the vote than in 2024, about 9 to 13 points smaller. These are NBC's counts, with about 99% counted as of Nov. 13. All six, and Spartz, voted for the Trump budget bill that cuts Medicaid, in the state that has lost a larger share of its children from Medicaid than any other.

• Rudy Yakym won the 2nd District with 51.3%, down from 62.7%. He went from winning by 28 points to winning by 5, the closest of Indiana's Republican winners for Congress. He voted to cut food stamps by nearly $200 billion, then wrote a bill letting food pantries ask for your ID. His opponent, Jamee Decio, ran on lowering everyday costs and protecting Medicaid and Social Security.
• Marlin Stutzman won the 3rd District with 54.9%, down from 65%. He's a farmer, and Indiana farmers lost $607 million to the trade war. When the Supreme Court threw out Trump's tariffs, he told Bloomberg the ruling wasn't good for Indiana farmers.
• Jim Baird won the 4th District with 54.2%, down from 64.8%. Two hundred fifty people at a town hall he skipped chanted "Where is Jim?"
• Jefferson Shreve beat Cinde Wirth for the second time in the 6th District, with 55.1%. Against the same opponent in 2024, he got 63.9%. Thirteen groups planned a candidate forum for the race, and it was cancelled when Shreve's campaign never answered the invitation.
• Mark Messmer won the 8th District with 55.2%, down from 68%. As of June, WNIN reported, he had never held an in-person town hall in his district. His opponent, Evansville City Council member Mary Allen, ran on protecting Medicaid and Medicare and keeping rural hospitals open.
• Erin Houchin won the 9th District with 54%, down from 64.5%. She wrote an op-ed titled "Trump's Tariffs Are Reviving American Manufacturing." A University of Illinois study found the tariffs wiped out 9,148 Indiana manufacturing jobs.

The ugly: Trump's map failed, and its backers got promoted

The map Trump wanted

In 2025, Trump pushed Indiana Republicans to redraw the state's congressional map in the middle of the decade. The plan carved up the two districts held by Democrats, aiming for Republicans to win all nine of Indiana's seats.

Rep. Ben Smaltz of Auburn wrote the House bill. He admitted the new districts were "politically gerrymandered." The House passed it anyway, over the objections of every Democrat.

As the fight heated up, so did the threats. By early December, at least 13 Indiana lawmakers said they had been threatened or targeted with fake police calls to their homes, known as swatting. Smaltz said he got a threat that his family would be killed in front of him. The threats hit lawmakers on both sides.

In December, the state Senate killed the map, 31 to 19. Twenty-one Republicans voted with all 10 Democrats against it. Before the vote, Trump wrote on Truth Social that anyone opposing it would be "met with a MAGA Primary in the Spring."

The revenge primary

He kept his word. Trump endorsed challengers against seven sitting Republican senators, and Gov. Mike Braun endorsed them too. In the May 5 primary, six of the incumbents lost: Travis Holdman, Jim Buck, Linda Rogers, Dan Dernulc, Rick Niemeyer and Greg Walker.

The money was enormous. TV ad spending in those primaries reached $13.5 million, according to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact. In 2024, about $250,000 was spent on state Senate races. The two biggest spenders were groups aligned with U.S. Sen. Jim Banks, which put in $5.2 million and $3.8 million. One of their ads called Buck, who had been in the Legislature since 1994, "Old. Pathetic. Liberal."

Senate leader Rodric Bray, whom Trump attacked again and again over the map, wasn't on the ballot. Trump's allies asked the challengers to promise they would vote to remove him as leader. Bray later decided to step down after drawing Trump's anger over the map.

What it was worth in November

Two of Trump's primary winners then lost to Democrats.

• In Lake County's Senate District 1, Trevor De Vries, who had beaten Dernulc in the primary, lost to Democrat Scott Houldieson, 57% to 43%, as of midnight on election night.
• In Senate District 11, near South Bend, Trump-endorsed Brian Schmutzler had beaten Rogers in the primary. He lost to Democrat Gabrianna Gratzol, a plastics factory worker, 51.4% to 48.6% in the AP's unofficial results. Schmutzler's campaign spent about $627,000. Gratzol's spent $13,000.

Two days after the election, Braun was asked about the map he had campaigned for. "I think that was probably clearly litigated by the results of the election Tuesday," he said.

Who runs the Legislature now

The day after the election, House Republicans picked their new leader to replace Huston: Ben Smaltz, the lawmaker who wrote the redistricting bill. Senate Republicans unanimously confirmed Sen. Chris Garten as the Senate's new leader, replacing Bray. Garten is a vocal supporter of redistricting, and Schmutzler had endorsed him for the job.

Asked whether redistricting could come back next session, Smaltz said: "I'm not sure that's an issue that's important to Hoosiers right now."

Garten nearly lost his own seat. In unofficial results he leads Democrat Nick Marshall by 297 votes, 21,817 to 21,520, the closest of the state's 25 Senate races. Four years ago, Marshall got about 38% against him. Clark County Democrats raised questions about check-in tablets, a jammed ballot machine and a possible gap between ballots cast and ballots counted at a busy polling site in Jeffersonville. Garten called that "politically motivated speculation." The county election board then voted 2–1 not to hand count the ballots from four Jeffersonville precincts, and Democrats say they will seek a recount and challenge the result. Garten called it "political theater." Candidates have until Nov. 17 to ask for a recount. That's also the day the Senate is expected to formally elect Garten its leader.

The rest of the ugly

• An Epstein ad. In the secretary of state race, Engling's campaign ran an ad tying Bayh's father, former Gov. Evan Bayh, to Jeffrey Epstein. Bayh said in their debate that the ad linked his father to Epstein "with no evidence" and that his father had never met or talked to him.
• A senator stayed on the ballot after he stopped campaigning. Republican Sen. Ron Alting of Lafayette, the Senate's longest-serving member, faced reports that he was involved in a string of shoplifting incidents. He stopped campaigning, citing "concerning changes in my judgment," and said he would resign if reelected. He lost to Democrat Natasha Baker, 59% to 41%.
• The state party chair quit. Indiana Republican Chair Lana Keesling resigned on Nov. 12. Braun had picked her in February 2025 as the party's fourth chair in less than 18 months.

What the results show

Victoria Spartz lost Indiana's 5th District to J.D. Ford, 51.7% to 48.3%, two years after winning it by more than 18 points. Democrats flipped 16 Indiana House seats and ended the Republicans' 14-year supermajority, took five state Senate seats, and won their first statewide races since 2012. The six Republicans on this site who won all got about 9 to 13 points less of the vote than in 2024, and Rudy Yakym won by just 5 points. Trump's revenge primaries against the state senators who blocked his 9–0 map drew $13.5 million in TV ads. Two of the seats his candidates won in May went to Democrats in November, and Republicans then picked the map's author, Ben Smaltz, and one of its loudest backers, Chris Garten, to lead the House and the Senate.

Source

Indiana Dems break GOP supermajority in House, notch Senate wins — Leslie Bonilla Muñiz, Indiana Capital Chronicle, November 3, 2026.