On Tuesday, voters across America handed Democrats control of the U.S. House and Senate. Missouri isn't a place you'd expect to feel that. Donald Trump won the state by 18.4 points two years ago.

Missouri felt it anyway. Republicans lost their supermajorities in both the state House and the state Senate. Ann Wagner lost her seat in Congress. Voters turned down a Trump-backed congressional map, and they turned down an abortion ban.

Republicans still run the state. They hold the governor's office, every other statewide office and both chambers. Bob Onder, Mark Alford, Eric Burlison and Jason Smith all won, by less than last time. And some Republicans are already talking about how to undo what voters just did.

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

The good: both supermajorities are gone, and so is Ann Wagner

Republicans have held two-thirds of the Missouri House since 2012. Going into Tuesday, Democrats needed to gain just three seats to end that.

They took 16. By the Missouri Independent's preliminary count, the House will have 95 Republicans and 68 Democrats in January. Republicans didn't flip a single Democratic seat. Their 95 is their lowest total since the 2008 election, and the Independent called it their worst election since Watergate.

"It feels really, really good to look towards the next General Assembly and not be a member of a super minority party," said state Rep. Ashley Aune, the House Democratic floor leader.

They did it with far less money. Republican House campaigns raised $17.7 million. Democrats raised $7.1 million.

Democrats also won the two state Senate seats they needed to end the supermajority there. Republicans will hold 22 of the 34 seats.

Republicans can still pass budgets and bills without a single Democratic vote. What they lost is the power to override a veto, or to make most new laws take effect right away, without help from Democrats. They also lost their cushion. Seventeen House Republicans won by fewer than 10 points.

The first big test is money. State Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick has warned that Missouri could run through its general revenue reserves by the 2028 budget year if trends continue. And in January, the same month lawmakers come back, the Medicaid work rules in Trump's budget bill take effect. All five Missouri Republicans on this site voted for that bill.

Here's where some of the wins came:

• The speaker of the Missouri House lost. Democratic state Rep. Keri Ingle, a former social worker, beat House Speaker Jon Patterson with 55% in a state Senate race in eastern Jackson County. Patterson outspent every other state Senate candidate. By the week before the election he had spent $2.7 million to her $616,000. The two biggest school districts there, Lee's Summit and Blue Springs, had seen their state aid cut 5% to 6% this year.
• Springfield. Democratic state Rep. Betsy Fogle won a Senate seat Republicans had held for more than 80 years. Her opponent, Melanie Stinnett, voted to repeal the paid sick leave voters passed in 2024, and to put the abortion ban on the ballot.
• The governor's own neighborhood. Democrat Suzanne Luther won the House seat that covers downtown Jefferson City and the Governor's Mansion. She beat Republican Shane Kampeter by just 189 votes.
• St. Charles County. Democrats won three House seats there. They'd been shut out for nearly 20 years.
• Cass County. Democrat Stacy Czar of Belton won an open seat that had been safe for Republicans.

Ann Wagner lost

Ann Wagner lost to Democrat Fred Wellman, a retired military officer, 51.1% to 46.2%, with about 99% of the vote counted. She had served seven terms. Two years ago she won with 54.5%.

Wellman won St. Louis County by 14 points. In St. Charles County, Wagner's lead fell from 16,000 votes in 2024 to about 4,000. She spent nearly $6 million defending the seat. He raised $2.2 million.

Wagner backed the 2025 redraw of Missouri's congressional map, which would have put more rural Republican voters in her district. Voters and the courts kept her on the old map, and she lost on it. "They were looking to try to shore up Ann Wagner as well, because they knew that she has been out of touch with that district for years," said Richard von Glahn, who led the campaign against the map.

About a month before the election, Wagner took credit for delivering $42 million for I-70. Federal records tie that money to a law she voted against.

What voters said on the ballot

The map and abortion percentages here are NBC News' count, with about 99% of the vote in.

• The map. Proposition A, the Trump-backed congressional map, went down 61.8% to 38.2%. Under it, Kansas City would have been split among three districts. Trump would have won the redrawn 5th District with about 58%. Under the map voters kept, Kamala Harris won it with about 61%. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, the Democrat Republicans were trying to beat, won another term with 69.5%.
• Abortion. Amendment 3, which would have brought back a ban on most abortions, went down 55.4% to 44.6%. Its campaign leaned on a ban on care for transgender kids that was also in the measure. Missouri became the first state to defeat an attempt to overturn an abortion rights measure. Gov. Mike Kehoe campaigned for it the day before the election, and his wife, Claudia, was the campaign's treasurer.
• Your right to pass laws. Amendment 6 won with about 60%. Now lawmakers need 80% of both chambers, plus another statewide vote, before they can change what voters passed by petition. This came three months after voters crushed two Republican amendments in August, including one to make petitions harder to pass.

Voters also turned down Amendment 7, a state investment fund that supporters hoped could one day replace state taxes. It got 39%.

Every major policy idea Republicans have put before voters since Kehoe took office has lost, the Independent noted. House Speaker Pro Tem Chad Perkins, a Republican, said of the income tax amendment: "We all knew how doomed it was before it ever got started."

The bad: they won, by less

Missouri had no governor's race and no U.S. Senate race this year. The only statewide candidate race was for auditor. So the roster here is four House Republicans who won. Each one lost between 8 and 10 points off their 2024 share, according to NBC News, with about 99% of the vote counted.

• Bob Onder won a second term with 52.9%, down from 61.3%, in a rematch with Democrat Bethany Mann. That was the closest win of any Republican running for Congress in Missouri. In September, the state's high court ruled that the new map never took effect, because voters had forced a referendum on it. Onder then went to federal court to have November's election run on that map anyway.
• Mark Alford won a third term with 61.5%, down from 71.1%. He voted for the budget bill's Medicaid cuts, then eight months later introduced a bill to help keep rural hospitals open.
• Eric Burlison won a third term with 62.2%, down from 71.6%, in a rematch with Democrat Missi Hesketh. Burlison has said in-person town halls are where "only political nutjobs show up." In September, Hesketh offered to meet him at a public forum any Sunday through Thursday evening in October.
• Jason Smith won with 67.7%, down from 76.2%. He chairs the committee that writes the nation's tax laws, and with Democrats taking the House, he'll have less power next year. Two weeks before the election he published a column called "Fighting for rural health care in Missouri." We looked at that rural health money: it covers a little over a third of what the bill he voted for cuts from rural Medicaid.

Two other Republicans who won aren't on this site. Former talk radio host Chris Stigall won the open 6th District with 58.7%. And Fitzpatrick, the auditor, beat Democrat Quentin Wilson 50% to 47%. He won by nearly 22 points in 2022. He won by about three this time.

The ugly: they lost, and they're already planning to try again

Republicans lost almost every big question on Tuesday's ballot. They also fought to keep some of those questions off the ballot at all. And the people who led that fight still have their jobs.

How they tried to keep the map from voters

Republicans passed the new map in a special session in September 2025, after Trump pushed Republican states to redraw their lines before the midterms. Missourians gathered more than 300,000 signatures to force a public vote on it.

Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, the state's top election official, refused to certify the referendum. He argued that a congressional map can't be put to a referendum.

On September 3, the Missouri Supreme Court unanimously ruled against him. It said the referendum was legal and that the 2025 map "never went into effect." It also put the mess on Hoskins: his "delay created the confusion, expense, and practical difficulties of which he complains."

The next day, Bob Onder and state Sen. Rick Brattin sued, and Hoskins agreed with them. A federal judge and then a federal appeals court said Missouri had to use the 2025 map. The appeals court blamed the state court for the confusion. Three weeks of court orders changed the map five times, as ballots started going out.

On September 25, the U.S. Supreme Court ended it in a unanimous, unsigned ruling: "as a matter of state law, the 2022 map — not the 2025 map — must be used in the 2026 congressional election." Going back to the 2025 map, it said, "would usher in electoral chaos."

That ruling was about which map to use, not whether the map was fair. Voters in 28 counties still ended up in different districts than they'd voted in at the August primary, because the primary had been run on the 2025 map.

Brattin won his primary on that map. Then he put up only a token effort in the old 5th District, the Independent reported, and got 28.1%.

What they're saying now

Hoskins said the results are "a wake up call for us as Republicans." He also said redistricting isn't dead.

"It may be forced on their hands because right now the 2022 map, according to the U.S. Supreme Court, is unconstitutional because it includes a majority-minority district," he said. "These new state reps may not have a choice."

That isn't what the court said. The Independent, which reported his comments, set the record straight in its own story: the Supreme Court did not rule Missouri's 2022 map unconstitutional. Its April ruling struck down a Louisiana district drawn mainly on the basis of race, and its September ruling let Missouri use the 2022 map in this election.

This is the official who runs Missouri's elections, saying new lawmakers may have no choice about a map voters just kept.

He's not alone. Minutes after the Missouri Supreme Court blocked the map in September, state Sen. Nick Schroer posted "8-0 2027" on social media, signaling interest in a map that gives Republicans all eight seats. On Thursday, Senate Republicans made Schroer their majority floor leader. That job gives him control over which bills come up for debate.

Schroer doesn't think his party went too far. Republicans lost, he said, because they failed to deliver, and he rejected the idea of moving toward the center. He also said Republicans still intend to go after the petition process and to restrict abortion, the two things voters just protected. Lawyers are looking at a possible court challenge to Amendment 6. What happens to it, he said, "I think will dictate what happens with the life issue in and of itself."

The campaign behind Amendment 3 isn't stopping either. Tom Estes of Her Health, Her Future told reporters that "this is a battle in a war, and so we are definitely going to keep on going forever."

Amendment 6 makes a new map harder. It bars lawmakers from passing a law "similar in effect" to one voters rejected, unless 80% of both chambers send it back to voters. That's 131 House votes and 28 Senate votes. Republicans will have 95 and 22. But the amendment doesn't define "similar in effect," so that fight could end up in court too, and any new map could face another petition drive. Hoskins already tried once to keep Amendment 6 off the ballot, and the Missouri Supreme Court unanimously overruled him.

St. Louis Public Radio also reported that some Republicans have called on lawmakers to split St. Louis and St. Louis County into several largely rural districts. Democrat Wesley Bell, who just won the 1st District with 81.5%, represents St. Louis and part of the county.

The rest of the ugly

• Your paid sick leave is still gone. Voters passed it in 2024. Six months later Republicans repealed it, and Kehoe signed the repeal. If Amendment 6 holds up in court, lawmakers can't do that on their own again. But it doesn't bring the sick leave back.
• "Traitors" are now in the Missouri Constitution. After a four-year Republican push, voters narrowly passed Amendment 8, with 51%. It protects county sheriffs in most of the state and lets only the attorney general start the legal case to remove one. It also moves a line from state law into the constitution: sheriffs must "apprehend and commit to jail all felons and traitors." Supporters say it isn't about adding power. Democratic state Rep. Aaron Crossley pointed out that state law doesn't define the word. "Is a traitor a protester?" he asked. Now lawmakers can't change that line without voter approval.
• Republicans still hold every statewide office. That's all six. Fitzpatrick's three-point win kept it that way.

What the results show

Missouri Democrats flipped 16 state House seats when they needed three, and two state Senate seats, ending Republican supermajorities in both chambers. Ann Wagner lost her seat to Fred Wellman, 51.1% to 46.2%. Bob Onder, Mark Alford, Eric Burlison and Jason Smith each won with 8 to 10 points less than in 2024. Voters rejected the Republican congressional map 61.8% to 38.2% and an abortion ban 55.4% to 44.6%. Within two days, the Senate's new Republican floor leader said his party still intends to go after the petition process and abortion, and Secretary of State Denny Hoskins was claiming the Supreme Court had found the old map unconstitutional, which the court has not done.

Source

Missouri Republicans suffer biggest electoral setback in a generation — Jason Hancock, Missouri Independent, November 4, 2026.

Democrats flip 16 Missouri House seats, ending Republican supermajority — Rudi Keller, Missouri Independent, November 4, 2026.