Ashley Moody keeps Florida seat as Roy Cooper flips North Carolina By Luís Henrique Costa
5 min read
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Three Black women will serve together in the U.S. Senate from January 2027, a first in the chamber’s 237 years of existence. The milestone came after Democrat Juliana Stratton won the Illinois race on Tuesday, November 3, 2026, according to national election projections. Stratton, who is currently lieutenant governor of Illinois, defeated Republican Don Tracy, a former chairman of the Illinois Republican Party.
Stratton will take the seat that Dick Durbin has held since 1997. Durbin, a Democrat, chose not to seek another term after five consecutive terms in the Senate. She will join Democratic senators Lisa Blunt Rochester, of Delaware, and Angela Alsobrooks, of Maryland, who were elected in 2024 and were not on the ballot in this midterm vote. Stratton’s arrival also changes the internal leadership balance of the progressive bloc in Washington.
Before this vote, only five Black women had ever held Senate seats: Carol Moseley Braun, Kamala Harris, Laphonza Butler, Blunt Rochester and Alsobrooks. Stratton becomes the sixth and the second to represent Illinois in the chamber, after Moseley Braun, who served in the 1990s. Community organizing across Chicago and support from the state Democratic machine led by Governor JB Pritzker helped hold back conservative gains in the Midwest.
In her campaign, Stratton pointed to her years in state executive office. She placed the expansion of social benefits, universal access to health care and the fight against rising living costs at the center of her priorities in Congress. Stratton also presented the Illinois administration she led as a model to defend nationally against the federal government. With three Black women in the Senate at once, the Congressional Black Caucus, the group of Black lawmakers in Congress, gains more weight in debates on federal judicial nominations, housing policy and electoral law reform.
How the key Senate races ended in five states
The count showed a mixed picture for the two main parties in the battle for Senate seats. Democrats gained one seat from Republicans, while Republicans kept their defensive ground in Florida. Each race ended with a result that will shape the next Senate term.
- Illinois: Democrat Juliana Stratton defeated Republican Don Tracy and keeps the seat of retiring senator Dick Durbin in Democratic hands.
- North Carolina: Democrat Roy Cooper defeated Republican Michael Whatley for the seat left open by Thom Tillis’s retirement.
- Florida: Republican Ashley Moody beat Democrat Angie Nixon to keep a seat she had received by appointment.
- Delaware: Lisa Blunt Rochester remains in office, since her seat was not contested in this round.
- Maryland: Angela Alsobrooks keeps her seat, which was not up for a vote in this round.
Cooper’s North Carolina flip and Moody’s Florida hold
Cooper’s win gave the opposition one of its most strategically important results on Tuesday. He beat Michael Whatley, a candidate closely followed by party leaders in Washington. A longtime ally of former vice president Kamala Harris, Cooper served two consecutive terms as governor and spent 16 years as attorney general. The result is the first Democratic Senate win in North Carolina since 2008.
The victory supports the opposition’s plan to win moderate and suburban voters in conservative areas of the South. Cooper focused his speeches on opposing broad tariffs that push up food and farm equipment prices. He also defended tougher rules against retail monopolies and the creation of skilled jobs in the region’s technology sector. Cooper will take office in January, after Tillis chose not to seek reelection following a public clash with Trump.
Check out: Democrats win Georgia Senate seat and key governor races in US midterm elections 2026
Republicans, meanwhile, scored a key defensive win in Florida, where Moody kept her seat against state representative Angie Nixon. Moody had been appointed in January 2025 to fill the vacancy left when Marco Rubio became secretary of state under President Donald Trump. She held off pressure from Democratic campaigns in the state’s urban centers by consolidating support from conservative voters in the north and along the southern coast. She will serve the final two years of Rubio’s term, and the seat returns to the ballot in 2028.
The Florida race became a clash of economic visions. Nixon mobilized Latino and African American communities by arguing that housing and health care costs had reached unsustainable levels. Moody tied her opponent to socialist proposals, a strategy aimed at older voters and residential suburbs. Nixon, who had won the Democratic primary in an upset, would have been the first Black U.S. senator from Florida if elected.
Three decades of Black women winning Senate seats
Building a Senate with three Black women took more than three decades of electoral change in the country. The main milestones appear below.
- 1992: Carol Moseley Braun, of Illinois, is elected the first Black woman to hold a Senate seat.
- 2016: Kamala Harris wins the race in California and becomes the second Black woman in the Senate.
- 2023: Laphonza Butler is appointed in California to finish the term of Dianne Feinstein after her death.
- November 5, 2024: Lisa Blunt Rochester, of Delaware, and Angela Alsobrooks, of Maryland, win their races and become the first two Black women serving together in the chamber.
- March 17, 2026: Juliana Stratton wins the Democratic primary in Illinois, defeating U.S. Representatives Raja Krishnamoorthi and Robin Kelly.
- November 3, 2026: Stratton is elected senator for Illinois, securing three Black women in the chamber from 2027.
When the new senators are sworn in and how terms work
The renewal and swearing-in of U.S. senators follows rules set out in the federal Constitution. The main points are listed below.
- Terms: the 100 senators serve six-year terms, divided into three classes, and only one class faces voters every two years.
- Exclusive powers: the Senate alone approves presidential nominees for the Supreme Court, lower federal courts, cabinet posts and heads of diplomatic missions abroad.
- Certification: state offices and local election bodies audit the vote records in the weeks after the election before the winners are formally certified.
- Swearing-in: elected senators take the oath at the Capitol in Washington on January 3, 2027, when the 120th Congress begins.
