Donald Trump’s Republicans suffer landslide defeat – what this means for the world

Donald Trump’s Republican Party has received a stunning rebuke in the US midterm elections. Republicans went into the evening hoping that the polls might be wrong and that they could at least cling on to control of the Senate. But by midnight in Washington, the GOP was staring down what looked like its worst defeat in 50 years.

Republican losses were not just confined to the type of swing districts that parties usually worry about on election night . The scale of the losses was staggering. They lost Senate seats in deep red states such as Texas and South Carolina. They lost districts they had gerrymandered and in which they were supposed to be unbeatable. They lost seats that even the sharpest analysts thought were safe.