Senate Republicans weigh delaying leadership elections after losing their majority

Senate Republicans are due to pick their leadership team for the next Congress on Tuesday morning, but a faction led by Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin is trying to stop the clock first. Johnson has spent the past several days collecting signatures for a letter demanding that Conference Chair Tom Cotton convene a full meeting of Senate Republicans to debate whether it makes sense to choose leaders for the next two years by secret ballot just one week after the party lost its Senate majority in the Nov. 3 midterm elections.

The vote is scheduled for 9 a.m. in the Old Senate Chamber. Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota is seeking a second term as conference leader, a job that becomes Senate minority leader once Democrats take over in January. No colleague has declared a challenge to him, and most Republican senators and aides have told reporters they expect the elections to go forward on schedule, with Thune, Cotton and Whip John Barrasso of Wyoming all keeping their posts.

A rule built for exactly this moment

Johnson's maneuver leans on a narrow but real mechanism inside the Senate Republican Conference's own rules, which state that the chair "shall call a Conference whenever requested to do so by the Policy Committee or in writing by five or more Senators." Johnson says he cleared that five-signature threshold over the weekend, with Sen. Mike Lee of Utah among those signing on. Forcing a meeting is not the same as forcing a delay, however. Changing Tuesday's schedule would still require a majority of the roughly four dozen Republican senators who will make up the incoming minority conference, and GOP senators and aides who spoke to reporters this week said they did not expect enough colleagues to go along with it.

In the letter to Cotton, which circulated among reporters over the weekend, Johnson described holding leadership elections so soon after "a stunning defeat" as an act of "political malpractice," arguing that leadership contests have historically come roughly 40 days after a general election, rather than the nine or so days Senate Republicans have used as their informal norm since 2006.

"Senate GOP rules contemplate leadership elections occurring between January 3rd and January 10th," Sen. Mike Lee argued, saying colleagues should be allowed to weigh candidates over the coming weeks rather than inside a single post-election week.

The scale of the defeat driving the push

The pressure on leadership follows one of the roughest midterm nights Senate Republicans have had in years. Going into Election Day, Republicans held 53 seats to Democrats' 45, with two independents caucusing with Democrats. The Associated Press called the chamber for Democrats on election night and, as vote-counting continued, projected Democrats would hold at least 54 of the 100 seats, well past the net gain of four they needed to flip control.

• Texas: James Talarico defeated Ken Paxton for the seat long held by John Cornyn
• Maine: Troy Jackson unseated longtime Sen. Susan Collins
• Iowa: Josh Turek defeated Rep. Ashley Hinson
• Ohio: Sherrod Brown won back the seat held by appointed Sen. Jon Husted

Exit-poll analysis has pointed to defections among Trump's own 2024 voters as a driver of the losses. According to an exit-poll breakdown circulated this week, roughly 7 percent of 2024 Trump voters nationally backed Democratic House candidates this cycle, with the crossover share reaching into double digits in states including Georgia, Texas and Virginia.

A party still arguing over why it lost

Beyond Johnson's letter, other Republicans have pushed, in less formal terms, for the party to slow down and take stock. Sen. David McCormick of Pennsylvania has said colleagues should discuss what went wrong in the election before any leadership ballots are cast, and multiple Republicans have said privately that the party has not agreed on how much of the blame belongs to President Trump, even as exit polling suggests many voters were registering a rejection of him specifically.

Thune's own position looks secure for now. Even Johnson, when asked this week whether Thune might face a rival candidate, replied, "Who would want the job?" — a reflection of how unappealing leading a 44-to-46-seat minority conference looks compared with the majority Thune has held since January 2025. Trump, for his part, has sent mixed signals since the election, telling associates he has a good working relationship with Thune while also suggesting on social media, contrary to his earlier pledge to accept the results, that the Democratic sweep was not entirely "honest."

What happens next

Johnson's effort is widely described by Senate aides as a long shot. Johnson's own office has not issued a public statement on the leadership fight, and Republicans note that a nearly identical push by Johnson to delay leadership elections after the party's underwhelming 2022 midterm showing also failed to change the schedule. Barring a last-minute shift inside the conference, Senate Republicans are expected to proceed with secret-ballot voting as planned on Tuesday morning.

The outcome will shape how Republicans enter a consequential lame-duck stretch. Congress returned this week facing a Dec. 11 government-funding deadline, an annual defense policy bill, a farm bill and a decision on renewing surveillance authority under FISA Section 702 — all of which the party will now have to navigate as the incoming minority, with Democrats set to take control of both the House and Senate on Jan. 3 with some of their largest majorities in more than a decade.