Democratic Senator Chris Coons won a third full term in the United States Senate on Tuesday night, November 3, 2026, as the Associated Press called Delaware's Senate race for the incumbent just after the state's polls closed at 8 p.m. Eastern, and NBC News projected the same result. Coons, who has held the seat since 2010 — the Delaware seat once held by Joe Biden — defeated Republican challenger Michael Katz, a former state senator, by a margin that passed 99,000 votes as the count neared completion in Wilmington, Dover and across Delaware's three counties. It is another Democratic hold on a night when the Senate majority is being decided in far tighter states, and it extends a streak: Republicans have not won a Senate election in Delaware since 1994. All election-night figures are unofficial until Delaware election officials certify the results.
The Associated Press tally put Coons at 223,049 votes — about 64.3 per cent of the two-candidate count — to Katz's 123,941, about 35.7 per cent, with 480 of Delaware's 533 precincts reporting and an estimated 90.17 per cent of the vote counted. The shape never changed after the early-evening call: an earlier snapshot carried by The Daily Letter had Coons ahead 193,192 to 106,221, a lead of 86,971 votes, and the margin only widened as the remaining precincts — most of them in New Castle County, the state's population centre — reported. Decision Desk HQ likewise recorded Coons as the winner in New Castle County and statewide.
Sixteen years in the seat, and a primary that told the story
Coons first reached the Senate in 2010, winning the special election for the seat Joe Biden had left to become vice president, and then won full six-year terms in 2014 and 2020; Tuesday's win gives him a third full term running to 2033. His path through 2026 was never seriously contested. In the September 15 Democratic primary he took 68,154 votes, 78.0 per cent, against three little-known challengers. Katz's route was more unusual: a former Democratic state senator who served from 2009 to 2013, and the Independent Party's Senate nominee in 2024, he won the Republican nomination on September 15 with 30,896 votes, 77.3 per cent, against U.S. Army War College instructor John Shulli. Coons carried the endorsements of Delaware's whole Democratic establishment — Senator Lisa Blunt Rochester, Representative Sarah McBride, Governor Matt Meyer and Attorney General Kathy Jennings.
The money gap matched the polling gap. Federal Election Commission reports to October 14, 2026 showed Coons had raised $7,685,072, spent $4,493,874 and still held $5,031,711 in the bank, while Katz had raised $190,416 in total and spent $174,332, leaving $16,085 — the incumbent outraised his challenger roughly forty to one. The Senate Democrats' campaign arm, the DSCC, congratulated Coons as “a champion for Delaware” who “will continue working to lower costs, create jobs, protect Delaware values, and deliver real results for working families across his state.”
Every one of the twelve major election forecasters rated Delaware Solid or Safe Democratic — Cook Political Report, Decision Desk HQ, The Economist, FiftyPlusOne, Fox News, Inside Elections, MS NOW, NBC News, RealClearPolitics, Sabato's Crystal Ball, Silver Bulletin and Split Ticket. That is why both the AP and NBC News could project Coons within minutes of the 8 p.m. poll close, and why the race's only real question was the size of the margin — which, at about 99,000 votes and roughly 64–36, landed close to his previous winning shapes.
The rest of Delaware's night
Coons was not Delaware's only Democratic winner in Washington. The League of Conservation Voters congratulated both Coons and Representative Sarah McBride, the state's at-large House member, “on their re-election wins in Delaware,” with LCV President Pete Maysmith saying the pair had “proven their commitment to pushing back against Trump's attacks on our democracy, climate and communities.” The group said environmental donors contributed $60,000 to Delaware candidates through GiveGreen in the 2026 cycle. With Coons and Blunt Rochester in the Senate and McBride in the House, Delaware's all-Democratic congressional delegation returns to Washington intact.
Source: League of Conservation Voters — congratulations to Coons and McBride (Nov. 3, 2026)
For this site's readers, Delaware's senator is a highway vote as much as a Washington one. Delaware is a small state with an outsized freight address: Interstate 95 and I-295 run through New Castle County, the Delaware Memorial Bridge carries I-295 and U.S. 40 traffic across the Delaware River toward New Jersey and the New York market, and the Port of Wilmington handles cargo a short drive from the interstate. Punjabi-American truckers running the Northeast corridor cross Delaware — and pay its tolls — on almost every New York–Washington run. The senator Delaware sends back to Washington votes on the federal highway and port funding that maintains that corridor, on trade and foreign-policy questions where Coons has been one of his party's most senior voices, and on the cost-of-living measures his party campaigned on this year.
Source: AP results; race and delegation background (Wikipedia compilation)
What happens next
The remaining precincts and any late-counted ballots will complete the count before Delaware election officials canvass and certify the result; with a lead of about 99,000 votes and more than 90 per cent of the expected vote already counted, no recount path was visible on election night. Coons's third full term begins with the new Congress in January, running to 2033 and carrying his Senate service — which began in 2010 — toward a quarter-century. His immediate business is the organisation of the new Senate, whose majority will be settled by the night's still-uncalled battlegrounds, and the cost, jobs and climate agenda his supporters cited in re-electing him.
Source: Associated Press results and Delaware certification process; LCV statement