SALEM, Oregon — The Associated Press called Oregon's U.S. Senate race for Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley on Tuesday night, November 3, projecting a fourth term for the incumbent over Republican state senator David Brock Smith. The call came shortly after Oregon's polls closed at 8 p.m. Pacific Time, on a night when Democrats were fighting across the map for the net gain of four seats they needed to take control of the Senate.
Source: Associated Press election results — U.S. Senate, Oregon
The two tallies tell the same story at different moments of the count. In the AP's partial count published when the race was called, Merkley had 321,558 votes to Smith's 156,648, with 325 of Oregon's 1,318 precincts reporting — 24.66 percent — and smaller numbers for Progressive candidate Chris Henry (9,342) and Libertarian Gary Dye (3,710). Decision Desk HQ's running tally at 11:02 p.m. Eastern, with far more of Oregon's mail ballots processed, put Merkley at 643,748 votes and 59.19 percent against Smith's 415,279 and 38.18 percent. Oregon votes almost entirely by mail, and counting will continue, but a lead of more than 228,000 votes at that stage is not one that late ballots overturn.
A hold, not a flip — and why it still matters
Oregon was never one of the battlegrounds: this is a Democratic hold in a state that has not elected a Republican senator since 2002. Its importance is in the Senate arithmetic. Before election day, Republicans held the Senate 53 to 47, counting the two independents who caucus with the Democrats, and Democrats needed a net gain of four seats to reach a 51-seat majority. Every safe Democratic seat like Oregon's had to be banked before the flips could count — and on Tuesday Democrats did flip Republican-held seats in North Carolina, where former Governor Roy Cooper won, in South Carolina, where Annie Andrews upset the Trump-backed Republican candidate, and in Texas, where James Talarico won, while holding Georgia through Jon Ossoff's re-election. As of late Tuesday night, NBC News had projected Democratic control of the House of Representatives, but no network had yet projected which party would control the Senate.
Merkley, 70, has represented Oregon in the Senate since 2009, when he first won the seat, and he was seeking a fourth six-year term. He is a former speaker of the Oregon House of Representatives and built his Senate profile on housing, health care, climate and financial-regulation issues. Smith, his challenger, is a Republican state senator from Port Orford on Oregon's south coast, a former Curry County commissioner who won his party's nomination in May.
The primaries were not close on either side. Merkley won the Democratic nomination with 93.2 percent of the vote — 457,006 votes out of 490,457 cast. Smith won the Republican nomination with 29.5 percent in a divided field, ahead of former Linn County party chair Jo Rae Perkins and real estate broker Brent Barker. The forecasters never moved: the Cook Political Report rated the race Solid Democratic on November 2, Decision Desk HQ rated it Safe Democratic, and The Economist did the same. Republicans have not won a U.S. Senate election in Oregon since Gordon Smith's re-election in 2002.
Oregon's Punjabi community is far smaller than California's, but the state's Interstate 5 corridor — Portland, Salem and Eugene — is a working route for Punjabi truck drivers crossing between California and Washington, and Oregon's senators vote on the federal trucking, trade and immigration questions that decide conditions on that corridor. A settled Oregon result also removes one more unknown from the Senate count that will shape immigration and transport policy in Washington.
What happens next
Oregon's county clerks will continue processing mail ballots over the coming days and the result will be certified by the state before it becomes official; the margin may narrow or widen, but the AP's call means the outcome is settled in all but arithmetic. Merkley's new six-year term begins with the new Congress, which is sworn in on January 3, 2027. Whether he returns as a member of the majority or the minority will be decided by the handful of Senate races still being counted in the Midwest and West — the question that will dominate American politics for the rest of this week.
For Oregon itself, the result is continuity: the state's two Democratic senators remain in place, and the state's voters have again declined to send a Republican to the Senate, extending a streak that now runs to nearly a quarter of a century.