Andy Barr Wins Kentucky Senate Race, Beating Charles Booker for Mitch McConnell's Seat

Republican U.S. Rep. Andy Barr won Kentucky's U.S. Senate race on Tuesday, November 3, 2026, defeating Democrat Charles Booker for the seat held by retiring Sen. Mitch McConnell. ABC News and Decision Desk HQ called the race in Barr's favor, the Louisville Courier Journal reported.

The Associated Press results feed marks the Kentucky Senate race as called for Barr. In that feed, Barr had 639,881 votes to 523,185 for Booker, with Christopher Campbell of the Kentucky Party at 24,338 votes. The feed put precincts reporting at 72.84 percent, or 2,323 of 3,189. Earlier in the night, at 8:45 p.m. ET, the Courier Journal had Barr at 53 percent with 53 percent of the votes counted.

The end of the McConnell era

The seat was open because McConnell is not seeking an eighth term. He has held it since 1985. This was the first open Senate election in Kentucky since 2010, and the result keeps the seat in Republican hands. Democrats have not won a Senate race in Kentucky since 1992.

The Courier Journal reported that the win marks a new era in Kentucky politics as McConnell prepares to retire. Barr now moves from the House side of the Capitol to the Senate seat that McConnell occupied for more than four decades, and he does so after a campaign run in McConnell's shadow from start to finish.

Barr's path through the primary

Barr has represented Kentucky's 6th Congressional District in the U.S. House since 2013. He was endorsed by President Donald Trump, and he won the May 19 Republican nomination with 60.5 percent of the vote over former state attorney general Daniel Cameron.

Booker, a former state representative, was the Democratic nominee in 2022. He won his party's nomination this year over Amy McGrath and Pamela Stevenson, then carried the Democratic case into a general election in a state that has not sent a Democrat to the Senate in more than three decades.

The final weeks

In the final weeks of the race, Barr appeared with House Speaker Mike Johnson, House Majority Whip Tom Emmer and Rep. Jim Jordan, the Courier Journal reported. Those appearances underlined the support Barr drew from House Republican leaders as he closed out his run for the Senate.

The count in the AP feed was still incomplete when the race was called, with more than a quarter of precincts not yet reporting. The call itself rested on the size of Barr's lead over Booker in the votes counted at that point, a lead of more than 116,000 votes in the feed's figures.