Democrats have won control of the United States Senate after flipping Republican-held seats in Texas, Ohio, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kansas and Iowa, according to the Associated Press.

The majority was secured when Democratic Senator Josh Turek won the Senate race in Iowa, bringing Democrats and independents who caucus with them to 51 seats.

The outcome reshapes the prospects for the stalled CLARITY Act and determines which lawmakers will lead the committees overseeing the crypto industry. Committee leadership carries weight for the sector because panels with jurisdiction over banking, securities and commodities set the hearing calendar, shape market-structure legislation and vet nominees to lead regulators such as the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Democratic control could also bring greater congressional scrutiny of Trump-linked crypto businesses and of regulators' decisions, while the chamber's composition will influence the confirmation of future presidential nominees to regulatory posts — appointees who cannot take office without Senate approval.

Senate procedure adds a structural constraint: most legislation needs 60 votes to clear a procedural hurdle, so a 51-seat majority falls short of the threshold required to move a bill over objection on its own.

Industry voices urge bipartisan path

"It's too early to say exactly what this means for crypto, but one thing is clear: nothing will pass without cross-partisan support," Jerome de Tychey, president of Ethereum France and co-founder of EthCC, told Cointelegraph.

"The CLARITY Act failed its Senate procedural vote 49 to 50 in September, and if it isn't passed by January, the next Congress starts again from scratch. So the industry will have to go back to the table and make the case for blockchain again, on substance."

De Tychey added that some Democratic demands could strengthen the industry's regulatory framework. "Conflict-of-interest rules and customer protection obligations are things a mature industry should welcome. In Europe, we already live with them under MiCA," he said, referring to the European Union's Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation.

He nevertheless warned against crypto policy hardening along party lines. "The biggest risk for crypto in America is for it to become entrenched as a partisan issue; that could set the US back several years."

Fred Hsu, co-founder and CEO of D3, a core contributor to Doma Protocol, similarly said durable regulation would require support from both parties. "The midterms are a good reminder that the industry can't rely on one party to deliver them, and should be making its case to lawmakers on both sides now," Hsu said in comments provided ahead of the election.

That timeline leaves the weeks before the new Congress is seated in January as the remaining window for the CLARITY Act to advance in its current form; after that, any market-structure effort would start from scratch, requiring fresh introduction and another pass through the committee process.

Related: 1inch lawyer sees agencies driving US crypto regulation as midterms unfold