A lousy night for Republicans and a big defeat for Trump.

Tuesday’s special U.S. Senate election in Alabama was never destined to bring good news for the Republican Party, no matter the outcome. But the stunning victory by Democrat Doug Jones was a devastating blow to a party wracked by divisions and intraparty rivalries and a humiliating defeat for President Donald Trump.

For some Republicans, the fact that the controversial and flawed Roy Moore will not be their new senator from Alabama came with some measure of relief. But the consequences of that outcome will reverberate over the coming months in one legislative battle after another. An already razor-thin margin in the Senate becomes even more tenuous for the party in power.

In the face of results that showed Jones leading by 20,000 votes and by more than a percentage point, Moore signaled he has not given up the fight. He refused to concede the race. That decision will produce more heartburn among establishment Republicans, who would prefer to see him fade quickly and quietly into obscurity.

Trump suffered mightily after fully embracing Moore in the final weeks of the campaign, despite credible allegations that Moore had engaged in sexually improper behavior with teenage girls when he was in his 30s.

It was the second such setback for the president in a state he won by 28 points just a year ago. In the GOP primary earlier this year, he had endorsed Sen. Luther Strange, who had taken the seat of Jeff Sessions when Trump made him his attorney general.

The outcome was a bad moment as well for Stephen Bannon, once the president’s White House strategist and a man with the expressed commitment of bringing down the GOP establishment. Bannon was all in for Moore, campaigning on his behalf while railing against those in the establishment who had been critical of the nominee.

Bannon has threatened a year of turmoil for the GOP, but in this high-profile test, both he and the president proved to have limited ability to transfer Trump’s popularity to another candidate. This won’t be the last the party hears from Bannon, but he will be viewed differently as a result of what happened Tuesday.

For those reasons, many Republicans will privately be pleased to see Bannon and even Trump get their comeuppance. But that doesn’t resolve the split within the party over the direction it should take. As long as Trump is president, this is the division and the reality that Republicans will live with — an uneasy coalition at best.

Moore brought to the race a history of defiance to the rule of law, twice having been removed from the state Supreme Court for defying orders. He was hardly popular despite defeating Strange in the primary, but in channeling Trump’s outsider, drain-the-swamp rhetoric, he appealed to many in the Trump and GOP coalition who wanted to stick the party’s congressional leadership in the eye. His candidacy took a damaging hit after the primary, when The Washington Post reported the accusation that he had initiated a sexual encounter with a 14-year-old girl when he was in his 30s as well as accounts of other women who said he preyed on them as teenagers.

The fact that he will not be in the Senate spares Republicans from what could have been a spectacle of controversy — a likely ethics investigation that could have led to Moore’s expulsion but that even if it did not, would keep him and the allegations against him in the forefront of the political conversation — to the detriment of the GOP.

There are questions about how much the addition of one seat to the Democrats’ column changes the calculus for control of the Senate in 2018. The map remains difficult for the Democrats, and they are still in need of a genuine renewal. But with control of the House already in play, the Alabama race, coupled with the results in Virginia last month, suggest there is energy among rank-and-file Democrats that could put the Republicans at a big disadvantage next year.

It’s always easy to overstate the importance of a single election and no doubt that’s the case even for Alabama. But this is one contest that seemed to bring together much of what is in the forefront of the political debates, from the popularity and influence of the president to the fractured Republican Party to the issue of sexual harassment.