A red wave. Red Tsunami. “Baby, it’s a red kingdom,” Newsmax anchor Benny Johnson said early Tuesday night. American conservatives had every expectation of dominating the midterm elections. They found that success in one place: in Florida, where Governor Ron DeSandis was re-elected by 20 points, Republicans won state legislative super-majorities and the party won three seats in the US House of Representatives. But in other key U.S. races, prominent Republican candidates either lost or failed to win decisive victories, leaving some contests out of reach on Wednesday — and putting the U.S. politically closer to the status quo than expected. The results were a major blow to former President Donald Trump, who helped far-right candidates win nominations over more moderate contenders, only to see his allies crumble in key races. Expected to announce a 2024 presidential campaign next week, he may now face stiff competition from Mr. DeSantis for the nomination. United States midterm election result 2022. The graph shows the live result of the House and Senate elections. LAST UPDATED AT 4:30 AM EST USA ELECTION RESULTS – 2022 Won 1 place 36 is not for elections Lost 1 place 29 is not for elections Note: Flipped US House seats represent all incumbent party losses and do not include 9 seats where the incumbent could not be determined by Edison Research due to redistricting. Source: Edison Research Staff | Reuters, November 9, 2022 LAST UPDATED AT 4:30 AM EST USA ELECTION RESULTS – 2022 Won 1 place 36 is not for elections Lost 1 place 29 is not for elections Note: Flipped US House seats represent all incumbent party losses and do not include 9 seats where the incumbent could not be determined by Edison Research due to redistricting. Source: Edison Research Staff | Reuters, November 9, 2022 President Joe Biden, meanwhile, could breathe a sigh of relief: Losing the House to Republicans would mean much of his agenda is blocked, but a narrow margin of control could allow him to strike legislative deals on any issue. Retaining the Senate would preserve the President’s power to appoint federal judges. Slow vote counting and limited results have so far prevented a definitive determination of who will control each House of Congress. At the state level, Democrats rejected gubernatorial nominations from Trump-backed caucuses in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Retaining these key states could prove decisive in preventing a 2024 repeat of Mr Trump’s efforts to overturn his election defeat. The Republican Party was expected to easily win a majority in the US House of Representatives. Republicans needed an additional five House seats and one Senate seat to unseat the Democrats. They have won several seats in the House, but lost one in the Senate. Early Wednesday morning, Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader of the House, said he expected a victory in the lower house. “When you wake up tomorrow, we will be in the majority and Nancy Pelosi will be in the minority,” he said. US Midterm Election Update: With polls closed across the country, Republicans have pushed to remove control of the US House Opinion: In American politics, nothing is ever over The outcome in the Senate is likely to hinge on narrow margins in several key races, after Democrats blocked Republican advances in several parts of the country. The party celebrated after the fall of Mehmet Oz, TV’s Dr. Oz. Gov. John Fetterman in Pennsylvania, losing a key Republican Senate seat. “We blocked them,” Mr. Fetterman, a Democrat who has been campaigning since surviving a stroke in May, said early Wednesday morning. “We’re holding the line.” It was a similar story in New Hampshire, where a vulnerable Democratic incumbent beat a Senate challenger endorsed by Trump and Desandes. and in New York, where the Democratic governor faced a challenger who supported Trump. In Georgia, another Senate battle between Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker, the former NFL running back who was among Mr. Trump’s most notable picks, is close enough to trigger a runoff next month. For now, Mr Warnock is leading the count. In Arizona, meanwhile, Republicans on a “Trump ticket” expressed hope that an early deficit would evaporate as sorters worked through hundreds of thousands of uncounted ballots. “The votes coming in are going our way,” said Cary Lake, Trump’s charismatic gubernatorial aide who refused to commit to accepting the election’s outcome. “We will not stop fighting until we count every legitimate vote,” he said. Voting was suspended at some locations in Phoenix after some ballots were printed too faintly for the sorting machines to read. Although the problem was resolved, some of Ms Lake’s supporters used the setback to baselessly claim the election could be rigged. The episode reignited fears that the election’s losing deniers could follow Mr Trump’s example in 2020 and fight to overturn the results. Republicans won the Senate races in Ohio, with a victory for Hillbilly Elegy author JD Vance, who once criticized Donald Trump before winning the former president’s favor. and North Carolina, where Rep. Ted Budd used Mr. Trump’s endorsement to win over a former state Supreme Court justice. Incomplete results showed two other Republicans leading for key Senate seats: Wisconsin incumbent Ron Johnson, a known purveyor of misinformation about vaccines and the Jan. 6 uprising, which he called the work of “fake Trump supporters.” and Adam Laxalt of Nevada, an election denialist who co-chaired Mr. Trump’s 2020 campaign in that state. Republican control of even one chamber of the US Congress would allow the party to thwart President Joe Biden’s agenda. But the rejection of high-profile candidates endorsed by Mr Trump offers a sign that US voters as a whole are not enthused about the former president, who lost the 2020 election by seven million votes. Congressional Republicans would almost certainly block Mr. Biden’s efforts to further expand the nation’s social safety net. They would also make life difficult for him by launching investigations into the business dealings of his son, Hunter Biden, and some of Mr. Biden’s worst moments as President, such as the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. However, a narrow Republican victory could allow the White House to remove enough opposition lawmakers to approve some measures, such as continued military aid to Ukraine. In another measure of weak support for Mr. Trump, several candidates who declined in the gubernatorial and secretary of state races failed to take their seats. Of 26 such candidates tracked by fivethirtyeight.com, eight won and 10 lost. The rest were in contests where a winner had not yet been announced. Virginia voters, however, fired Elaine Luria, a Democrat who was part of a January 6 House committee that uncovered significant evidence of Mr. Trump’s support for the attack on the U.S. Capitol. If Republicans win control of the House, they are expected to shut down that committee. The caucus will also have several dozen naysayers, keeping the conviction a hallmark of Republican politics. But in California, Michigan and Vermont, voters backed measures that would give state constitutional protections to abortions, months after the Supreme Court ruled that it struck down the federal constitutional right to abortion. The Supreme Court owes its conservative makeup largely to the justices Mr. Trump nominates. Even in Texas, where Gov. Greg Abbott comfortably won re-election, voters rejected Republican candidates in two of three South Texas districts that conservatives saw as critical to showing their appeal to Hispanic voters, who now make up the largest national team in the Lone Star State. Across the US, Republicans have sought to capitalize on voter dissatisfaction with the economy and personal safety, with inflation at 40-year highs, crime rates rising in many parts of the country and concerns about undocumented immigration. Like Mr. DeSantis in Florida, Mr. Abbott presented himself as a solid solution to these issues. But he has also found success in combating culture war issues that have become new priorities for a Republican party that bills itself as a defender of family values, including those taught in schools, rights for transgender youth and strict abortion bans. “I ran to the thousands of Texans who came up to me and said, ‘Governor, let Texas be Texas,’” Mr. Abbott said Tuesday night.
