Senate and House results, the surprisingly strong performance of Democrats in governors’ races, and other 2022 midterm contests, explained through charts and graphs.
Tuesday’s congressional elections ended up being far closer than many political analysts expected, and with many ballots yet to be counted in key contests, party control of Congress — particularly the Senate — remains in doubt.
Here is what we know so far about the two chambers of Congress.
Polling leading up to the election heavily suggested a strong night for Republicans in the House of Representatives. It takes 218 seats to win a majority in the House, and the GOP only needed a net gain of five to take the majority. It still appears probable that Republicans will pick up those five seats, but it’s increasingly clear that the big majority some in the party were expecting won’t materialize.
That could make maintaining cohesion in a caucus that features a broad spectrum of ideologies, ranging from moderates to members of the alt-right, difficult. Exactly how much of a majority the GOP has will become clearer once California finishes its tally, something that could take weeks to do.
Who’ll control the Senate is still completely uncertain. Republicans need to pick up at least two seats to win control of that chamber, given Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman’s success in flipping current GOP Sen. Pat Toomey’s seat. Republicans are favored to pull out a win in Alaska, leaving Nevada and Georgia as the decisive elections in the race for a majority. Nevada’s race remains too close to call, while Georgia’s race will be decided with a runoff on December 6.
It’s possible control of the Senate could depend on Georgia; and if that’s the case, Americans won’t know until December which party has the majority. That’s because under Georgia law, if no candidate wins more than 50 percent of the vote outright — something neither Democrat Sen. Raphael Warnock nor GOP candidate Herschel Walker were able to accomplish — the race goes to a runoff.Control of the Senate is up in the air
Georgia: After neither candidate won more than 50 percent of the vote, incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock will face Republican Herschel Walker in a December runoff. That means Georgia could again decide control of the Senate, following runoff elections in 2020 that put Warnock and Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) in office and clinched the majority for Democrats. Expect an enormous blitz of campaigning and ad spending in the state over the next few weeks. Democrats will likely continue to seek to capitalize on scandals over Walker’s previous affairs and revelations he had paid for abortions despite saying on the campaign trail he was staunchly anti-abortion.
Nevada: Republican Secretary of State Adam Laxalt leads Democrat Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto narrowly as of Friday morning, according to the Associated Press. Tens of thousands of votes remain to be counted, many in regions that favor Cortez Masto, the first Latina elected to the Senate. That means the race is still too close to call.
Arizona: In a race that doesn’t appear to have been quite as close as expected, Democrats managed to hold onto Arizona. Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly won his first full six-year term against Republican challenger Blake Masters Friday, winning (with about 20 percent of the vote left to tally) 51 percent of the vote to Masters’ 46 percent, according to the Associated Press.
