Wednesday, 9 November 2022

Red splash: Where the midterms stand right now

 Although a red wave did not flood the nation as foretold, Republicans nevertheless made a significant splash Tuesday night. What follows is a rundown of the results as they stand early Wednesday morning.

Senate

In the Senate, 35 seats were up for grabs on Election Day: 13 Democrat-controlled seats and 21 Republican-controlled seats.

Democrats needed to keep 50 seats to maintain control (with Vice President Kamala Harris' tie-breaking vote).

Fox News presently has the parties tied at 48-48 (+12 D and +19 R).

It appears as though Alaska will go to one of two Republicans; Georgia is a toss-up between Sen. Raphael Warnock (D) and Herschel Walker (R); Nevada and Wisconsin are leaning red; and Arizona is leaning blue, with Sen. Mark Kelly (D) leading Blake Masters (R) by a significant margin.

The New York Times indicated that the fight for Georgia's Senate seat may be headed to a runoff election, to be held in December. Warnock (D) leads Walker (R) by less than 20,000 votes, 49.2% to 48.7%. 

One of the bigger surprises of the night, particularly to politicos on PredictIt, was John Fetterman's win in Pennsylvania. Despite being unable to complete a cogent sentence in his October debate, Fetterman nevertheless managed to complete his race, leading Mehmet Oz by three points and over 100,000 votes.

The best-selling author and populist Republican J.D. Vance crushed Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan for Ohio's Senate seat by roughly 6.6 points.

House

The New York Times estimated that the GOP will end up with 224 seats over the Democrats' 211. NBC alternatively predicted that the split will be 220 R to 215 D. Democrats had previously held a narrow majority (220 to 212).

Republicans have so far won five of the 19 competitive seats they need to take control. They flipped seats in New Jersey and Virginia, but lost seats in Ohio and Michigan.

218 seats are needed for control.

Republican control will likely mean that President Joe Biden will be unable to pass most of the rest of his agenda and will likely face increased oversight scrutiny.

According to CNN, the House popular vote had Republicans ahead by over 6 million votes with 80% of the estimated vote in.

Governors races

Of the 36 gubernatorial elections on the ballot in 2022, 18 Republicans won or are projected to win; 16 Democrats won or are projected to win. Two including Arizona remain in contention.

Republican gubernatorial projected wins:

Democrat gubernatorial projected wins:

The following two states remain in contention as of 8:00 a.m. on Wednesday:

  • Arizona, with Kari Lake (R) and Katie Hobbs (D) neck and neck and only 64.29% of the votes in; and
  • Oregon, with Republican Christine Drazan down one point behind Democrat Tina Kotek with 76% of votes in.
Two of the widest margins of victory for Republicans were in Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis handily beat Charlie Crist by nearly 10 points, and in Georgia, where Gov. Brian Kemp crushed twice-failed gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams by nearly eight points.

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