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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Sam Levin in Los Angeles (now) and Chris Stein in Washington (earlier)

US midterms 2022: Democrats’ Senate hopes grow as vote count edges forward – as it happened

Mark Kelly United States Arizona Nevada Georgia
Election workers open mail in ballots at the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center on Friday in Phoenix, Arizona.
Election workers open mail in ballots at the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center on Friday in Phoenix, Arizona. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Summary

That’s all the live coverage for today. Here are some key developments and links from the day:

In the closely watched mayor’s race in Los Angeles, Democratic congresswoman Karen Bass has pulled slightly ahead with the latest batch of votes counted:

Bass had been trailing slightly behind her competitor, Rick Caruso, a billionaire real estate developer.

There are, however, many more votes to be counted, and the race might not be called for days or weeks.

The Republican candidate for Oregon governor has conceded the race.

Christine Drazan, who was the GOP minority leader in the state House, lost to Tina Kotek, the Democratic candidate who is also Oregon’s longest-serving House speaker.

Drazan said the math showed that she cannot win, even with some ballots still to be counted, the AP reported. She noted in a statement that Kotek had not earned more than 50% of the vote, since an unaffiliated candidate had earned 8.6% of votes.

“This is a unique moment in Oregon’s history and an extraordinary opportunity for leadership that recognizes the dynamics of this race that call for moderation and inclusivity moving forward,” Drazan said. “I have spoken with Tina Kotek and hope for the best for our state as she steps into this role.”

The race had been unusually close for the typically blue western state. In the final stretch of the race, in a sign of the Democrats’ concerns they could lose the governorship, Joe Biden came to Oregon and campaigned for Kotek. Democrats had argued that a GOP win would threaten abortion rights and environmental protections.

Updated

In Orange county, California, incumbent Republican Young Kim has defeated a Democratic challenger and secured her second term, according to the AP.

Kim was one of the first Korean American women elected to Congress. Democrats had hoped to flip the seat with candidate Dr Asif Mahmood, but some of the nearby Orange county races were more competitive and ended up receiving more attention, the LA Times reported.

The southern California district had been redrawn and became more conservative, and Kim’s platform and messaging became further rightwing this cycle, focusing on crime and the border, the Times said.

Mahmood said in a statement today that he had conceded, noting that he and Kim “both share humble beginnings as immigrants who had big dreams and hopes for our families”.

Some Republican senators have called for a delay in the party’s leadership elections scheduled to take place next week.

While Mitch McConnell, the current minority leader, was expected to continue in his role, three GOP senators have been circulating a letter calling to postpone the vote scheduled for Wednesday morning, Politico reported. The letter, shared by Senators Ron Johnson, Mike Lee and Rick Scott, said:

“We are all disappointed that a Red Wave failed to materialize, and there are multiple reasons it did not. We need to have serious discussions within our conference as to why and what we can do to improve our chances in 2024.”

Senators Marco Rubio and Josh Hawley also have supported the calls for a delay, CNN reported.

The debate over when to hold the vote comes as the fate of the Senate is still unclear. The high-stakes Georgia race is headed to a 6 December runoff.

The closely watched Colorado congressional race between far-right congresswoman Lauren Boebert and the Democratic challenger Adam Frisch could potentially lead to a recount, the New York Times reported.

It could, however, be weeks before the race is called or before it is known whether a re-count will take place, and the process is complex. In Colorado, voters have until 16 November to fix errors or discrepancies on their ballots, and after that the secretary of state’s office selects at least one statewide race and one race in each county to audit, the Times reported. At that point, if it’s found that candidates are separated by less than .5%, then the secretary of state can order a re-count.

At the latest count, Boebert had 50.2% of the vote and Frisch had 49.8%. In the initial results, Frisch had the lead over Boebert, but as more votes have been counted, she earned a very narrow edge.

Boebert is known as a conspiracy theorist and election denier and is considered one of the most extreme members of her party.

Our story from yesterday:

Updated

Why is the vote counting taking so long in Arizona?

The AP has a helpful explainer on why its taking days for winners to be declared in Arizona, where the AP has not yet made calls in the crucial governor and Senate races.

Almost all of Arizona’s vote happens by mail, and counting all of those ballots can take a while, particularly in a county as large as Maricopa. The state’s largest – and fourth-largest in the country – Maricopa is home to a total of 4.5 million residents, and about 2.4 million registered voters.

There were some Republican activists in Arizona who advocated that voters intentionally wait until Election Day to drop off their ballots. Some of this push was based on unfounded theories that fraudsters could manipulate voting systems and rig results for Democrats, once they had seen how many GOP votes had been returned early.

Experts had also warned that such a last-minute crush of ballots could end up creating delays that can ultimately be used by a bad actor to undermine confidence in the election. There were some hang ups this year. About a quarter of voting centers in Maricopa County, Arizona’s most populous, had a printing problem Tuesday, in which marks weren’t showing up correctly when voters showed up to print out their ballots.

Officials have assured voters that every ballot will be counted.

Some pundits have called the Senate race for Mark Kelly, saying the Democrat has defeated Blake Masters, but the AP has not yet declared a winner.

Yesterday, a newly elected House representative and the lieutenant governor of Virginia did something rare for Republican office holders: they said it was time for the party to move on from Donald Trump.

Their comments were a sign that the uneven performance of candidates he endorsed in the midterms may have damaged the GOP’s support for Trump.

But today, Elise Stefanik, the third-ranking GOP lawmaker in the House, announced Trump has her endorsement for the 2024 presidential election.

She’s jumping the gun a little bit – Trump has not yet announced another campaign, but is widely expected to do so on Tuesday.

Updated

CBS News has more reporting indicating that Trump is not taking the loss of several of his hand-picked Republican candidates in Tuesday’s midterms particularly well:

Trump is on Tuesday expected to make what he’s called a “big announcement” – likely the start of his campaign to win the White House again in the 2024 election.

And with a big announcement comes big money – at least he hopes. An appeal email sent out by the ex-president’s fundraising committee today offers people who contribute $45 or more the chance to win a free trip to Mar-a-Lago for the announcement.

This post has been corrected to indicate it was CBS News that reported on Trump’s mood, not CNN.

Updated

Not all the results are in, but expect analysts to spend a lot of time debating just how Democrats pulled off their surprisingly good performance in Tuesday’s election. One theory making the rounds is that the party prevailed thanks to substantial support from young voters. The Guardian’s Erum Salam takes a closer look:

The 2022 midterm election delivered surprising results, with Democrats maintaining more House seats than projected and a Republican “red wave” failing to materialize. As the forces driving these come into focus, one group proved to be key: young voters.

While final figures are still pouring in, it is estimated that 27% of young voters aged 18-29 cast a ballot in 2022, making this the midterm election with the second highest youth voter turnout in almost three decades, after 2018. In some key battleground states, turnout was even higher, at 31%, and support for Democratic candidates was roughly over 60%, driven in large part by the fight for abortion rights after the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade.

An Edison Research National Election Pool exit poll showed that 18-29s were the only age group in which a strong majority supported Democrats. Support for Democrats was even higher among Black youth at 89% and Latino youth at 68%.

It is a trend that continues from the 2018 and 2020 elections, where youth voter turnout – historically perceived as low – surged and proved to be a crucial voting bloc, particularly for Democrats. But some young voters struggled to cast their ballot – raising questions about the particular hurdles this group faces to have a voice in elections.

Despite many of their candidates’ rhetoric about stolen elections and voting fraud before the midterms, Republicans who lost in Tuesday’s election don’t seem to be flocking to the courts to challenge the results. That could change.

Politico reports that on a Thursday conference call, Republican senator Lindsey Graham suggested that if the party’s Senate candidate Adam Laxalt loses in Nevada, it’ll be a sign of fraud.

“There is no mathematical way Laxalt loses,” Graham said, according to Politico. “If he does, then it’s a lie.”

It’s unclear if Laxalt agrees with Graham, who he would join in the Senate if elected over Democratic incumbent Catherine Cortez Masto. On Twitter, Laxalt has been projecting confidence as Nevada’s slow ballot counting process grinds on:

Outside New York City, House Democrat Pat Ryan has also triumphed in his re-election battle, the Associated Press says:

It was a close call for Ryan. He won 49.4% support against his Republican opponent Colin Schmitt’s 48.6% share of the vote, according to New York’s unofficial results.

Updated

Another vulnerable House Democrat has won reelection.

The Associated Press says David Trone has emerged victorious in a district stretching from western Maryland to Washington’s exurbs. Trone tweeted that his opponent, Neil Parrott, called him to concede the race:

The race was very close. Trone squeaked to victory with 50.5% support against Parrott’s 49.4%, according to the state’s unofficial results.

Updated

Meanwhile in Alaska, the state’s Democratic House representative is warning that it could be a while before voters learn whether she’s won election to a full term:

Alaska’s ranked choice voting system has made calling their elections particularly complex, and the Anchorage Daily News says don’t expect the final results in Peltola’s race until 23 November. Their preliminary data shows her in the lead over Republican challenger Sarah Palin – yes, that Sarah Palin, the one-time vice-presidential nominee known for her folksy brand of conservatism.

Peltola won a special election in August to replace Alaska’s longtime Republican House representative Don Young, who died in office.

Biden exhorts other nations to join US in climate pledges, action

Guardian US climate reporters Oliver Milman and Nina Lakhani report from Egypt.

Joe Biden has implored countries to do more to tackle the climate emergency, telling the Cop27 summit that world leaders “can no longer plead ignorance” and that time to confront the crisis is running out.

Biden told a large crowd of delegates at the talks, held in Egypt, that the “science is devastatingly clear – we have to make progress by the end of this decade.” The US president stated that America was taking action on cutting planet-heating emissions and that other major economies needed to “step up” to avoid a disastrous breach of 1.5C in global heating.

Joe Biden delivers a speech during the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference, more commonly known as COP27, at the Sharm El Sheikh International Convention Centre, in Egypt’s Red Sea resort.
Joe Biden delivers a speech during the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference, more commonly known as COP27, at the Sharm El Sheikh International Convention Centre, in Egypt’s Red Sea resort. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

“Let’s raise both our ambition and speed of our efforts,” he said in his speech on Friday in Sharm el-Sheikh. “If we are going to win this fight, every major emitter needs to align with 1.5C. We can no longer plead ignorance of the consequences of our actions or continue to repeat our mistakes. Everyone has to keep accelerating progress throughout this decisive decade.”

Biden, buoyed by better than expected midterm elections for Democrats this week, said that governments need to “put down significant markers of progress” in reducing emissions. Scientists have warned that the world is heading for disastrous levels of global heating, with emissions still not falling fast enough to avoid severe heatwaves, wildfires, droughts and other impacts of the climate crisis.

“It’s been a difficult few years; the interconnected challenges we face can seem all-consuming,” said Biden, who accused Vladimir Putin of using “energy as a weapon” in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, an action that has caused energy and food prices to soar globally. “Against this backdrop, it’s more urgent than ever that we double down on our climate commitment.”

You can read the full report here.

Updated

Four of the five supreme court justices who overturned the constitutional right to abortion showed up at the conservative Federalist Society’s black-tie dinner marking its 40th anniversary, the Associated Press writes.

Justice Samuel Alito got a long, loud ovation Thursday night from a crowd of 2,000 people, most in tuxedos and gowns, when another speaker praised his opinion in June that overturned Roe v Wade, long a target of judicial conservatives.

Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel Alito speaks during the Federalist Society’s 40th Anniversary dinner at Union Station in Washington.
Justice Samuel Alito speaks during the Federalist Society’s 40th anniversary dinner at Union Station in Washington. Photograph: José Luis Magaña/AP

At a moment when opinion surveys show that Americans think the court is becoming more political and give it dismal approval ratings, the justices turned out to celebrate the group that helped then-president Donald Trump and Senate Republicans move the American judiciary, including the supreme court, to the right.

The Federalist Society has no partisan affiliation and takes no position in election campaigns, but it is closely aligned with Republican priorities, including the drive to overturn Roe.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett and Alito offered brief remarks that steered well clear of the court’s work, though Alito praised the Federalist Society for its success in the Trump years and hoped it would continue. “Boy, is your work needed today,” he said.

Supreme Court Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett speaks during the Federalist Society’s event.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett speaks during the Federalist Society’s event. Photograph: José Luis Magaña/AP

Barrett’s only allusion to the abortion case came when she responded to the crowd’s roar of approval when she was introduced. “It’s really nice to have a lot of noise made not by protesters outside my house,” she said.

Abortion protections were on the ballot in some states in the midterm elections earlier this week.

Updated

The day so far

Three days after the midterm election, we’re still awaiting the results of Arizona and Nevada’s Senate races, which will be crucial to determining control of the chamber. The majority in the House is similarly uncertain, though it looks like Republicans have a better shot than Democrats at taking the majority for the next two years. Meanwhile, Donald Trump appears ready to announce a new run for the White House on Tuesday, even as some in the GOP question whether he’s the right candidate to continue leading the party.

Here’s more of what we’ve learned so far today:

  • Trump has gone after a number of Republicans on social media today, including Florida governor Ron DeSantis and Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin.

  • Why is the Guardian’s count of Senate seats different from the AP’s? This is the reason why.

  • One Democratic pollster explained why he believed his party would do well all along. Another explored the reasons why Democrats performed better on the issue of crime than he expected.

Updated

In the days before the election, another veteran Democratic pollster predicted a rough night for the party, in part due to frustration over crime.

Writing in The American Prospect, Stanley B Greenberg, who played a part in Bill Clinton’s successful White House campaign, argued that Democrats had failed to convince voters of their ability to stem rising crime. So bad was their handling of the issue that many voters believed the party wanted to defund the police, even though many Democrats reject the idea.

Greenberg spoke to New York Magazine in an interview published today about the reasons why Democrats ended up doing better in the midterms than his analyses predicted:

It’s important not to take the wrong lessons from the fact that we were saved by late partisan polarization, which reflects the post-2016 era where we have high turnout and consolidation of both parties. A lot of moderate Democrats in our October poll said they were voting for Republicans, about twice as many Republicans who said they were voting for Democrats. But that disappeared in the intense partisan polarization at the end. And that was driven on the Democratic side by worries about abortion, Social Security, and democracy. On Tuesday, about 3% of Democrats voted for Republicans and about 3% of Republicans voted for Democrats. A quarter of people in our survey said they made up their mind on the last day, or in the last few days before the election, which we’ve never had before. So we were on a knife’s edge, and it could have been and was poised to be much worse.

He also addressed why his prediction about the crime issue does not appear to have come true:

If you look at the candidates who won, they addressed the crime problem early on and spent a lot of money being clear that they were against defunding the police, and being clear that they opposed those in the party who are advocating it. Voters believe that we wanted to defund the police. And so if you didn’t make your message almost entirely about respect for police and funding the police, you were not going to make any progress.

I’m actually surprised how much voters are open to rethinking Democrats on crime, but not in the context of this election, where Democrats were mostly saying the wrong thing. They were making the issue more important, but without the right message. The national Democratic message was block grants for more police, banning assault weapons — a range of government programs that our data showed hurt us. If you look at what happened in New York, they led with that kind of messaging.

Updated

The Democrats’ success in Tuesday’s elections took many by surprise. But not Simon Rosenberg.

The veteran Democratic pollster and president of the NDN and New Policy Institute think tanks has been arguing for weeks that his party would perform better than polls indicated in the midterms, and ended up being more right than wrong.

Yesterday on Twitter, he shared some thoughts about what propelled Democrats to their surprisingly strong showing:

Have you heard of Chase Oliver? Democratic and Republican party leaders in Georgia certainly have. The Libertarian candidate garnered 81,000 votes in the tight race for Georgia’s Senate seat, which will now go to a run-off, in part because of his presence on the ballot. Here’s more about the “armed and gay” politician, from The Guardian’s Andrew Lawrence:

The morning after the midterms, Chase Oliver was back at work. “That’s what most other Georgians have to do after an election,” he tells the Guardian. “I have a job and have to pay rent and the bills.”

Oliver, 37, has two jobs, actually – one as a sales account executive for a financial services company and another as an HR rep for a securities firm. And as he toggled between email replies and Zoom interviews from his north-east Atlanta home, with three cats and a dog, Delilah, underfoot, you’d never suspect this natty, young Georgian had thrown a spanner into the cogs of American power. “You are possibly the most hated man in America right now,” read one post to his Facebook page.

Oliver was the third candidate in Georgia’s US Senate race: a pro-gun, anti-cop, pro-choice Libertarian who proudly announces himself as the state’s first LGBTQ+ candidate – “armed and gay”, he boasts. And on Tuesday night, this surprise spoiler scored an historic upset of sorts, siphoning enough support away from the Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock and his Republican challenger Herschel Walker to force the election to a 6 December runoff – Georgia’s second in as many election cycles. Until then, there’s no telling whether the Democrats will retain control of the Senate.

Vote counting is proceeding at an agonizingly slow pace in Nevada, where Democrats are locked in tight races to keep a Senate seat and the governor’s mansion.

For an idea as to why, take a look at this explainer from the Associated Press:

The vote counting is taking days, but that’s not abnormal for Nevada, where a chunk of votes have previously not been tallied until after election night. In the two most populous counties, officials warned up front that it would take days to process the outstanding ballots.

NEVADA’S WAY

A few things have slowed Nevada’s vote counting in recent elections.

First, Nevada has also had problems with long lines of voters at poll close, although Nevadans have traditionally opted to vote early. The state won’t release vote counts until all voters who were in line at poll close have cast their vote.

Second, in 2020, Nevada greatly expanded absentee voting, sending a ballot to every registered voter. The state passed legislation to do that in future elections as well.

Also that year, nearly 15% of Nevada’s vote was not reported until after election night — and it took three days for the state to report 100% of the vote.

This year, voting officials in the two most populous counties, encompassing the population centers of Las Vegas and Reno, warned it would take days to process the outstanding ballots.

County election clerks will count mail ballots received until Nov. 12 as long as they were postmarked by Election Day.

Officials have until Nov. 17 to finish the counting and submit a report to the Nevada secretary of state’s office, according to state law.

The state has no mandatory recount law.

All eyes are on media results trackers as Arizona and Nevada’s Senate races inch closer to official results and news on control of the House looms.

So a quick note about Alaska…

Readers who like to pick ‘n’ mix may have noticed that the Guardian and the New York Times currently have the Senate decided 48 to 48, Democrats vs Republicans in the 100-seat chamber, but CNN on screen and online is showing the GOP at 49 seats.

That’s down to Alaska, where ranked choice voting is used. There isn’t a winner projected yet by the Associated Press, on which the Guardian blog, stories and tracker rely, but the AP acknowledges the race is tight and is now between two Republicans, incumbent Lisa Murkowski and Trump-backed challenger Kelly Tshibaka.

Republican U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski stands with supporters on U.S. election night in Anchorage.
Republican U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski stands with supporters on U.S. election night in Anchorage. Photograph: Kerry Tasker/Reuters

AP on Thursday noted: “Exactly who’ll win Alaska’s US Senate contest isn’t clear, but it will be a Republican.”

So the GOP do have 49 Senate seats nailed down, but we’ll wait for AP to name a winner in Alaska before we recalculate our AP-driven special live results tracker.

What about the P-word? Mary Peltola is ahead of Sarah Palin in the Alaska House race.

U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola waves a sign during the morning rush hour in Anchorage, Alaska, on Tuesday Nov. 8. Peltola, who became the first Alaska Native elected to Congress when she won a special election earlier this year, faced Republicans Sarah Palin and Nick Begich and Libertarian Chris Bye in the midterms general election. Final result awaited.
U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola waves a sign during the morning rush hour in Anchorage, Alaska, on Tuesday Nov. 8. Peltola, who became the first Alaska Native elected to Congress when she won a special election earlier this year, faced Republicans Sarah Palin and Nick Begich and Libertarian Chris Bye in the midterms general election. Final result awaited. Photograph: Mark Thiessen/AP

Remember her? Still touting “drill, baby, drill.”

Trailing Peltola now, here’s former Alaska governor and former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin in Anchorage on election day.
Trailing Peltola now, here’s former Alaska governor and former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin in Anchorage on election day. Photograph: Kerry Tasker/Reuters

If you couldn’t tell from his social media posts, CNN confirms it: Trump is “cranky”.

That’s according to this story that gets into the intra-family drama playing out ahead of Saturday’s planned wedding of the former president’s youngest daughter, Tiffany Trump. Donald Trump is, of course, expected to attend, but CNN reports he’s distracted by his “special announcement” set for Tuesday, which will likely be where he makes public a new campaign for the White House in 2024.

As for what’s fueling Trump’s annoyance, CNN chalks that up to the underperformance of his candidates in Tuesday’s midterms, and the handful of calls from Republicans for the ex-president to step aside.

Next up on Trump’s hit list is Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin.

Last year, Youngkin managed to win the governor’s office in a state that typically leans Democratic. In a post on this Truth social network Trump said Youngkin “couldn’t have won without me.”

“I Endorsed him, did a very big Trump Rally for him telephonically, got MAGA to Vote for him - or he couldn’t have come close to winning. But he knows that, and admits it. Besides, having a hard time with the Dems in Virginia - But he’ll get it done!”

Trump began his post by misspelling Youngkin’s name as “Young Kin (now that’s an interesting take. Sounds Chinese, doesn’t it?).”

Yesterday, Virginia’s lieutenant-governor Winsome Sears called Trump “a liability” for Republicans, and said if he ran in 2024, she “could not support him.”

Trump attacks DeSantis with baseless claim of fraud, FBI involvement

Donald Trump has spent the past hours having something of a public meltdown, and directing his ire towards various Republicans who offended him.

Last night, the target was Florida governor Ron DeSantis. In a statement, Trump claimed he sent federal agents to stop vote rigging during Florida’s 2018 election, in which the Republican narrowly beat Democrat Andrew Gillum for the governor’s mansion.

“I was all in for Ron, and he beat Gillum, but after the Race, when votes were being stolen by the corrupt Election process in Broward County, and Ron was going down ten thousand votes a day, along with now-Senator Rick Scott, I sent in the FBI and the U.S. Attorneys, and the ballot theft immediately ended, just prior to them running out of the votes necessary to win. I stopped his Election from being stolen,” Trump wrote in a diatribe that called DeSantis “Ron DeSanctimonious”.

There is no evidence of tampering with Florida’s 2018 election. There is, however, evidence that DeSantis had a much better Tuesday evening than Trump. He was re-elected as Florida’s governor by a big margin, on a night in which Republicans performed well statewide. Meanwhile, several of the former president’s handpicked candidates across the country came up short, and a few Republicans have since broken the party’s wall of support for Trump, and called for the GOP to move on.

That would be a boost to DeSantis, who is widely seen as mulling his own run for the White House in 2024. His campaign could pose the most serious challenge to Trump for the Republican nomination.

Updated

Joe Biden departed Washington yesterday evening for Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, where he’s minutes away from addressing the Cop27 climate summit.

The Guardian’s Oliver Milman is covering the event, and you can tune in to our live blog for full coverage of Biden’s speech:

Updated

Donald Trump’s plan to announce a new presidential campaign is causing controversy among some Republicans who worry it will jeopardize their chances of winning Georgia’s Senate runoff, Hugo Lowell reports:

Donald Trump’s top political staffers at Mar-a-Lago are pressing him to move forward with his planned 2024 presidential campaign announcement next week but a chorus of allies are suggesting delaying until after the Senate runoff in Georgia in December, according to sources familiar with the matter.

The former US president has been forced to reckon with Republican blame for underwhelming performances from rightwing candidates he endorsed in the midterm elections, with the defeat of Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, contributing to uncertainty over which party will control the Senate.

Trump has suggested publicly that he intends to announce his 2024 presidential campaign next week as planned. Behind the scenes at Mar-a-Lago, in a sign of concern about his standing after disappointing results in the midterms, he remains undecided on how to proceed. However, some initial invites for the “Special Announcement” event have been sent.

Trump’s top staffers have firmly pressed him to announce his latest White House campaign as planned on Tuesday, the sources said, suggesting that he would appear weak and wounded by the results were he to cave to demands that he hold off until the Senate runoff early next month.

Trump also has no upside in waiting until the Senate runoff, where his handpicked Republican candidate Herschel Walker trails Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock. His staffers are said to have told him: if Walker wins, he can take credit, and if Walker loses, his position would be no different.

Updated

If Republicans win a majority in the House, Kevin McCarthy could be the man to lead it for the next two years. The Guardian’s Edward Helmore reports on McCarthy’s conversation with Joe Biden yesterday, and the president’s acknowledgment that Democrats face long odds in keeping the chamber:

The eyes of the political world remained focused on Arizona and Nevada on Friday, where hundreds of thousands of uncounted votes held the key to control of the US Senate, three days after Americans cast their final ballots in midterm elections.

The delay in districts such as Arizona’s Maricopa county, which includes Phoenix, is attributed to the record number of ballots cast on Tuesday. Election officials had estimated they would have a tally by Friday but now say they will count through the weekend.

In Nevada, election officials had estimated a finish by Friday but, again, the high number of ballots cast means counting will continue through next week. However, a winner could be called as soon as any candidate is judged to have passed a majority threshold.

The Associated Press has not called the Senate races in Nevada and Arizona, where Democratic incumbents are fighting for re-election.

But the Cook Political Report has weighed in on Arizona, saying that Democrat Mark Kelly won his race:

Nevada conducted its election mostly by mail, and is slowly releasing the results of ballots that have been counted. According to the Nevada Independent, the results are looking good for Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto in her bid for another term against Republican Adam Laxalt – but it’s not over yet:

Updated

We do not know all the results of the midterms, but we do know that Joe Biden will be president until January 2025. So let’s go through a few scenarios about how the outcomes of the still-uncalled House and Senate races will affect his presidency.

Democrats seem to be on course to win the Senate again, which is a significant prize for any president. Besides passing laws, the chamber is tasked with confirming the White House’s nominees – including supreme court justices, federal judges and cabinet secretaries. The last time Republicans controlled the chamber under a Democratic president, Barack Obama, they held up nominations of judges and most famously refused to consider his nominee for a vacant supreme court seat, which ended up being filled by Donald Trump. Keeping control of the chamber would be majorly helpful to Biden, even if he doesn’t have the House.

Congress’s lower chamber has fewer unilateral powers than the Senate, and was always seen as unlikely to remain in Democratic hands after the midterms. That does not mean the party is out of contention there. Several races remain to be called, and a return to power by Biden’s allies is still possible – though as this thorough Politico piece makes clear, it will be harder for them to pull that off than for the GOP to regain the majority.

The most likely outcome at this point appears to be a narrow Democratic majority in the Senate and a small Republican majority in the House, similar to the situation Trump faced from 2019 to 2021. If that happens, expect the House GOP to pass lots of bills that the Senate will ignore, as its Democratic leaders focus on confirming judges and whatever other nominees the White House sends them.

If Republicans take both House of Congress – aided by wins in Nevada and Georgia’s still-to-be-determined Senate elections – then Biden will probably be using his veto pen repeatedly over the next two years against whatever legislation they manage to pass. But if Democrats somehow defy the odds and pull off a history-making victory in both chambers, Biden will get another shot at accomplishing a laundry list of priorities – including codifying abortion protections that previously were guaranteed by Roe v Wade, which the president said would be the first bill he sends to the new Congress.

Updated

Democrats edge towards Senate majority as counting continues

Good morning, US politics blog readers. Ballots are still being counted three days after Tuesday’s midterms, and it seems like Democrats may have a shot at taking control of the Senate again. While the Associated Press hasn’t called the race, there are signs that senator Mark Kelly has won reelection in Arizona, though the fate of Nevada’s Catherine Cortez Masto is still up in the air. If both triumph, Joe Biden’s allies win control of the chamber for another two years. But if only one does, the run-off election for Georgia’s Senate seat set for 6 December will determine control. And that’s to say nothing of the House, where several key races are yet to be called. What a week.

Here’s a look at what’s going on today:

  • Democrats worried they could lose the governor’s mansion in blue-state Oregon amid a backlash over crime, homeless and the state’s unpopular incumbent. Their fears were allayed last night when the Associated Press called the race for Democrat Tina Kotek.

  • Far-right Republican Lauren Boebert is edging closer to reelection despite a surprisingly strong challenge from Democrat Adam Frisch.

  • In Nevada’s Senate race, Democrat Cortez Masto is slowly cutting into her Republican challenger Adam Laxalt’s lead as mail-in ballots are counted.

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The Guardian - UK
How to watch or stream Sunday’s Week 16 games of the NFL’s 2024-2025 football season live, online, and free without cable
It’s a holiday feast of football!
Fortune
Fortune
Tina Fey and Tom Hanks among stars to induct Martin Short into Saturday Night Live's Five-Timers Club
Tom Hanks, Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin and Scarlett Johansson were among the stars to induct Martin Short into the 'Saturday Night Live' Five-Timers Club on Saturday (21.12.24).
BANG Premier
BANG Premier
FDA restricts psychoactive mushroom used in some edibles
The regulator warned food manufacturers that Amanita muscaria –  more commonly known as the fly agaric – and the compounds it contains are not authorized to use
The Independent UK
The Independent UK
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