2022 midterm election results

An election worker arrives with ballots to be tabulated inside the Maricopa County Recorders Office, Wednesday, November 9, in Phoenix.

More votes are expected to be posted from Colorado’s Pueblo County at 9 p.m. ET, Gilbert Ortiz, the county’s clerk and recorder, told CNN — they then will call it a night and pick back up tomorrow morning at 11 a.m. ET.

Why this county is key: The county is located in GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert’s district, where she is facing a very tight race against Democrat Adam Frisch.

The county is at approximately 57,000 votes right now out of a total of about 61,000 (Note: the numbers are subject to change a little because some votes are being cured, and there’s eight days to do that after Election Day in Colorado).

At 9 p.m. ET, the county is expected to post approximately 2,000 more votes which would get them to about 59,000 out of the roughly 61,000 total. 

A Democratic Senate campaign aide involved in strategy for the likely Georgia runoff says the attacks raising questions about GOP candidate Herschel Walker’s character are expected to remain front and center ahead of voting on Dec. 6.

There will also be a continuation of a massive field effort in urban areas like Atlanta and the Atlanta suburbs and direct voter contact in other areas across the state.

Other Democratic strategists say the ground game will be pivotal. 

Some background: CNN projects the hotly contested Senate contest between Walker and Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock will face a runoff on Dec. 6.

Neither candidate surpassed the 50% threshold to win the race outright on Tuesday. Depending on the outcome of Senate races in Arizona and Nevada, voters in Georgia could then – for the second consecutive election cycle – have the Senate majority in their hands.

President Joe Biden spoke by phone this evening with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, according to the media pool.

The White House offered no other details on the call.

For background: Biden said earlier Wednesday he planned to speak with McCarthy, who could be poised to become the next House speaker. CNN has not yet made a call on GOP control of the House. 

Asked to describe his relationship with McCarthy, who is moving swiftly to lock down the votes to claim the speaker’s gavel, Biden offered minimal detail, saying:

During the 2022 primary season, Democrats actively meddled in a number of Republican races – hoping to boost GOP candidates who they viewed as too extreme (especially on the issue of election denialism) to win general elections.

All told, Democrats spent millions of dollars interfering in Republican primaries for Senate, House and governor around the country.

The debate at the time was whether this was dirty pool by Democrats. After all, they – and President Joe Biden in particular – had made the defense of democracy from those who would question it the centerpiece of the 2020 campaign and beyond.

If Democrats truly believed that sowing doubt about free and fair elections was a deep and serious threat to democracy, then how could they justify spending money to elevate candidates who espoused those very views?

That remains a worthwhile debate. But what is beyond debate is that Democratic meddling in Republican primaries was very effective.

To read more, click here.

A version of this story appeared in The Point newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell speaks during a news conference at the US Capitol in Washington DC, on September, 28.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell told CNN on Wednesday that he doesn’t believe he ever predicted a red wave would happen this midterm cycle.

“Yeah, I don’t believe I ever predicted that,” McConnell said as he was leaving the US Capitol when asked his response to the so-called red wave that was expected by some this election. 

On whether he has any insights into the remaining votes in Senate races in Arizona and Nevada, he said: “Well, like everybody else, I’m watching them count votes.”

And when asked if he thinks inflation was as big of an issue as he expected it to be with voters, he responded as the elevator doors were closing: 

“We’re all waiting for December the 6,” an apparent reference to the runoff election for the Georgia Senate seat between GOP candidate Herschel Walker and Sen. Raphael Warnock, the Democratic incumbent.

Republican Marc Molinaro waves to supporters on Tuesday at his election headquarters in Binghamton, New York.

Republican Marc Molinaro will defeat Democrat Josh Riley in New York’s 19th Congressional District race, CNN projects.

This is a Republican pickup.

Where things stand in the House: Republicans now have 207 out of 218 seats needed to control the House, CNN projects.

Not much can grow naturally in the barren desert landscape of Arizona’s Maricopa County, but given its pivotal role in shaping national politics, it’s fertile ground for conspiracy theories to take root.

“We’ve anticipated legitimate mistakes and issues with election infrastructure being reframed as fraud,” Kate Starbird, an associate professor at the University of Washington who studies the spread of disinformation, explained to CNN.

That appears to be what precisely played out in Maricopa County on Election Day.

The right-wing personalities, who have spent the past two years convincing millions of Americans not to trust their democracy, pointed to this Election Day’s problem with printers at some Maricopa polling locations as proof that everything they had said was right. The printer issue was not a mistake, they suggested – fraud was afoot.

The reality of any Election Day in the United States is that issues are going to arise at the polls. We can argue whether that is unacceptable or inevitable, the result of incompetence or aging infrastructure. But it is another thing entirely to suggest, without evidence, that these issues are the result of a nefarious and sophisticated effort to “steal” an election.

Election deniers in 2020 attributed malice to the mundane, repeatedly claiming videos showed poll workers stealing the election, when in fact the videos showed them doing their jobs. Having studied this, Starbird and her colleagues at the University of Washington and the Stanford Internet Observatory published a report last month looking at “implied intentionality.”

“In elections, honest human errors can be opportunistically exploited to imply intentionality and to support unfounded narratives of intentional, widespread fraud, undermining the legitimacy of electoral outcomes. However, as research shows, election fraud is exceedingly rare and such mistakes are unlikely to impact election outcomes,” they wrote.

It all began early this Election Day when a Republican activist posted a video to Twitter showing a Maricopa poll worker explaining there was a problem that could cause delays.

For those who had been waiting to claim the election was a fraud, it was a gift and it could hardly have come from anywhere better.

To read more on the election conspiracies in Maricopa County, click here.

Sen. Ted Cruz speaks at a rally in support of Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt's reelection in Oklahoma City on Tuesday, November 1.

The cavalry starts with Ted Cruz. 

The Texas senator is the first Republican senator heading to Georgia during the one-month sprint to the Dec. 6 runoff between Herschel Walker and Sen. Raphael Warnock. He is set to hold a rally Thursday night in Cherokee County, about an hour north of Atlanta.

The event with Cruz is a part of the Walker campaign’s launch for the “Evict Warnock Bus Tour.”

Cherokee County underscores the challenges: Walker received about 9,000 fewer votes there than Republican Gov. Brian Kemp – a pattern repeated across the state – that tells the story of how Kemp avoided a runoff and Walker did not. The Walker campaign is studying voting patterns and doing survey work to study why Republican voters either supported Warnock or chose not to vote. They are seeking to improve turnout in red, rural areas to compete with Warnock’s strength in the cities and suburbs.

The question is whether former President Trump will make his way to Georgia to help his self-recruited candidate. He stayed away – but talked regularly with Walker – but is eager to visit in the next month, people close to him say.

Voters wait to cast their ballots in Tucson, Arizona on Tuesday.

Pima County, Arizona, officials said they have about 159,000 ballots still to be counted and don’t expect to complete their count until Nov. 14 or 15.

Pima County, home to Tucson, is the state’s second most-populous county.

Those ballots still to be counted include more than 54,000 early ballots still being processed by the recorder’s office; 2,460 provisional ballots; 350 overseas ballots; and 750 “problem” ballots that may be missing a signature or for which officials need to reach out to voters, said Gabriella Cazares-Kelly, the Pima County Recorder.

Constance Hargrove, the county Elections Director, said they have completed the tabulation of ballots cast on election day.

Cazares-Kelly said that they expect to tabulate about 20,000 ballots a day in the coming days, and will post results at 6 p.m. Arizona time (8 p.m. EST) each day.

House and Senate GOP leaders stayed mostly behind closed doors Wednesday even though they’re on track to take back the House and could still regain the Senate.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, who traditionally holds news conferences the day after an election, opted not to have one today. He came to the Capitol but didn’t want to talk about the results when asked by reporters.

House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy also was behind closed doors and didn’t hold a news conference or make himself available to reporters. He made brief remarks at 2 a.m. at his election night party but left quickly and avoided reporters.

GOP sources say party members are not eager to field questions about why they underperformed — in large part because of the widespread feeling within the party that former President Donald Trump hurt their chances.

Republican sources believe his late appearances on the campaign trail helped make the race a clearer contrast between the two parties, something that hurt them in swing states like Pennsylvania. 

Republicans are also privately griping that their party failed to have an effective answer on abortion amid the onslaught of attacks their candidates endured on the issue.

One member who did answer some questions about their performance is Rep. Tom Emmer, who chairs the National Republican Congressional Committee — but he refused to explain why candidates underperformed, instead touting the likelihood the GOP will take the House.

There would be a data dive once all the races have been called, he said.

If Georgia voters were hoping to avoid talking politics at Thanksgiving, the state’s tightly contested Senate race has other plans.

Neither Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock nor Republican challenger Herschel Walker surpassed the 50% threshold needed to win the race outright Tuesday evening, CNN projects, forcing a runoff election set for Dec. 6.

But what exactly does that mean? And how will the runoff election work?

Here’s what you need to know:

What is a runoff and how does it work? A runoff is an additional election used to determine the winner of a certain race when neither candidate earns the required threshold for victory – in this case, 50%.

In Georgia, runoffs are more straightforward than general elections in that the candidate with the most votes wins.

Georgia’s top elections official, Brad Raffensperger, said counties are already preparing for the Dec. 6 election, and voters can request absentee ballots starting Wednesday through November 28 via the state’s online portal.

Early voting must begin by November 28 in all counties, but Raffensperger said his office anticipates some counties could have early voting on Saturday, November 26 or Sunday, Nov. 27. “We are working with the counties to find out what their plans are on this front,” he said.

Notably, the logistics of the 2022 runoff will be different than in years passed. The 2021 Georgia law that cut the length of runoffs from nine weeks to four means that the deadline for a new voter to register for the runoff election has already passed.

What is at stake? Put simply, a lot.

Depending on the outcome of Senate races in Arizona and Nevada, voters in Georgia could then – for the second consecutive election cycle – have the Senate majority in their hands.

Top officials from the Democratic and Republican parties told CNN they intend to double down on their significant investments in Georgia, with an increasing assumption that control of the Senate could hinge on the outcome of the runoff.

Republican Mike Lawler arrives to attend his election night party in Pearl River, New York on Tuesday.

Republican Mike Lawler will win in New York’s 17th District, CNN projects, defeating Democratic Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney.

This is a Republican pickup. Maloney had conceded the race earlier today.

CNN projects Republicans now have 206 out of 218 seats needed to control the House.

CNN’s John King and Jake Tapper explain:

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A headshot of Anthony D’Esposito.

Republican Anthony D’Esposito will win in New York’s 4th District, CNN projects, and defeat Democrat Laura Gillen.

This is a Republican pickup.

CNN projects Republicans now have 206 out of 218 seats needed to control the House.

Voting stickers at Irvine Valley College in Irvine, California on Tuesday.

In many ways, the 2022 elections were an example of the plane landing safely.

The fallout from former President Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election – and the fraudulent conspiracy theories, hostility towards election officials and promises of combative poll watching activities those falsehoods produced – did not translate into widespread chaos at precincts around the country on Tuesday.

Several factors contributed to the mostly drama-free administration of the midterms, according to election officials and voter advocates.

Among them was the clear message election officials in key states sent that disruptions at voting sites would not be tolerated. A federal judge’s ruling that clamped down on some conduct viewed as intimidating outside of Arizona ballot drop boxes during early voting was another shot across the bow.

But it was also the two years of preparations – and lessons learned from the difficulties in responding to disinformation that surrounded Trump’s electoral loss in 2020 – that helped stave off the sort of Election Day confusion that could be exploited to cast doubt on the results.

“One of the things is we had a chance to get prepared for it – everyone did. It came out of nowhere in 2020,” said Chris Harvey, the former Georgia elections director, who is now deputy executive director of Georgia Peace Officer Standards and Training Council.

More context: Counting continues in several key states, and there is still the possibility of litigation over the vote, particularly if the margins are thin in Nevada and Arizona – where both the Senate and governors’ races are competitive – or in California, where some House races could determine control of the lower chamber.

Read more about this here.

Republicans had hoped to make big enough gains among Latino voters in 2022, extending their inroads from two years ago, that would fundamentally realign the political landscape in several battleground states — and the presidential map — in their favor.

Although Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis delivered on those hopes, winning heavily Latino counties that no Republican candidate for governor or president had won in a generation, other Republicans could not keep up with his pace.

Even with many races still to be called, exit polls and results in some key House races showed the party improving on the margins, but not making the leap among Latino voters GOP strategists had sought.

The outcomes of House races still unfolding in California and New York, as well as Senate and governor’s races in Arizona and Nevada, will play a key role in determining the significance of this year’s smaller shifts toward the GOP.

Democrats won two of three South Texas congressional races, all in the Rio Grande Valley, that were widely seen as a gauge of whether the GOP could build on former President Donald Trump’s 2020 gains in a historically Democratic area.

Rep. Henry Cuellar, the most conservative Democrat in the House, posted a double-digit victory in the 28th District, which stretches from San Antonio to his hometown of Laredo. And in the 34th District, in the state’s southeastern tip — another border district that includes McAllen, Harlingen and Brownsville — Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, who was running in a new district, delivered a clear victory over Republican Rep. Mayra Flores, who won a special election this year under the old district lines.

“The RED WAVE did not happen. Republicans and Independents stayed home,” Flores tweeted in the early Wednesday morning hours.

The only GOP victory in the region came from Monica De La Cruz, who won in the neighboring 15th District, which was drawn in last year’s redistricting process to be a GOP-leaning but competitive seat.

Democrats saw their victories in the region, after a deluge of Republican spending on the three races, as a sign the party had held off the GOP in the largely Hispanic Rio Grande Valley after 2020.

“Even with these large investments, we showed the Republican party that South Texas is not their home,” Gonzalez said at his victory party, the Texas Tribune reported.

Latinos are not a monolith, and South Texas — like Florida — isn’t a perfect window into the broader Latino population. Voters there are typically more culturally conservative — a reality that explains Cuellar’s survival despite two hard-fought primaries against a progressive challenger and a tough general election while under the cloud of an FBI investigation. (In April, Cuellar’s lawyer said federal authorities told him that his client was not a target of the investigation.)

Nationwide, Democrats won Latino voters — 60% to the GOP’s 39% — according to exit polls conducted for CNN and other news networks by Edison Research. That’s a slight improvement for Republicans over 2020.

Democrats’ strongest performance was among younger Latinos and women, while Republicans did better with men and older voters.

The exit polls showed Democrats dominating among the 75% of Latino voters who said abortion should be legal, winning that group by 58 percentage points. The party also avoided massive blame for an economy that 69% of Latinos said is fair or poor, winning those voters by 12 percentage points.

But the most important question about long-term trends about Latino voters is whether a marginal shift in the GOP’s favor this year will be significant enough to change the political landscapes of presidential swing states such as Arizona and Nevada, which, like Texas, have big Latino populations, largely of Mexican descent.

Read more.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer returns to the Capitol in Washington DC on the morning after Election Day, on Wednesday.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said on Wednesday that Democrats are still “feeling good” about the Nevada and Arizona Senate races, as votes are still being counted in both states. 

“But, of course, the votes have to be counted,” he said when asked about the outlook for the Democratic candidates, Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada and Sen. Mark Kelly in Arizona. 

Concerns about democracy played a larger role than anticipated, he said.

Schumer made the comments as he left the US Capitol for the night. 

Republican nominee Kari Lake speaks at the Republican Party of Arizona's 2022 US midterm elections night rally in Scottsdale, Arizona on Tuesday.

With hundreds of thousands of votes still left to be counted and the Arizona governor’s race too early to call, a source in Republican nominee Kari Lake’s campaign tells CNN that Lake has been in meetings today with her would-be transition team.

She has met with a number of people, including former Trump acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, in an effort to begin to establish her advisory team if she were to win.

But the reality is, this race is far from decided, and even the Lake campaign can’t ignore that.

While boosting these transitional meetings, the Lake campaign canceled what was touted as “a big event you don’t want to miss.” The campaign source followed up by saying the cancellation was due to how slowly the ballots were being counted in Maricopa County.

A spokesperson for Katie Hobbs would not elaborate on Hobbs’ schedule today, other than describing it as a day for campaign staff to wait for the election results.

Both Arizona and Nevada have key uncalled races as of Wednesday evening and counties in both states are working to count thousands of votes.

Here are where things stand:

Arizona:

Maricopa County — As of Wednesday afternoon, there were 400,000 votes left to count. Bill Gates, chair of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that the majority of outstanding votes in the county are mail-in ballots.

Pima County — As of Wednesday afternoon, the county had about 23,000 election day ballots left to scan, as well as about 40,000 early ballots and 2,300 provisional ballots left to count, according to county communications director Mark Evans, said.

Nevada:

Clark County — County registrar Joe Gloria said that results from an additional 14,718 ballots will be posted tonight. This batch contains ballots that were either into dropboxes on Monday or arrived via USPS on Tuesday. Election officials will also be “curing” mail ballots through Monday. “Curing” is when election officials contact voters to fix mistakes on their ballots, like if information is missing. More than 9,500 voters had issues that needed curing. More than 5,390 of them haven’t “cured” their ballots yet, Gloria said. Mail-in ballots will continue to come in until Saturday, as long as they are postmarked by Nov. 8. All in-person ballots that were cast in Clark County on Election Day are already reflected in the publicly released results, Gloria said.

Washoe County — The state’s second most populous county is still sorting through more than 20,000 ballots, Jamie Rodriguez, Washoe County’s interim registrar of voters, said. She said that while she anticipates a small update on where the vote count stands this evening, she stressed that a bigger update in vote totals should be expected tomorrow, after election officials have had a chance to process thousands of additional mail-in ballots that arrived Wednesday.

President Joe Biden said Wednesday that he believes the American public wants the government to “move on and get things done for them,” and not lead investigations into him, his family or his administration – as House Republicans have indicated they want to pursue if they win back the majority.  

“I think the American public want us to move on and get things done for them,” Biden said, adding: “I think the American people will look at all of that for what it is. It’s just almost comedy. I mean, it’s, but you know, look, I can’t control what they’re going to do. All I can do is continue to try to make life better for the American people.”

House Republicans are eyeing potential probes into everything from the chaotic pullout from Afghanistan, Biden administration border policies, the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic, the FBI search on Mar-a-Lago, and the bureaucratic decision-making behind Covid-related school closures and vaccine mandates. 

President Joe Biden addresses the media and takes questions on Wednesday.

President Joe Biden said Wednesday that it remains his “intention” to run for reelection in 2024.

In remarks from the White House after the midterm elections, Biden noted that he is not in “any hurry” to announce a reelection bid as his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, teases an announcement set for next week.

The president said he continues to deliberate with his wife, first lady Dr. Jill Biden, reiterating that his timeline won’t be influenced by Trump and remains “early next year.”

Asked how he interprets last night’s results in terms of seeking another term — and whether the results make it more likely — Biden said the results did not impact him and his family’s thinking.

Biden, who at 79 is the oldest president in American history, added the caveat that Democrats outperforming expectations in the elections provided “whew – a sigh of relief that the mega-Republicans are not taking over the government again.”  

But, he said, “My intention is that I will run again, but I’m a great respecter of fate. And this is all made a family decision. I think everybody wants me to run, but we’re gonna have discussions about it. And I don’t feel any hurry one way or another to make that judgment – right – today, tomorrow, whenever, no matter what my predecessor does.”  

The president said he hopes he and the first lady get time to “sneak away” around the holidays as he reiterated, “My guess is that it’ll be early next year to make that judgment, but that is my plan to do it.”

Biden’s top advisers are making plans toward a 2024 reelection bid, even as he has not yet made a decision on whether to throw his hat into the ring again. Senior White House adviser Anita Dunn said Wednesday that planning for a potential campaign is already underway, regardless of Biden’s decision.

Biden later dismissed midterm exit polling that suggested a majority of voters do not want him to run for re-election. Asked whether that data impacts his decision, he sharply responded, “It doesn’t.”

And his message to those opposed to another presidential bid: “Watch me.”

Biden also bristled at a question of who would be a tougher 2024 Republican competitor: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis or Trump. 

“It’d be fun watching them take on each other,” he said, declining to elaborate.

CNN’s Betsy Klein contributed reporting to this post.

President Joe Biden answers questions from reporters on Wednesday.

President Biden was asked about House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy’s comment last night that Republicans are going to take the House majority back — and whether he thinks McCarthy is right.

Biden responded that he thinks Democrats still have the possibility of holding onto the chamber, but he noted that “it’s going to be close.”

Biden was asked about his relationship with McCarthy. He said that he hasn’t spoken to him much but believes that he’ll be talking to him later today.

In terms of how they’ll potentially work together moving forward, Biden said, “there is always enough people on the other team, whether Democrat a Republican that the opposite party can make an appeal to, maybe pick them off to get the help.”

Former President Donald Trump speaks at his Mar-a-Lago estate on Tuesday.

In an interview with Fox News Digital Wednesday, former President Donald Trump said that reports he was “furious” following the midterm results were not true.

“It is just the opposite,” Trump said, “The people I endorsed did very well. I was batting 98.6% in the primaries, and 216 to 19 in the general election — that is amazing.”

Trump went on to praise several of the candidates that he endorsed including Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, both of whom Trump rallied for. Grassley and Rubio were both strongly favored to win before Trump appeared along side them. 

Trump also had favorable words for celebrity Dr. Mehmet Oz who lost his senatorial bid in Pennsylvania to Lt. Gov John Fetterman.

“Oz worked very hard, but there were forces against him,” Trump said. “Oz is a great guy. He had a lot of immovable forces against him.”

Asked if the lackluster results would change Trump’s decision to announce a third presidential run next Tuesday, the former president indicated he would be forging ahead with that plan.

“We had tremendous success…. Why would anything change?” Trump said.

President Joe Biden speaks from the State Dining Room at the White House.

President Joe Biden signaled on Wednesday how he would try to work across the aisle if Republicans win the House, but made clear there are some issues he won’t compromise on. CNN has not yet projected control of the House.

“I’m prepared to work with my Republican colleagues,” Biden said. “The American people have made clear, I think, that they expect Republicans to be prepared to work with me as well.”

Biden indicated he hopes there will continue to be cooperation across the aisle to deliver aid to Ukraine. “In the area of foreign policy, I hope we will continue a bipartisan approach of confronting Russia’s aggression in Ukraine.”

Biden also outlined what he does not want to see happen. “I’m not going to support any Republican proposal that’s going to make inflation worse,” and “I’m not going to walk away from historic commitments we just made to take on the climate crisis.”

Winning the House majority would give Republicans power to set the agenda in the chamber. House Republicans would also have subpoena power and control over powerful committees – and they have made clear they would make investigations into the Biden administration a top priority. 

On the legislative front, there would be some must-pass policy issues — like funding the government — that would test the ability of Republicans and Democrats to work together if the GOP controls the House.

Asked if he believed the “MAGA fever” has been broken, Biden said, “I don’t think we are going to break the fever for the super mega MAGA Republicans. But I think they are more minority of Republican party. I think the vast majority of party, we disagree strongly on issues, but they are decent.”

President Joe Biden speaks to the media on Wednesday.

President Biden addressed voter frustrations, despite Democrats performing better than expected this election season, during his remarks from the White House saying, “I get it.”

“The voters were also clear that they’re still frustrated. I get it. I understand it has been a really tough few years in this country for so many people,” Biden said.

He went on to list the ways his administration is tackling obstacles like the Covid-19 pandemic and a reeling economy.

“And we’re just getting started. The interesting thing is that this is all going to really come into clear view for people in the month of — in the months of January, February, March of next year. It’s just getting underway. So I am optimistic about how the public is going to be even more embracive of what we’ve done,” the president said.

President Joe Biden speaks at a White House news conference on Wednesday.

President Joe Biden opened his remarks this afternoon by calling Tuesday’s midterm elections “a good day, I think, for Democracy” and a “good day for America.” 

“The American people have spoken, it shows that Democracy is who we are,” the President said. He added that the election happened “without much interference at all or any.”

While acknowledging that all the results are not in, Biden went on to discuss the results that we do know at this stage.

Biden said that any seat lost by his party is painful. But he pointed out that his party “lost fewer seats in the House of Representatives than any Democratic presidents’ first midterm election in the last 40 years.”

CNN’s Kevin Liptak contributed reporting to this post.

President Biden is addressing reporters from the White House as the control of Congress still hangs in the balance.

Biden appeared to withstand historic and political headwinds in the midterm elections, staving off resounding Republican wins even as his presidency is now likely entering a new period of divided government.

The results were neither the “thumping” George W. Bush described during his own post-midterms press conference in 2006 nor the “shellacking’” Barack Obama said Democrats endured in 2010.

Instead, the failure of a so-called “red wave” to materialize Tuesday night had Democrats, including those inside the White House, feeling enthused and vindicated following an election season where Biden’s political aptitude was questioned.

The results appeared more likely to prompt soul-searching among Republicans than Democrats, as former President Donald Trump teases an imminent announcement that he is running for the White House again. Many of the candidates Trump endorsed in toss-up races lost or were locked in contests that were too early to call.

Still, Biden and his team still face the prospect of a difficult two years of governing should Republicans seize control of the House of Representatives. The president’s agenda would likely be sharply curtailed without a Democratic majority. And Republicans have promised investigations into Biden’s administration and family.

Watch Biden’s remarks in the video player above our live updates.

Wall Street was betting on a red wave in the midterm elections Tuesday, but investors saw red on their trading screens Wednesday when that didn’t happen. 

Stocks ended the day broadly lower, with the Dow plunging more than 645 points, or 2%. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq fell 2.1% and 2.5% respectively. 

The market rallied sharply during the past three days following a historic surge for stocks in October. That was due in part to expectations of a convincing victory for Republicans that could give the party control of one or both chambers of Congress — a development that could lead to more investor-friendly gridlock. But it’s not yet clear if Democrats will actually lose their majority in either chamber. 

Still, as the midterm dust settles, investors may now shift their attention back to inflation and the economy. The government will report the October consumer price index figures Thursday morning. Investors are hoping that if inflation continues to cool, the Fed may be able to finally slow the pace of interest rate hikes following four consecutive increases of three-quarters of a point.

Facebook owner Meta Platforms also confirmed a major round of layoffs, but the stock rallied more than 5% on the news.

John James' win in Michigan is a pick up for the Republican Party.

Republican John James will win Michigan’s 10th District, CNN projects, defeating Democrat Carl Marlinga.

This is a Republican pickup.

Here’s where things stand in the House:  

Remember: In the House, the party with at least 218 seats has the majority and, assuming it can unite behind one candidate, selects the Speaker of the House

CNN’s Melissa Holzberg DePalo contributed reporting to this post.

Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates talks to CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Wednesday.

Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates disputed incompetence in the 2022 election process, as levied by Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, he told CNN Wednesday afternoon. 

“I do not believe that what happened yesterday can fairly be called incompetence or corruption in any way,” Gates said. “Did we have some issues? Yes,” he continued. 

Gates referenced voting tabulators running into issues at 20% of voting locations on Tuesday — something that was resolved by the afternoon.

“If people have instances or proof of fraud, we want to hear that,” Gates said. “But up to this point we have not. And right now, we are laser focused on getting through this count and doing it in an accurate way.”

Asked by CNN’s John King about which way the uncounted mail-in ballots will break, Gates said it’s too early to tell.

“In the last couple of cycles, we’ve tended to see more Republicans showing up on Election Day of course to vote a ballot and run it through the tabulator, but also at the early ballot,” Gates said. “I think it’s too hard at this point to try and estimate exactly how those early ballots are going to break.”

Gates reiterated, as he said Tuesday as well, that they expect more than 95% of the votes will be counted by Friday evening.

Former President Donald Trump takes the stage to speak at Mar-a-lago on Election Day, Tuesday, November 8, 2022, in Palm Beach, Florida.

Donald Trump wanted to catapult himself into a third presidential campaign with a wave of Republican midterm gains behind him. Instead, he emerges from Tuesday’s underwhelming election night facing questions about his political future and with momentum behind Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — his potential chief nemesis in a 2024 primary. 

With key races still too early to call in Arizona and Nevada, and with Georgia heading to a Senate runoff, Trump entered Wednesday with few victories to tout and the possibility that they might soon be overshadowed by further losses.

His chosen candidates for open Senate seats in Ohio and North Carolina prevailed, as did incumbent Republican Sen. Ron Johnson in Wisconsin. But he lost a critical Senate contest in Pennsylvania, where Mehmet Oz, whom he backed in the primary despite widespread concerns about his electability, was defeated by Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman.

In Michigan, Trump’s candidate in the governor’s race failed to unseat Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. And while Republicans still appear to be on track to capture a House majority, it is likely to be far slimmer than initially thought. 

“As powerful as Trump is in the Republican party, we learned that he cannot anoint anyone a winner. You still need candidates who have the fundamentals,” said Bryan Lanza, a longtime Trump adviser. 

Others were more blunt in their assessment of Tuesday’s known outcomes. 

Rep. Troy Nehls, a Texas Republican who won reelection and was endorsed by Trump, appeared to cast the former president as a drag on other GOP candidates in a radio interview Wednesday. 

“There’s just a lot of negative attitudes about Trump,” Nehls said.

In the early hours of Wednesday morning, a current Trump adviser, who requested anonymity for fear of retribution, conceded that Trump “is in a tough spot coming out of tonight.” 

“Two narratives are going to take hold over the next week and neither one is going to be easy to dispel,” the adviser said.

Acutely aware of his unprecedented involvement in Republican primaries earlier this year, this adviser and other Trump allies said they expect the former president will be blamed for elevating flawed candidates in some of the party’s most important contests — especially Oz, a daytime talk show host who had barely resided in Pennsylvania before launching his Senate campaign there. 

Trump’s disappointment was palpable inside the gilded ballroom at his Mar-a-Lago estate, where he gathered with dozens of aides, allies and donors to watch returns on Tuesday evening. When he returned to the party halfway through the night following a private dinner, his mood had visibly shifted. 

As the crowd dwindled, Trump sat at a table in front of a television tuned to Fox News with just a handful of advisers. Meanwhile, several guests whose names appeared on a VIP list that one Trump adviser circulated to reporters were nowhere to be found, including some who apparently decided to skip the event — surfacing as television pundits throughout the night from studios elsewhere in the country. 

The end result was the exact scenario Trump’s advisers had hoped to avoid: an election where his top recruits fizzled or flopped and his primary Republican rival soared to new stardom. 

Read more here.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger speaks in Atlanta on Wednesday.

Georgia’s top elections official detailed plans for early and absentee voting for the upcoming Dec. 6 US Senate runoff between Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker.

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who won reelection last night, said in a news conference Wednesday that counties are already preparing and voters can request absentee ballots starting today through Monday, Nov. 28 on the state’s portal. Early voting must begin by Nov. 28 in all counties, but Raffensperger said his office anticipates some counties could have early voting on Saturday, Nov. 26 or Sunday, Nov. 27.

The 2022 midterm election results must be certified by Nov. 25 — the day after Thanksgiving. Before that can happen, officials need to conduct an audit of the election. Raffensperger said officials would announce Thursday at 11 a.m. ET which race from the 2022 Georgia midterms they will perform an audit on, as required by state law. 

Raffensperger said the audit is a “lot of work” but added, “we welcome it, because we know at the end of the day, everyone wants to know we have honest and fair elections – and we do.” 

What the campaigns are saying: Top aides for the Warnock and Walker campaigns came out with tough words for each other, perhaps previewing the campaign road ahead.

Quentin Fulks, campaign manager for Warnock, tweeted Wednesday morning, “Last night, Herschel Walker significantly underperformed in an environment that set him up for success,” he said. “Walker not only underperformed Kemp, he earned fewer raw votes than every other statewide Republican on the ballot.”

Republican incumbent Gov. Brian Kemp sailed to victory last night in his defeat of Democrat Stacey Abrams. Fulks argues Walker also underperformed former president Donald Trump’s vote share in rural, suburban, and urban counties.

Meanwhile, Scott Paradise, campaign manager for Walker, tweeted in response, “More than 50% of Georgians voted against the incumbent that spent more than $100 million. If you think that’s a ‘good night,’ I’ve got a penthouse apartment in Columbia Towers to sell you.” 

CNN’s Eva McKend contributed reporting to this post.

Pima County, Arizona, began scanning ballots again Wednesday at 1 p.m ET (11 a.m. local time) when political party observers arrived, according to the county’s communications director Mark Evans.

Pima County, home to Tucson, has about 23,000 election day ballots left to scan, as well as about 40,000 early ballots and 2,300 provisional ballots left to count, according to Evans.   

There are additional mail-in ballots and drop-off ballots that were received Tuesday that have yet to be counted.

Evans declined to immediately say how many of those ballots arrived, but says the numbers could increase significantly. More concise numbers may be released at a 6 p.m. ET (4 p.m. local time) virtual meeting.

President Biden tweeted a video showing clips of him making congratulatory calls on election night, writing, “Commander and I burnt the midnight oil last night calling some of our great election winners. I’m looking forward to the work we’ll do together.”

Most of the 400,000 votes left to be counted in Arizona’s Maricopa County are early-ballot votes, according to the County Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates.

“Just on Election Day, just yesterday, we had over 275,000 people drop off an early ballot for us. So, that’s the large majority of it,” he told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.

Gates said 95% to 99% of votes will be counted by Friday.

“And, again, if people have instances or proof of fraud, we want to hear that. But up to this point, we have not. And right now we are laser-focused on getting through this count and doing it in an accurate way,” he added.

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An election worker boxes tabulated ballots inside the Maricopa County Recorders Office, Wednesday, November 9, in Phoenix, Arizona.

Federal officials have not seen any evidence that any voting system used in the 8,800 jurisdictions across the US has been compromised, the Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity agency said Wednesday afternoon.

“We have seen no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was any way compromised in any race in the country,” US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Jen Easterly said in a statement. 

Some more context: The statement comes as election deniers, including former President Donald Trump, continue to falsely claim that technical glitches in places like Maricopa County, Arizona, are signs of voter fraud. 

Rep. Tom Emmer (R) address an Election Night party with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (L) at The Westin Washington hotel in Washington, DC, on Tuesday, November 8.

Rep. Tom Emmer, the chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, declined to pinpoint specific reasons for why House Republicans did not perform as well as expected when pressed by CNN’s Manu Raju over what the shortfall can be attributed to and if it had to do with candidate quality, abortion, or former President Donald Trump.

Emmer responded that “no one said this was going to be easy,” but defended the election results and said that House Republicans accomplished their goal by taking back the majority. CNN has not yet projected control of the House. 

Emmer also confirmed that he is launching a bid to be House GOP whip in the next Congress. “I am running to be the whip in the majority,” he said.

Asked if there is a concern that the results of the election could impact his whip bid, Emmer said, “I don’t see how. We delivered. This is exactly what we said we were going to do — we were going to deliver a new Republican majority.”

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul speaks to supporters after her win during an election night party in New York City, on November 8.

 After New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul was projected to win a first full term in office and making history as the first elected female governor of New York, her Republican challenger Lee Zeldin issued a concession statement, congratulating Hochul on the win.

“This race was a once in a generation campaign, with a very close margin in the bluest of blue states. The unrelenting passion and hard work of our grassroots volunteers and supporters made this incredibly close race possible and helped us win at least 49 of New York’s 62 counties,” he said Wednesday.

He ended by asking the governor to take note that New Yorkers “are sick of the attacks on their wallets, their safety, their freedoms and the quality of their kids’ education.”

New Yorkers “are hitting their breaking point, as proven by these results. As they take office in January, Governor Kathy Hochul and those controlling Albany must address the grave concerns voiced by the voters,” he added.

Election officials sort mail-in ballots Tuesday at the Washoe County Registrar of Voters Office in Reno, Nevada.

Washoe County, Nevada, is now processing 20,000 ballots that were mailed in or placed in a drop box on Monday and Tuesday.

Washoe County Communications Manager Bethany Drysdale said “everything is going smoothly this morning,” and officials are hoping to finish counting those 20,000 ballots today but could not guarantee that would happen. 

After that tally is completed, county officials will then move on to counting the mail-in ballots received Wednesday.

Drysdale did not have an estimate on how many mail-in ballots were received Wednesday.

“We have no idea,” she said.

The city of Reno is located in the county.

Gabriel Sterling, the chief operating officer for Georgia's Secretary of State Office, talks to CNN’s Erin Burnett on Wednesday.

A top Georgia election official said there are less than 10,000 votes left to be counted in that state, which means the tight Senate race will go to a December runoff. 

Gabriel Sterling, the chief operating officer for Georgia’s Secretary of State Office, told CNN’s Erin Burnett there are simply not enough votes left that could put Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock above the threshold needed to avoid a runoff.  

Sterling told CNN off-camera that of the approximately 10,000 remaining ballots, 5,139 are provisional ballots that need to verified by Monday. In addition, 2,163 are absentee ballots and 2,700 are early in person ballots from across the state.   

Sterling said the Georgia Secretary of State’s office is already preparing themselves for a December 6 runoff election. Ballots will be sent out to counties by Monday, Nov. 14 for their signoff, and the absentee ballot portal is open so voters can start requesting their absentee ballots, Sterling said. Early voting could start as early as Saturday, Nov. 26 if counties choose, he added.  

“It’s all about getting those parts lined up so we can get as many votes in – so the voters can make their voice heard,” Sterling said. 

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Kristina Karamo, a Republican running for secretary of state in Michigan, attends a rally in Dearborn last month.

Election officials in Ann Arbor, Michigan, are pushing back on election fraud claims from Kristina Karamo, the Republican candidate who lost her bid for the Michigan secretary of state seat.

In early morning posts on Twitter and the right-wing social media platform Truth Social founded by former President Donald Trump, Karamo attacked the Ann Arbor city clerk, who oversees elections.   

Karamo claimed voters were able to cast ballots even if they arrived at the polls after 8 p.m. local time, when polls closed. She alleged that voters were still being registered at 10:30 p.m. 

She also said a voter with an address discrepancy was allowed to vote absentee, and someone who now lives in Michigan was able to vote Tuesday night in Ann Arbor after her absentee ballot did not arrive from Colorado.  

Ann Arbor City Clerk Jacqueline Beaudry dismissed Karamo’s claims, saying in an email to CNN that there are “strong protocols in place to protect the integrity of our elections.”

Beaudry said there were long lines at three polling locations on election night. Voters in line by 8 p.m. at all those locations were given a “ticket” that allowed them to vote. Staff were present to “monitor lines and further ensure no individuals joined the lines after 8 p.m.,” she said.

“Michigan residents are allowed to register and vote on Election Day,” Beaudry said, adding that voters who recently moved to the state have to show proof of a 30-day residency to register and vote. 

Refuting Karamo’s claim that the city didn’t publicly post absentee ballot totals by 9 p.m., Beaudry noted that information was made available at city hall on Election Day.

A spokesperson for the Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson called Karamo’s allegations “meritless.”

But Karamo claims she is only concerned that fraud is happening, saying, “We are not election deniers or threats to democracy.”

Benson on Tuesday night told reporters “there were no widespread or major disruptions” in Tuesday’s elections and that “any minor issues were addressed quickly and without stopping voters from casting their ballots.” 

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaks at a news conference in September.

In a private conference call with her caucus, Speaker Nancy Pelosi praised Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney for soaking up a lot of the GOP cash targeting his seat that she believes would have been spent elsewhere in other districts, according to a Democratic member on the call. 

But Pelosi did not speak about her future at all and whether she will again run for the top job in her caucus, the source said. Leadership elections for House Democrats are expected after Thanksgiving.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee executive director told the members that there is still a mathematical path to the majority but ‘everything would have to go right,’ the source said. 

Pelosi told her caucus on a call that Maloney “took an arrow for us … a Pyrrhic victory,” a source on the call tells CNN. 

On some vulnerable Democrats keeping their seats, she said, “our candidates were courageous… they had the stamina to get the job done.”

Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell arrived at the Capitol on Wednesday, telling reporters, “I don’t know any more than you guys do.” 

Asked how he was feeling, he replied: “I don’t deal in feelings.” 

US Sen. Raphael Warnock, left, and Herschel Walker

Georgia’s senatorial race between Republican Herschel Walker and Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock will head to a runoff, CNN can project, sending the high-profile race to a Dec. 6 showdown after neither candidate was able to receive more than 50% of the vote. 

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An election worker arrives with ballots to be tabulated Wednesday inside the Maricopa County Recorders Office in Phoenix.

There are about 400,000 votes left to be counted in Arizona’s Maricopa County, Board of Supervisors Chair Bill Gates said in a press conference Wednesday morning. This is up 100,000 votes from what Gates told CNN earlier this morning.

About 275,000 early ballots were dropped off on Election Day, Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer said. The election officials will need additional time to sort, count and verify the ballots. They are asking for patience as they work through the process and said they expect more than 95% of the votes will be counted by Friday. 

“This number is immense,” Richer said, adding there were about 170,000 early ballots dropped off on Election Day in 2020. 

They received 86,000 early ballots Friday and over the weekend, Richer said. Those ballots have already been processed and should be reported today, he said.

There are about 17,000 uncounted ballots that went into what they call “Box 3,” which means they were not run through the tabulator. These in-person ballots make up about 7% of in-person ballots, Gates said. There are always ballots that go into “Box 3,” Gates said, “but this is a higher percentage than normal.” Gates said those ballots are “secure” and will be tabulated in their central count facility.

Almost 1.2 million votes have already been reported, Gates said.

Eli Crane appears at a rally in Prescott, Arizona, in July.

Republican Eli Crane will win in Arizona’s 2nd District, CNN projects.  

US Rep. Susan Wild has been reelected in Pennsylvania.

Democratic Rep. Susan Wild will hold on to her seat, CNN projects, defeating Republican Lisa Scheller, as she did in 2020, but this time in a redrawn district more favorable to Republicans. 

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is joined on stage by his wife, Casey, and their children during his election night party in Tampa.

Rupert Murdoch, the media mogul who controls some of the most powerful organs in conservative media, appeared to make clear Wednesday that he would prefer to cast aside former President Donald Trump in favor of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as the leader of the Republican party.​

The New York Post, a tabloid Murdoch controls, hailed DeSantis’ election night victory on its front page Wednesday morning. 

“DeFUTURE,” the headline on the Post blared, alongside a photo of DeSantis and his family celebrating their major win in the Sunshine State.

On Fox News, the dominant television voice Murdoch controls, significant attention was given on Wednesday to DeSantis’ victory. 

“I think Gov. DeSantis is the single biggest winner of the night,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said on “Fox & Friends,” adding that he will “almost certainly become the rallying point for everybody in the Republican Party who wants to move beyond President Trump.”

The homepage of Fox News also prominently featured a column by conservative commentator Liz Peek that declared DeSantis “the new leader of the Republican Party.” Fox News dubbed it “A NEW ERA.”

And at The Wall Street Journal, the broadsheet owned by Murdoch, the newspaper’s conservative editorial board published a piece proclaiming the “DeSantis Florida tsunami.”

Coverage from Murdoch’s media outlets is notable, given that they have significant sway over the Republican Party base and its power brokers.

“It is not an accident,” a person familiar with how Murdoch runs the companies told CNN Wednesday morning when asked about the fact that the billionaire’s media outlets were focusing attention on DeSantis as the future of the Republican Party.

The coverage from Murdoch’s media outlets does not mean that they will completely turn on Trump. Rather, it suggests that Murdoch might use his influence to tilt the scales and push Republicans toward DeSantis if the two squared off in a 2024 Republican primary.

A spokesperson for Murdoch did not immediately return a request for comment. But Murdoch has in the past made clear his frustrations with Trump. 

Maggie Haberman, a reporter at The New York Times and CNN political analyst, reported recently in her bestselling book that after the 2020 election Murdoch remarked of Trump, “We should throw this guy over.”

President Biden is set to continue the tradition of holding a formal press conference the day after the midterm elections and will take questions from reporters at 4 p.m. ET in the State Dining Room, the White House announced. 

The event will be open to press.

CNN’s MJ Lee reported Biden is expected to take a victory lap and argue that his party was able to avoid a bloodbath because at the end of the day, candidates were running on his agenda that proved to be popular. Biden will also continue to stand by the decision – which the White House was widely criticized for in the final weeks – to spend time and energy discussing issues like abortion rights, protecting democracy and election integrity, in addition to the economy and inflation. 

Biden advisers point to exit polls and ballot initiatives as clear proof that those other issues needed up being hugely motivating for voters.

Past presidents have traditionally held press conferences the day after midterm elections. They have produced noteworthy moments, like when then-President Barack Obama acknowledged a “shellacking” for Democrats in 2010. 

Obama held press conferences following midterm elections in 2010 and 2014. Former President Donald Trump held a press conference after midterms in 2018. And former President George W. Bush held press conferences after the midterm elections in 2002 and 2006.

“You’re going to hear from the President. He always enjoys taking your questions,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters earlier this week. 

New York Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney has conceded his race to Republican Mike Lawler.

New York Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, the leader of the House Democratic campaign arm, publicly conceded his race to Republican Mike Lawler in a Wednesday morning press conference, saying Lawler “won fair and square” and pledging his support to man who will replace him in Congress.

CNN has not yet projected a winner in this race.

Maloney was in the awkward position of touting House Democrats’ exceeding of pre-election expectations while also trying to make sense of his own defeat, which was part of Republican near-sweep of the New York City suburbs.

Maloney said he spoke to President Biden earlier and “expressed our appreciation for his leadership on the issues that matter to the American people.”

In recounting his conversation with Biden, Maloney said the president was “interested in where we end up.” Republicans appear likely to win a House majority, but the margin remains very much in doubt. 

“Last night should encourage him,” Maloney said of Biden. “Despite the opposition, despite the anger and the hatred and the lies that he has faced, the implacable obstruction that he has encountered, that he’s making progress and that we’re going to get through this together.”

US Rep. Dan Kildee speaks outside the Capitol in March.

Democratic Rep. Dan Kildee will win in Michigan’s 8th District, CNN projects.  

US Rep. Frank Mrvan is joined by his wife, Jane, as he talks to supporters in Merrillville, Indiana, on Tuesday night.

Democratic Rep. Frank Mrvan will win in Indiana’s 1st Congressional District, CNN projects, defeating Republican Jennifer-Ruth Green. 

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy speaks at his election event in Washington, DC, early on Wednesday.

House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy, staring at a smaller potential majority than he had hoped, is calling fellow Republicans Wednesday to discuss his party’s strategy and as he moves behind the scenes to ensure he has the votes to become speaker in January, according to several GOP sources.

McCarthy and his team are still confident that he will get the support to win the speakership, especially since there’s no challenger emerging against him. But they are trying to limit protest votes that would make it harder to get the votes he needs for the gavel since the margins in the House could be narrow. 

GOP leadership races in the House are scheduled for next week, and McCarthy will need to secure a majority of his conference’s support to be his party’s nominee for the speakership. The full House votes in January and that will be a more complicated prospect for him if more than a handful of Republicans lodge protest votes, since he needs 218 votes of the full House to be elected speaker.

McCarthy had hoped to pick up at least 20 seats to give him a cushion in both the speaker’s race and to help push through his agenda. It’s unclear if they can get there as many races remain too early for CNN to call.

McCarthy allies are touting his Tuesday endorsement from former President Donald Trump for the speaker’s gavel, something that could help with staunch Trump backers in the House GOP Conference.

Plus, they believe Republicans will credit him for the hundreds of millions of dollars that Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell’s outside groups raised and spent in key races. McCarthy has been calling victorious GOP candidates and members since last night.

Read more here.

US Sen. Ron Johnson speaks to supporters at his election night party in Neenah, Wisconsin.

Republican Sen. Ron Johnson will win reelection in Wisconsin, CNN projects, defeating Democratic Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes in one of the nation’s most important Senate races.  

The victory was another demonstration of the remarkable political durability of Johnson, 67, who has now won three consecutive hard-fought elections, despite polls that long showed him among the least popular senators up for re-election this year.  

In holding off Barnes — who Democrats had viewed at the outset of this year’s election cycle as a potential rising star — Johnson has also bolstered the GOP’s hopes of winning control of the Senate. 

The 2022 election is now in the books, although vote counting continues in a lot of places with so many races still uncalled. Democrats, who were expected to suffer considerable losses in the House, appear to have held their own, but they still look likely to wind up in the minority.

The Senate is a nip-and-tuck affair, with Democrats currently netting a single seat in Pennsylvania. Now, all eyes are on Arizona, Georgia and Nevada, all of which are too early to call. 

However, it’s clear that 2020 election deniers were the losers in the midterm election results so far.

Several high-profile election deniers running for governor across the country came out on the losing end. In Wisconsin, Tim Michels lost. In Michigan, Dixon fell short. Mastriano got blown out in Pennsylvania. Ditto Dan Cox in Maryland. And Darren Bailey in Illinois.

While CNN hasn’t called the Arizona governor’s race, Republican Kari Lake is trailing. 

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Mehmet Oz speaks during an election night rally in Newtown, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday.

Republican Mehmet Oz called Democrat John Fetterman to concede the Pennsylvania Senate race at 9:30 a.m. ET this morning, according to Fetterman campaign spokesperson Joe Calvello. 

Oz campaign manager Casey Contres confirmed the call to CNN.

Later on Wednesday morning, Oz released a statement of concession.

“This morning I called John Fetterman and congratulated him. I wish him and his family all the best, both personally and as our next United States Senator,” the statement reads.

Oz also thanked his supporters and campaign workers, saying the campaign “was the honor of a lifetime.”

“Pennsylvanians showed up with passion and a vision for a bright future that I found inspiring every day. I want to thank my supporters, so many of whom worked tirelessly to spread our message and support me and my family,” he said. “We are facing big problems as a country and we need everyone to put down their partisan swords and focus on getting the job done. With bold leadership that brings people together, we can create real change.”

New York Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, chair of the House Democratic campaign arm, has conceded his race to Republican Mike Lawler, a state assembly member from Rockland County. 

Maloney’s spokesperson Mia Ehrenberg confirmed the concession to CNN.

CNN has not yet projected a winner in this race.

Lawler told Fox News on Wednesday that Maloney “just called me a few minutes ago and was very gracious in conceding to me.”

He called it “a hard-fought campaign” and said “people wanted change.”

Lawler also acknowledged the difference of the newly redistricted map, saying when the map came out, “I took one look at it and knew that I could win it.”

“He didn’t have that built-in advantage of incumbency that a normal incumbent would have,” Lawler said of the new map.

Lawler said it looked like he might lose Westchester County, acknowledging it has become increasingly Democratic, and said, “I got a lot of work to do over there to make inroads over the next two years and I look forward to doing that.”

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Democratic state Sen. Don Davis has won his bid to represent northeast North Carolina in Congress, CNN projects, defeating Republican Sandy Smith in a significant win in the Democratic Party’s bid to stem their losses in the midterms. 

Democrat Brittany Pettersen will win the race in Colorado’s 7th District, CNN projects, defeating Republican Erik Aadland.  

This year, Republicans won a majority of White women, an important voting bloc the two parties split in 2018.

Republicans also made good on predictions that they would perform better among Latino voters than they did four years ago.

Democrats’ support among Latino men was 63% in 2018 and is under 55% in 2022, according to the early exit polls. Republicans appeared to cut into Democrats’ advantage among Latino women, although Democrats still got the support of about two-thirds of them.

Here’s a look at the changes between 2018 and 2022:

Former President Donald Trump’s endorsements for political candidates in close high-profile races have not yet given Republicans the swift and sweeping victories they had anticipated for this election cycle, despite many GOP hopefuls banking on his support to propel their campaigns. 

Many critical midterm races have yet to be called as of Wednesday morning, but so far, no Republican endorsed by Trump in a toss-up gubernatorial, US Senate or House race has won. Among those toss-up races where Trump had publicly backed a candidate, CNN projects the governor’s seat in Wisconsin, a Senate seat for Pennsylvania and four House seats are going to Democrats.

The Trump-backed candidate with the highest profile who pulled out a win was JD Vance in Ohio, who is projected to become the next US senator from Ohio after defeating Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan. CNN had rated that race as lean Republican.

Trump has traveled across the country, stumping for Republicans at huge rallies that mirrored event programs of his past presidential campaign stops — implicitly framing himself as the leader of the party. Now, as Republicans begin to reckon with what the results mean, they’ll also have to address whether Trump’s agenda will help or hurt in the 2024 elections. 

A Trump adviser who has been in contact with Trump’s inner circle told CNN that the former president is “livid” and “screaming at everyone” after the results.

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin speaks at a rally with congressional candidate Yesli Vega in Brandy Station, Virginia, on November 1.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accepted Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s apology about remarks he made about her husband, Pelosi’s spokesperson said.

The Virginia Republican sent her a handwritten note of apology for comments he made after the assault on her husband Paul Pelosi, her spokesperson told CNN.

The letter comes after Youngkin, while stumping for congressional candidate Yesli Vega, said about Paul Pelosi’s assault: “Speaker Pelosi’s husband had a break-in last night in their house, and he was assaulted. There’s no room for violence anywhere, but we’re gonna send her back to be with him in California. That’s what we’re going to go do.”

After his remarks, he told Punchbowl News: “At the end of the day, I really wanted to express the fact that what happened to Speaker Pelosi’s husband was atrocious. And I didn’t do a great job.” 

Punchbowl was the first to report about the letter.

Democrat Hillary Scholten will win in Michigan’s 3rd District, CNN projects.  

Republican Rep. Don Bacon will defeat Democratic challenger Tony Vargas in the competitive 2nd Congressional District in Nebraska, CNN projects.  

Gov. Laura Kelly arrives to address supporters at her election night party in Topeka, Kansas, on Tuesday.

Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly will win reelection in Kansas, CNN projects, defeating Republican state Attorney General Derek Schmidt in a state former President Donald Trump won by 15 percentage points two years ago. 

Election workers count ballots in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Tuesday.

Wisconsin’s Milwaukee County and Dane County have counted all of their mail-in, early voting and same-day voting ballots, two county officials told CNN.

Milwaukee County has a population of about 950,000 people, with 595,000 of those people living in the city of Milwaukee, according to their county website.

Dane County has a population of about 560,000, according to the Census Bureau. It is also where Madison, one of the state’s major cities, is located.

Former President Donald Trump speaks during an election night event at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday.

Former President Donald Trump “is livid” and “screaming at everyone” after last night’s disappointing GOP results in the midterms, a Trump adviser who has been in contact with Trump’s inner circle tells CNN. 

“Candidates matter,” the Trump adviser said. “They were all bad candidates,” the adviser continued, critiquing many of Trump’s handpicked contenders in key battleground states. 

This adviser said it’s unlikely Trump would delay his expected presidential announcement because “it’s too humiliating to delay.” But the adviser said there are too many unknowns at this point. 

The most striking loss for Trump came in Pennsylvania, where Republican Mehmet Oz fell to Democrat John Fetterman in what was the most expensive Senate race in the country. Trump endorsed Oz, during the contentious Republican primary, effectively pulling through a brutal primary and narrowly into the general election. But where the former president’s backing was decisive in the primary, it was an albatross in the general election for a Republican Senate candidate who was attempting to make inroads in the suburbs by touting his own moderation.

While Trump did score some Senate wins — Trump-backed GOP JD Vance defeated a stronger than expected challenge from Democrat Tim Ryan in the Ohio Senate race, while Republican Ted Budd defeated Democrat Cheri Beasley in North Carolina — those wins have so far been limited to clearly lean Republican states.

In the House, too, Trump acolytes lost in what were seen as competitive contests that Republicans needed to win if they were going to build a significant majority in the legislative body.

In New Hampshire, former Trump aide Karoline Leavitt lost to Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas in what was seen as a highly competitive contest. In North Carolina, Trump-backed Republican Bo Hines lost to Democrat Wiley Nickel in a race that was widely seen as a test of the former President’s influence. And in Ohio, Democratic state Rep. Emilia Sykes defeated Republican Madison Gesiotto Gilbert who bullishly touted her ties to Trump.

Trump’s evening was particularly bad when viewed through the lens of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ romp of a night.

DeSantis, Trump’s clearest rival for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, overwhelmingly won reelection on Tuesday, crushing Democrat Charlie Crist by nearly 20 percentage points, continuing to consolidate Latino support in Florida and even by winning populous counties like Miami-Dade.

The headline in Trump’s one-time hometown paper, the New York Post, said it all: “DeFUTURE,” the headline blared, showing the Florida Republican on stage with his family.

US stocks on Wednesday dipped modestly after the opening bell, with the Dow sliding nearly 200 points, or 0.6%. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq fell 0.7% and 0.9% respectively. 

Wall Street was betting on a red wave in the midterm elections Tuesday. But so far, it appears that didn’t necessarily happen. 

The market had rallied the past three days, following a historic surge for stocks in October. That was due in part to expectations of a convincing victory for Republicans that could give the party control of one or both chambers of Congress — a development that could lead to more investor-friendly gridlock. 

Voters in Gwinnett County, Georgia, cast their ballots on Tuesday.

All advance in-person, absentee-by-mail and Election Day results have been counted in Gwinnett County, Georgia, according to county media relations manager Deborah Tuff.

“That leaves a small number of provisional ballots, cures and some overseas ballots,” she said in an email to CNN Wednesday morning.

Tuff will provide an estimate of when those ballots will be counted later Wednesday.  

Gwinnett County is located about 30 miles northeast of Atlanta. 

Meanwhile, in Georgia’s Columbia County, all mail-in, early voting and same-day voting ballots have been counted, according to Columbia County Director of the Board of Elections Nancy Gay. The county is in eastern Georgia near Augusta.

There are 52 provisional ballots left to research and determine if they can be counted or not and an unknown number of military ballots left to count, Gay said.

CNN’s Ellie Kaufman contributed reporting to this post.

Kentucky voters on Tuesday rejected a proposal to amend the state’s constitution to say that it does not “secure or protect a right” to abortion or the funding of abortion, CNN projects. 

If adopted, the measure would have gone into effect immediately once the results of the election are certified by the State Board of Elections. 

The ballot question voters faced read: “Are you in favor of amending the Constitution of Kentucky by creating a new Section of the Constitution to be numbered Section 26A to state as follows: To protect human life, nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to secure or protect a right to abortion or require the funding of abortion?”  

Kentucky’s “trigger law,” which bans most abortions at all stages of pregnancy, and a law banning abortion after roughly six weeks of pregnancy have been allowed to be enforced temporarily while a lawsuit challenging the laws continues.  

Kentucky Right to Life executive director Addia Wuchner, who chairs the Yes for Life Alliance which supported Amendment 2, previously said voting “yes” would “ensure there’s no false interpretation of the constitution.”  

Without the amendment, “instead of the lawmakers who duly reflect the people’s will, we would end up with the abortion industry taking each law back into court,” Wuchner said.  

Tamarra Wieder, the Kentucky state director for Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates, had said passing the amendment would “open the door to more attacks on abortion access,” but rejecting it would allow abortion rights advocates to “continue to fight back” against the six-week ban and the trigger ban. 

An American flag flies above the US Capitol on Tuesday.

GOP Rep. Nancy Mace told CNN she is “cautiously optimistic” that Republicans will win a majority in the House of Representatives, adding that until both parties reach across the aisle it will be “difficult for anyone to govern.” 

Mace also acknowledged she expected her Republican colleagues to perform better than they did Tuesday.

Mace also said she did not support “at this juncture” any effort to impeach President Joe Biden if the GOP does take the House of Representatives. 

“That’s not something I support at this juncture without a heavy investigation. Impeachment has been weaponized over the years – and we’ve seen that in the last five years or so. We need to really focus on economic issues,” Mace said Wednesday. 

Mehmet Oz addresses supporters at his election night party in Newtown, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday.

As of early Wednesday morning, Republican Mehmet Oz has not publicly conceded after his projected loss to Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman in the race for Senate in Pennsylvania. 

The silence from the candidate and staff is noteworthy. 

After repeated attempts to get in touch with the campaign, no comment or details on a statement from the candidate — written or verbal — have been confirmed. 

Oz spoke at his campaign headquarters in Bucks County late Tuesday before the race was projected, saying to the crowd, “When all the ballots are counted, we believe we will win this race.” 

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel speaks at a campaign rally in East Lansing in October.

Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel will be reelected, CNN projects, and defeat Republican Matthew DePerno. 

DePerno was a leader in the efforts to challenge Michigan’s 2020 election results, including by filing a lawsuit claiming vote fraud in Antrim County. While the suit failed and DePerno’s theories about Dominion voting machines have been thoroughly debunked, he pledges to “prosecute the people who corrupted the 2020 election.” 

Exit polls are reported on a screen at an election night event for Raphael Warnock in Atlanta on Tuesday.

Four Senate races must still be called, but only one offers a chance of a rematch: Georgia.

As day breaks the morning after the election, the campaigns of Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker are starting to prepare for one more month of campaigning – not waiting for a runoff to be formally called by state election officials.

Both candidates are expected to speak later today, aides say, with specific plans still in flux.

Top officials from the Democratic and Republican parties also tell CNN they intend to double down on their significant investments in Georgia, with an increasing assumption that control of the Senate could hinge on the outcome of a likely Dec. 6 runoff.

While Warnock holds a narrow edge over Walker of about 18,000 votes – out of more than 4 million ballots cast – Republican officials are alarmed by another tally from election night: Walker’s underperformance compared to Gov. Brian Kemp. 

In his reelection victory, Kemp performed far stronger than Walker in suburban areas, earning about 163,000 more votes than Walker.

Georgia election official Gabriel Sterling told CNN that the state’s secretary of state office began making preparations last night for a runoff in the US Senate race. Preparations include building ballots and pushing proofs to counties starting Monday.

So far, neither candidate has reached the 50 percent needed to avoid a runoff, which makes a runoff a very real possibility.

An election worker moves a rolling shelf at the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center in Phoenix, Arizona, on Tuesday.

There are at approximately 300,000 ballots left to be counted in Maricopa County, Board of Supervisors Bill Gates told “CNN This Morning” on Wednesday.

Approximately 17,000 ballots from Election Day, not including mail-in ballots, have yet to be counted, Gates said. Those ballots comprise roughly 7% of ballots that went into “Box 3,” meaning “they were not run through the tabulator there at the vote center, but they are secure and they will be tabulated in our central count facility,” Gates said.

In addition, there are 90,000 mail-in ballots that were received after Friday but before Tuesday that have not been counted, and approximately 200,000 mail-in ballots received Tuesday that also have yet to be counted, Gates told CNN This Morning. 

He noted that they do not have a precise count of how many mail in ballots were received Tuesday, but said the roughly 200,000 “all came in late last night.”

Gates stressed that voters in Maricopa County “should not be concerned” about their votes being counted after a technical issue, telling CNN that the bottom line is that “everyone who showed up yesterday with a valid ID…they had the opportunity to vote a ballot and that vote is going to count.”

The sun illuminates the US Capitol on November 8.

Election Day is over but many of the fundamental races of this election cycle remain uncalled.

Gubernatorial races in Alaska, Arizona, Kansas, Nevada and Oregon have yet to be called. And as the country begins to look towards 2024, the management of future elections in three key states remains unclear, with the races for Secretary of State in Arizona, Nevada and Wisconsin ongoing.  

When it comes to Congress, control of both the House and Senate is still up for grabs.

In the Senate, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman’s victory in Pennsylvania, flipping a GOP seat, gave Democrats a sigh of relief as they await results from Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin and Georgia. Republicans need to win three of those four to claim a majority.

The shape of the House, too, remains uncertain.

Here are the remaining races, whose outcomes will determine which party controls the chambers:

SENATE

HOUSE

Maxwell Alejandro Frost speaks as he celebrates with supporters during a victory party at The Abbey in Orlando, Florida, on Tuesday, November 8.

The first member of Gen Z who is heading to Congress, 25-year-old Florida Representative-elect Maxwell Alejandro Frost, said that he and President Joe Biden bonded on a call about the president also first being elected at a young age.

Frost has received calls from Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi after his projected win in Florida’s 10th District.

He and Biden discussed how the president was elected to the Senate when he was 29 years old and how had to wait until after his 30th birthday to be sworn in.

Generation Z refers to those born after 1996. Frost will succeed Democrat Val Demings, who vacated the seat to run for Senate.

Frost said when organizers in Orlando first approached him about running last year, his first reaction was “no,” but he told CNN that a call to his biological mother changed that.

“I was at a crossroads. … Hearing that she had me at the most vulnerable point in her life really reaffirmed what I believe in and why I ran for Congress,” he said.

Frost said he wants to push for gun violence legislation, including universal background checks.

When asked about Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis winning a resounding reelection victory, Frost said, “What we saw was not a red wave. … What we saw is there was a blue deficit. Democrats did not turn out the way they needed to. And I think as Democrats, we need to have year-round organizing.”

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John Fetterman addresses supporters at his election night party in Pittsburgh on Tuesday.

President Biden and his advisers are in a particularly good mood about one candidate who scored a major victory overnight: John Fetterman. 

The Pennsylvania lieutenant governor was in one of the most closely watched Senate races of the cycle, and ultimately defeated celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz. Biden texted Fetterman to congratulate him, and a White House official even made a rare comment on this specific win: “The president had a great time with the senator-elect on Saturday,” a White House official told CNN overnight.

That comment served as a reminder, of course, that the president had campaigned alongside Fetterman in Pennsylvania in the final stretch of the midterms. That move had stood out because towards the very end, Biden was sticking to safer, blue states such as New York, Maryland and California.

In the end, one of the most important Senate race results of the election was Democrats picking up a Senate seat in Pennsylvania where both Biden and former President Barack Obama went all out in the end – efforts that ultimately could have made a difference in Fetterman’s favor.

In the final stretch of the midterms, President Biden and his White House were starting to be on the receiving end of a whole lot of criticism that went something like this: Why wasn’t the president focusing solely on the economy when it is the top, overwhelming issue for most voters?

That criticism took aim at the fact that Biden and his advisers were choosing to spend a good amount of effort and time in the final stretch discussing abortion rights and issues related to protecting democracy and election integrity. This included a major evening speech by the president last week in Washington, DC, in the aftermath of a violent attack against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband. 

The morning after the election, Biden advisers say they feel even more vindicated on their messaging decisions – pointing to various exit polls that indicate yes, the economy was a huge motivator for voters – but so were other issues such as abortion and protecting democracy.

Even as they wait to learn what the balance of Congress will ultimately be, Biden advisers say some of the most important bright spots around the country that they’ve isolated are ballot initiatives aimed at protecting abortion rights. 

As some key races remain uncalled as of Wednesday morning, here’s a look at the states and districts that CNN projected for Democrats or Republicans over the course of election night.

In the Senate:

And in the House:

Herschel Walker speaks to supporters during an election night event in Atlanta on Tuesday.

Georgia’s Republican Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan lamented on Wednesday that the GOP Senate candidate in Georgia was Herschel Walker.

“I think a lot of Republicans like me are waking up this morning going ‘what could have been if we picked a better candidate that could have won with a margin like Brian Kemp that would have been able to put real leadership on display, real ideas on display, win the hearts and minds of Georgians, and get the state back to fully red?’” he told CNN.

Duncan has been a critic of Trump for some time now, urging Republican leaders and voters to move on from the former president.

“I think Donald Trump’s moving from a movement to a distraction for the Republican Party now,” Duncan told CNN Wednesday.

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Former President Donald Trump addresses a crowd at an election night event at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday.

Former Trump aide Sarah Matthews says the way 2022 Election Night went indicates that Donald Trump is costing Republicans winnable seats. In the walkup to midterm elections, the Republicans had hoped that they would have clear majority in the House of Representatives on Election Night.

However, as of Wednesday morning, the results are still coming and the control of Congress still hangs in the balance.

She added: “You have record inflation, increased fears over crime, the worst border crisis in history, an unpopular president and Republican performance was still underwhelming. And that was in large part due to the candidates that Trump backed. They weren’t up to quality. I think this is lessons learned for Republicans that a, Trump is not a national winner, and, b, candidate quality matters.”

CNN analyst Harry Enten explained this through the numbers.

“Donald Trump is not a well-liked politician,” he said Wednesday, pointing to Trump’s favorability standing at 39%.

People who held an unfavorable view of Trump voted overwhelmingly for Democrats in this election, Enten explained. “Basically, those people who said they voted for Biden two years ago, stuck by the Democratic candidates for the House. And this was despite the fact look how unpopular Joe Biden was.”

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It was 150 years ago this year that noted suffragette and voting rights activist Susan B. Anthony illegally cast her vote in her hometown of Rochester, New York. She was arrested, and then convicted for voting illegally. Nearly 50 years later, after the 19th amendment passed on June 4, 1919, White women like Anthony were legally granted the right to vote.

On Tuesday, women and men paid tribute to Anthony’s trailblazing efforts by visiting her final resting place and leaving their “I Voted Today” stickers on her gravestone after voting in the 2022 midterm elections. It’s been a local Rochester tradition for years now to visit the site at Mount Hope Cemetery, also the resting place of abolitionist Fredrick Douglass, on Election Day.

New York State Senator Samra Brouk, and Assemblymembers Sarah Clark and Jennifer Lunsford held a rally this year where supporters marched from Anthony’s home to the nearest polling station in an effort to encourage women to vote in this year’s midterm election.

“With all that’s going on with rights for women right now, and our ability to make decisions on our own bodies and healthcare eroding, it’s important for us to show up and vote,” Clark said.

Clark has been leaving her “I Voted Today” sticker at Anthony’s gravestone since 2016 when, like many others, she braved the long line to get a chance to place her sticker on the women’s right’s advocate’s gravestone in honor of Hilary Clinton.

On Tuesday, six years on, Clark visited the gravesite to place that sticker on Anthony’s tombstone once again, as is Rochester tradition.

The headstone looks a little different than it did in 2016. For one, it’s under a plastic cover protecting the grave marker being damaged from the myriad of stickers that often get placed on it every election cycle. There’s also no throng of people waiting in line at the gravesite like in 2016.

Clark said 120 people marched and voted to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Susan B. Anthony’s historic vote. The assemblywoman said they handed out “I Voted When She Voted” stickers to all march-goers who voted. The hashtag #SusanBAnthony on social media shows women posting photos of their “I Voted Today” sticker on Anthony’s headstone.

President Joe Biden speaks at a campaign rally for Maryland Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wes Moore in Bowie, Maryland, on November 7.

As many in the country were going to bed last night, President Biden and his advisers – up late into the night watching the midterm returns come in — felt convinced of two things: Races across the board looked competitive, and Democrats appeared to have avoided a bloodbath that some had predicted and feared.

The White House wakes up this morning to real reasons for that optimism from the previous night to continue: The possibility of Democrats’ keeping the Senate in their hands very much remains intact, and they’ve seen Democratic governors of big swing states and key House frontliners in their party win their races.

A huge outstanding question, of course, remains the fate of the House – and just how many seats Republicans will ultimately end up picking up. 

Whether Democrats can keep control of the Senate – and how the makeup of the House will ultimately shake out – will have huge implications for President Biden and his party’s ability to govern in the second half of his first term.

And as the White House is poised to highlight some of the bright spots from last night’s results, a challenge for them will be whether they can successfully make the case that some of these Democrats were able to hold their own because of the White House and President Biden – not in spite of them.

Leading up to Election Day, there was already starting to be plenty of finger-pointing at the White House. Some House Democrats, for example, told CNN that Biden and his team failed to drive hard at an economic message, at a moment when voters have made clear that it is overwhelmingly their most important issue.

One progressive House member put it bluntly to CNN: “We knew the economy would be bad… and they didn’t have an economic message at all.”

The lawmaker lamented – echoing sentiments expressed by some of their colleagues – that they also didn’t see the White House adequately take credit for Democrats’ legislative wins, including last year’s passage of a major bipartisan infrastructure bill. It was a “total failure to take a victory lap,” they said.  

But if many Democrats were ready to start playing the blame game, the results so far could have bought everyone some breathing room – the White House most of all —at least for a few days.

White House officials have insisted in the final stretch of the midterms that Biden has consistently discussed the economy and made economic issues key to his political messaging.

They’ve also made clear that they believe voters are considering a range of issues as they head to ballot boxes – and not just the economy – and that it was critical for the leader of the Democratic Party to publicly discuss issues like abortion rights, gun safety and protecting democracy, which they believe have played major roles in animating the Democratic base.

The thinking goes like this – it would have been unthinkable for Biden to have not addressed the state of women’s reproductive rights in this country after the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe; similarly, there was no scenario in which the president would have neglected to speak out publicly against election deniers and threats and acts and politically motivated violence, when it was plainly obvious to him just how serious these issues were this election cycle.

While the exact timing and plans remain in flux, Biden is expected to address the election results in some form on Wednesday.

Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, left, and his Republican challenger Herschel Walker.

The hotly contested Senate contest in Georgia is too early to call, with Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker locked in a tight race that could decide control of the US Senate.

Remember: If neither candidate surpasses the 50% threshold, Warnock and Walker will proceed to a Dec. 6 run-off. Depending on the outcome of Senate races in Pennsylvania, Arizona and Nevada, voters in Georgia could then – for the second consecutive election cycle – have the Senate majority in their hands.

That the race is so close underscores the prevalence of ticket-splitters in Georgia this year. Republican Gov. Brian Kemp comfortably defeated Democrat Stacey Abrams, CNN projected, but Walker has lagged Kemp’s margin all night, while Warnock has outpaced Abrams.

In brief remarks on Tuesday night, Walker asked supporters gathered in a hotel ballroom to “hang in there a little bit longer.”

“I’m telling you right now – I didn’t come to lose,” Walker said.

Warnock has not yet addressed the crowd at his election night headquarters. But on Monday night, he joked to CNN about a potential run-off campaign.

“I think that there is bipartisan agreement that we (would) rather not have politics and Thanksgiving mixed together,” Warnock said.

Some Republican candidates who have denied or refused to affirm the results of the 2020 election will be elected as state elections chief, CNN projects — though others will be defeated.

Here are three Republican secretary of state winners CNN has projected so far: 

In addition, Republican candidate Chuck Gray of Wyoming ran unopposed for secretary of state in the general election after winning the Republican primary.  

Here are five election deniers CNN projects will lose their 2022 races:

CNN found that at least 12 Republican candidates for secretary of state have questioned, rejected or tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election. CNN had not yet projected the other races as of midnight ET on Wednesday morning.

Pennsylvania Senate candidate John Fetterman addresses supporters at his election night party in Pittsburgh on Tuesday.

The battle for control of Congress – both the House and the Senate – is coming down to a dwindling number of key races, with Democrats dashing Republicans’ hopes for a red wave and both parties hanging onto hopes of winning narrow majorities.

Republicans began the night with a rout in Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis won heavily Latino, historically Democratic regions on his way to a blowout victory that could serve as a launch pad for a 2024 presidential run.

But in the hours that have followed, Democrats have fought back. In Pennsylvania, Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman defeated Republican Mehmet Oz for the seat of retiring Republican Sen. Pat Toomey.

Meanwhile, the battle for the House majority – one that favored Republicans, who expected to benefit from high inflation, historical trends and friendly new district lines after 2021’s redistricting – remains unsettled.

Here are some key takeaways as votes continue to be counted in key races:

Democrats go a long way to protecting their Senate majority: Republicans were not shy about the importance of Pennsylvania’s Senate race: “This is a must-win race. We believe if we win Pennsylvania, we win the majority,” said Steven Law, president of the preeminent Republican Senate super PAC. Early on Wednesday morning, CNN projected that Fetterman would be the next senator from Pennsylvania, defeating Oz in the most expensive and high stakes Senate campaign in the country. Fetterman’s win was a thunderclap for Democrats.

Democrats and the suburbs: Suburban areas across the country went a long way to helping Democrats avoid a significant red wave. Republicans may still win the House, but if the 2022 election was going to be a red wave, it was likely to come through suburban victories that have not materialized yet. Republicans did score some suburban victories – CNN projected Brandon Ogles the winner in a district around Nashville, Tom Kean Jr. winning in a suburban New Jersey district and Rich McCormick the victor in a district that included Atlanta’s northern suburbs – but it was their defeats that spoke volumes about the size of the GOP wave.

Virginia’s split decision offers early signals: Three Democratic-controlled House races in Virginia were widely viewed as an early warning signal of the night’s results. Democrats held seats in two Virginia districts Biden won in 2020. CNN projected that Democratic Jennifer Wexton won her reelection bid in Virginia’s 10th District. In an even more competitive race, CNN projected Rep. Abigail Spanberger also won reelection in Virginia’s 7th District. But Democrats lost in southeastern Virginia, with CNN projecting that Republican state Sen. Jen Kiggans defeated Democratic Rep. Elaine Luria.

Another Jan. 6 committee member loses: Luria, a member of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, lost her Virginia Beach-based House seat, CNN projected. She had defeated former GOP Rep. Scott Taylor in 2018 and 2020. But the district had become slightly more favorable ground for Republicans in redistricting: Biden carried the previous version by 5 points, and would have lost the new district by 2 points.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks to supporters at an election night party in Tampa on Tuesday, November 8.

DeSantis and 2024: Gov. Ron DeSantis led a dominant Republican ticket in Florida – delivering historic margins in Democratic territory in his victory over Democratic Rep. Charlie Crist on a night that provides him a powerful argument if he seeks the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination. The easy wins by DeSantis, who led by nearly 20 percentage points with 92% of the estimated vote counted, and Sen. Marco Rubio, who was 17 points up, were enough to cast doubt on Florida’s status as a national bellwether.

GOP makes gains with Latinos in Florida: Republicans hoped to build on Trump’s inroads among Latino voters in 2020, a trend that could reshape the political landscapes in several swing states if it continues. The strongest early signal that the GOP had continued to make gains came in Miami-Dade County, home to a large Cuban population. But it’ll take a while to fully gauge whether those GOP gains take place outside of Florida.

Win for abortion rights: In Michigan, Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer – who staked her reelection campaign on her successful efforts to block the enforcement of the state’s 1931 law banning abortion in almost all instances – defeated Republican challenger Tudor Dixon, who had waged a campaign focused on cultural battles. Michigan voters also approved a Whitmer-backed amendment to the state’s constitution that will scrap that 1931 law and guarantee abortion rights. Voters in California and Vermont also green-lit constitutional amendments enshrining abortion rights.

A night of firsts: Up and down the ballot, in red states and blue, candidates from both parties are celebrating pathbreaking victories. Read about some of them here.