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Tag: Live updates: Election results and balance of power in Congress

  • Live updates: Election results and balance of power in Congress

    Live updates: Election results and balance of power in Congress

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    The battle for control of the House is now the biggest unanswered question of this year’s midterm elections after Democrats kept their narrow Senate majority.

    Which party reaches the 218 seats necessary for a House majority will hinge on races in states with a large share of mail-in ballots — including California, where identifying winners in some races could take weeks, Oregon and Arizona.

    Another high-profile contest remains too close to call: The Arizona governor’s race. Republican Kari Lake, the Donald Trump-supported election denier, is facing Democratic secretary of state Katie Hobbs, a defender of the state’s election process.

    Democratic upset keeps narrow House majority hopes alive

    Republicans appear to be slowly inching toward a slim majority, but Democrats’ hopes have not yet fully faded.

    Republicans have won 211 of the 218 seats they’d need to take the majority, according to CNN projections, while Democrats have won 204, with 20 undecided as of Saturday evening.

    Democrats scored a major victory in Washington’s Republican-leaning 3rd District, where on Saturday CNN projected that Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez would defeat Republican Joe Kent, who had aligned himself closely with former President Donald Trump.

    Many of the other undecided races are in California, where counting mail-in ballots can take weeks and significant shifts can occur late in that process. Other states with large quantities of mail-in ballots, including Arizona and Oregon, also have undecided races.

    Arizona governor’s race still undecided

    The Arizona governor’s race between Lake, one of the most prominent election deniers on the ballot this year, and Hobbs, remains tight, with Hobbs clinging to a 34,000 vote lead as of late Saturday with an estimated 290,000 votes to be counted.

    If she wins, Lake would be a rare Trump-supported election denier to win a competitive statewide race this year.

    In an interview with CNN Saturday afternoon, Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates said that about 190,000 votes remain to be counted in Maricopa County.

    He said he was confident that about 95% to 99% of those votes will be recorded by Tuesday. He said the county will continue to report about 85,000 votes per night until they are done.

    Other races to keep an eye on:

    In Alaska, the state’s at-large House seat and one of its Senate seats will hinge on ranked-choice results.

    Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola, who won a special election this summer, is in a strong position to eclipse the 50% mark. But Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski faces a stiffer challenge from Republican Kelly Tshibaka, who is backed by Trump as part of his bid for retribution against Murkowski and others who for his impeachment after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

    And in Los Angeles, Rep. Karen Bass on Saturday widened her lead over developer Rick Caruso in the mayoral race.

    If elected, Bass would become the first woman and the first Black woman to lead America’s second-largest city.

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  • Biden says Democrats “feel good” about where they are as they look ahead to Georgia’s runoff election

    Biden says Democrats “feel good” about where they are as they look ahead to Georgia’s runoff election

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    The Capitol building is seen through the American flags in Washington, D.C. on October 20. (Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto/Getty Images)

    Democrats will keep their narrow Senate majority for the next two years, CNN projects, after victories in close contests in Nevada and Arizona. Democrats now have 50 Senate seats to Republicans’ 49 seats. 

    In Nevada, CNN projects that Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, a former prosecutor and state attorney general, will defeat Republican Adam Laxalt, her successor in the attorney general’s office and the son and grandson of former senators.  

    In Arizona, CNN projects that Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, a former astronaut and the husband of former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, will defeat Republican Blake Masters, a venture capitalist who was endorsed by Trump and supported by tech mogul and emerging GOP megadonor Peter Thiel. 

    Georgia’s race between Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker is headed to a December runoff after neither candidate cleared the 50% threshold on Tuesday.  

    Even if Republicans win the Georgia runoff, though, Vice President Kamala Harris would continue to cast the tie-breaking vote in an evenly divided Senate to guarantee the Democratic majority. 

    Only one Senate seat has changed hands so far in the 2022 midterm elections: Pennsylvania, where Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who campaigned as he recovered from a May stroke, defeated Republican Mehmet Oz, the celebrity doctor who was endorsed by former President Donald Trump.  

    Republicans successfully defended seats in hard-fought races in Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin, while Democrats retained their seats in competitive contests in Arizona, Colorado, Nevada and New Hampshire.  

    More on the Democrats’ Senate win: Retaining Senate control is a huge boost to President Biden over the remaining two years of his first term in the White House.  

    It means Democrats will have the ability to confirm Biden’s judicial nominees — avoiding scenarios such as the one former President Barack Obama faced in 2016, when then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to hold a vote on his Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland. It also means that Senate Democrats can reject bills passed by the House and can set their own agenda.  

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  • Where things stand in the Arizona governor’s race as new vote counts come in

    Where things stand in the Arizona governor’s race as new vote counts come in

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    The political world’s attention is on the western US Saturday as officials work through another day to tally the votes in key races.

    The razor-thin elections for Nevada’s Senate seat and Arizona’s governorship have yet to be called. Large counties in both states are working to whittle down the tens of thousands of ballots that still need to be counted.

    Races we’re watching

    In Nevada: Republican Adam Laxalt is holding onto a slim lead of about 860 votes over Democratic incumbent Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto.

    If Cortez Masto wins, Democrats are projected to take control of the Senate. If she loses, the fate of the upper house will be decided in December’s Georgia runoff.

    In Arizona: Democrat Katie Hobbs leads Republican Kari Lake by about 31,000 votes in the governor’s race.

    It’s been a fiery campaign marked by Lake’s unfounded claims about the 2020 election and Hobbs’ role as the Arizona secretary of state.

    Where we expect results this evening

    In both states taking center stage tonight, large counties will release a significant number of results.

    Clark County, Nevada: Clark County, which is Nevada’s most populous and encompasses Las Vegas, will release results from its remaining 22,000 mail ballots tonight, according to county registrar Joe Gloria.

    This batch of results will be released “sometime this afternoon or early evening,” he said, and he estimated that this could happen around 7 p.m. ET at the earliest.  

    Washoe County, Nevada: Washoe County plans to release its next batch of results on Saturday night around 11 p.m. ET, according to election officials.

    There are approximately 12,000 ballots remaining to be counted there, officials said, though it’s unknown how many will be in Saturday night’s batch of results.

    Washoe County, which encompasses Reno, is Nevada’s second-largest by population and is considered a swing county.

    Maricopa County, Arizona: More results are expected around 10 p.m. ET Saturday from Maricopa County, which is the most populous in Arizona.

    Elections supervisor Bill Gates told CNN he expects a vote drop similar to last night, when the county reported about 80,000 more votes.

    Gates said Friday that there are about 275,000 ballots left to count in the county, which includes Phoenix.

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  • Live updates: Election results and balance of power in Congress

    Live updates: Election results and balance of power in Congress

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    A tiny margin separates the two candidates in Nevada’s pivotal Senate race, and a GOP strategist told CNN the mood inside Republican Adam Laxalt’s campaign is “awful.”

    Different factions of the Republican’s operation have begun the internal blame game, feeling it is a forgone conclusion that Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto will take the lead soon, the strategist said. When asked by CNN to describe the current mood, the strategist said, “shocked and depressed.”

    Publicly, Laxalt laid out what he described as a “narrowed” path to victory in a pair of tweets Saturday.

    As of Friday evening, Laxalt had a lead of only 862 votes over Cortez Masto. An early lead for the Republican eroded further Friday as election workers counted and released the results of more ballots.

    “Multiple days in a row, the mostly mail in ballots counted continue to break in higher DEM margins than we calculated,” Laxalt wrote. “This has narrowed our victory window.”

    In Clark County, Nevada’s largest, CNN estimates there are roughly 24,000 more mail-in ballots to be counted, along with about 15,000 provisional ballots and ballots that need to be cured.

    Laxalt said the race will come down to those ballots, saying that “if they continue to trend heavy DEM then (Cortez Masto) will overtake us.”

    If they come from GOP-leaning precincts or from only slightly Democrat-leaning areas, “then we can still win,” Laxalt claimed.

    For its part, Cortez Masto’s campaign told CNN the team remains “confident” as it awaits further results.

    Laxalt campaign responds: Brian Freimuth, Laxalt’s press secretary, responded to CNN’s reporting later Saturday, saying: “Our campaign team remains confident and hopeful, and any reporting to the contrary is inaccurate and poorly-sourced.”

    Why it matters: The Nevada Senate race has been deadlocked for months, and it could ultimately determine the balance of power in the upper chamber.

    With CNN projecting Sen. Mark Kelly to win his race in Arizona, Democrats need to win one more seat: Nevada or Georgia, which is headed to a December runoff.

    Republicans need 51 seats for majority control. Democrats would have control in a 50-50 tie with Vice President Kamala Harris casting tie-breaking votes.

    View Laxalt’s tweets below:

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  • Live updates: Election results and balance of power in Congress

    Live updates: Election results and balance of power in Congress

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    Election officials sort mail-in ballots at the Washoe County Registrar of Voters Office on November 8, in Reno, Nevada. (Trevor Bexon/Getty Images)

    Washoe County, the second-most populous county in Nevada, said it still has 22,000 ballots left to count and hopes to get through most of them on Friday. 

    “I think we should be able to get the vast majority of them done. There might be a small amount that will trickle into Saturday,” Jamie Rodriguez, interim registrar of voters for Washoe County, told CNN. 

    The county includes the city of Reno.

    Rodriguez said of the 22,000 remaining votes, about 20,000 are mail-in ballots. Another 1,914 are provisional ballots.

    Rodriguez said the county disqualified 400 mail-in ballots on Thursday — about two-thirds of the mail-in ballots the county received Thursday — because they were postmarked after Election Day. “The bulk of the mail we received (Thursday) was postmarked on the 9th,” Rodriguez said, referring to the day after Election Day.

    Rodriguez said that in the past, some voters have mailed their ballots on Election Day — but after the last mail pickup of the day, causing the ballots to be postmarked for the next day, which disqualifies them from being counted. 

    The 22,000 ballots that remain to be counted have already had the postmark verified, she said. 

    On Friday and Saturday, it is still possible the county, like all counties in Nevada, could receive more ballots that were postmarked on Election Day. Saturday is the last day ballots are allowed to arrive. 

    Washoe expects to update its vote totals at 11 p.m. ET Friday night.

    What’s at stake in Nevada: A crucial Senate race between Republican nominee Adam Laxalt and Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto has not been called. The contest could help determine which party controls the Senate.

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  • Live updates: Election results and balance of power in Congress

    Live updates: Election results and balance of power in Congress

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    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is joined on stage by his wife, Casey, and their children during his election night party in Tampa. (Marco Bello/Reuters)

    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.”

    “There’s little doubt that his Florida success will grab the attention of voters outside the Sunshine State,” the editorial board wrote. “You can bet Donald J. Trump was watching—unhappily.”

    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.”

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