Saturday, November 12, 7:20 a.m.: US President Joe Biden’s Democrats have an increased chance of retaining their wafer-thin majority in the Senate after the midterm elections. After days of counting, Democrat Mark Kelly managed to defend his hard-fought Senate seat in the state of Arizona.
Former astronaut Kelly prevailed against Republican challenger Blake Masters late Friday evening (local time). That puts the Democrats just one seat away from a possible Senate majority. Two races for seats in the Congress Chamber are still open.
In Georgia it is still unclear on Saturday whether Democrats or Republicans will get the crucial senatorship. The Democrats certainly control 49 seats, the Republicans 48. Both need two of the three seats to have a de facto majority in the Senate – with 50 to 50 seats, Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris can decide.
In Georgia, the decision between the Democrat and incumbent Raphael Warnock and the Republican challenger Herschel Walker will probably not be made until December 6th in a runoff election. 99 percent of the votes have been counted there and Warnock is just ahead of his challenger Walker (48.3 percent) with 49.6 percent. Because neither of the two candidates gets more than 50 percent, there will be a runoff election due to a special rule.
In the US state of Nevada, the Republicans won the gubernatorial election after a long nail-biter. Conservative Joe Lombardo defeated Democratic incumbent Steve Sisolak, the AP news agency and several television stations – including NBC, CNN and Fox News – reported on Friday evening (local time) based on vote counts. Lombardo was supported in the election campaign by former Republican President Donald Trump.
Thursday, November 10, 5:59 a.m.: US President Joe Biden has stressed that his Democrats could still defend the majority in the House of Representatives. “We have the opportunity to keep the House of Representatives,” Biden said in Washington on Wednesday. At the same time he admitted: “But it will be very tight.”
218 seats are required for a majority in the House of Representatives of the US Congress. With the votes for which there are already results or predictions about the winner, the Republicans have 209 votes and the Democrats have 191 votes.
The Senate is about tight races in three particularly competitive states. In Georgia, Arizona and Nevada it was still unclear on Wednesday evening (local time) whether Democrats or Republicans would get the crucial senator posts. In the particularly close race between incumbent Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker in Georgia, the runoff will take place on December 6th. If the counting of the remaining votes in Arizona and Nevada does not bring clarity, this duel could decide who will hold the majority in the upper US Congress chamber in the future.
10:29 p.m .: US President Joe Biden has described the midterm elections as a “good day for democracy” in the United States. “Our democracy has been tested in recent years, but the vote of the American people proved once again that democracy is who we are,” Biden said at a White House news briefing on Wednesday. A day after the vote on the composition of the US Congress, he added that election officials had done their job “and obviously without much hindrance,” the Democrat said. According to Biden, there was no overwhelming victory for the Republicans, a “red wave”.
10:18 p.m .: The counting of the votes for the midterm elections in the particularly competitive US state of Nevada could take days. Currently, for example, preliminary votes cast are compared with the electoral roll, said Cook County representative responsible for counting, Joe Gloria, at a press conference on Wednesday.
For Wednesday evening (local time), Gloria also announced an estimate of how many votes had been put into around 300 boxes for election envelopes by Tuesday and still have to be counted.
After counting almost 839,000 votes, the Republican candidate for the US Senate, Adam Laxalt, was around 22,600 votes ahead of the Democratic incumbent Catherine Cortez Masto. Observers suspected that this lead could shrink, because in the USA supporters of the Republicans tend to cast their votes disproportionately in person, while Democrats more often prefer postal votes or the interjection.
9:20 p.m .: Ex-President Donald Trump has described the results of the US midterm elections as “in a way somewhat disappointing” – but sees them as a personal success. The majority of the candidates he supported won the so-called midterms, he wrote on Wednesday on the platform Truth Social, which he co-founded. “Who has ever done better?” he asked. In fact, prominent protégés of Trump lost or were behind in tight races. Candidates he supported were particularly successful in places where Republican approval is already high.
A particularly difficult defeat for Trump was the race in the embattled US state of Pennsylvania. There, his protégé Mehmet Oz lost in the vote for the Senate seat. In Georgia, Trump supporter Herschel Walker has to go into the runoff for the Senate seat. In Arizona, the counting of results continued. According to forecasts, Trump’s candidate for the governorship, the election denier Kari Lake, has been able to catch up there in the past few hours, but was still just behind the Democratic candidate.
9:09 p.m .: In Pennsylvania, an unusual decision was made in the midterms. Democrat Anthony “Tony” DeLuca was elected with 85 percent of the vote. But DeLuca is no longer an option. He died on October 9 at the age of 85, the Guardian reports. DeLuca was Pennsylvania’s longest-serving state representative. The reason for the unusual situation: At the time of his death, it was too late to change the Midterms’ ballots or put up another candidate for his seat.
DeLuca’s opponent Queonia “Zarah” Livingston received 14 percent of the vote. Thus, the election of the late DeLuca has triggered a special election that will be held at a later date. “While we are incredibly saddened by the loss of Rep. Tony DeLuca, we are proud that voters continue to show their trust in him and his commitment to Democratic values by posthumously re-electing him,” the Pennsylvania Democratic Campaign Committee tweeted.
8:20 p.m .: After the US midterm elections, US President Joe Biden wants to make a public statement on Wednesday afternoon. The White House announced that Biden will address questions and address questions at 4:00 p.m. local time (10:00 p.m. EST) at the White House. It is the first public appearance after the “midterms”, the outcome of which was still open.
The counts indicated that Biden and his Democrats were doing much better than expected. A clear victory for the Republicans, as predicted in the polls, did not materialize.
Here you can find the current status of US election crime at any time
8:00 p.m .: Surprisingly strong Democrats and a furious victory by Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in the US midterm elections are putting ex-President Donald Trump under pressure. Before Trump’s expected re-election to the White House, a number of Republicans he supported lost the vote. Meanwhile, DeSantis, who is considered Trump’s main intraparty competitor for the 2024 election, showed strength with a dominant lead of about 20 percentage points. Due to a tight key race, however, it was initially unclear which party would be able to win the majority in the chambers of congress.
6:56 p.m .: In the US state of Georgia there will be a runoff in the race for the contested seat in the Senate. Neither the Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock nor his Republican challenger Herschel Walker received more than 50 percent of the votes, as the US broadcasters CNN and NBC reported on Wednesday afternoon (local time). Due to a special rule, there must now be a runoff in the southern state.
According to the forecasts, Warnock received a good 49 percent of the votes, Walker was just behind. A third candidate also competed in Georgia – according to forecasts, he was around two percent. Because of this Libertarian Party candidate, it was previously expected that Warnock and Walker could miss the necessary majority.
The runoff election should then take place in a month on December 6th. Since the race for the majority is so close, it could very well happen that only this vote will decide the majorities in the upper chamber of Congress. There was a similar nail-biter two years ago.
2:42 p.m .: In the American midterm elections, voting machines in 60 of the 223 polling stations in the municipality of Maricopa County failed in the state of Arizona. Voting was not possible due to a software problem in the polling stations. Ex-US President Donald Trump immediately suspected election fraud. “A lot of bad things are happening right now,” Trump said in a video message. “A lot of people have already left and what happened there is very, very unfair.” He did not provide any evidence that people had not cast their votes.
In Arizona, the election is also about the governorship. Trump-backed election denier Kari Lake is up against Democrat Katie Hobbs. Lake is considered a Republican rising star and refused to say before the election that she would concede defeat. During one appearance, she shot at the “fake media” that would criticize the Republicans.
However, the electoral authorities assured that all votes will be counted. Technicians then fixed the software problem in the afternoon – hours before the polling stations closed. A result has not yet been determined
You can read more news about the US midterm elections on the following pages.
