() — Democrats will maintain their narrow majority in the US Senate for the next two years, projects, after victories in close races in Nevada and Arizona.
The party bucked the historic trend of midterm elections breaking the dominance of the ruling party and overcame anxiety about high inflation, winning a majority as voters rejected Republican candidates who had allied themselves with former President Donald Trump. and in many cases they repeated their lies about widespread voter fraud.
Retaining control of the Senate is a big boost for President Joe Biden for 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 like the one former President Barack Obama faced in 2016, when then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to take a vote on his Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland. It also means Senate Democrats can reject bills passed by the House and can set their own agenda.
Victory in the Senate is followed by control in the House, where Republicans were widely expected to win a majority but are still up for grabs. Votes are still counted in key districts in some states, including California, Arizona and Oregon, with a large proportion of ballots sent by mail. Even if the Democrats don’t retain control of the House, they could leave the GOP with a slim majority.
The path to the Democrats’ surprisingly strong showing in the midterms was one in which they defied political gravity. exit polls showed that 49% of voters who said they somewhat disapproved of Biden voted Democrat, while 45% backed Republican; Of the 38% of voters who said the state of the economy is “not that great,” 62% voted Democrat compared to 35% for the Republican Party.
After projected Democratic victories in Arizona on Friday and Nevada on Saturday, Democrats now hold 50 Senate seats to Republicans’ 49 seats.
The Georgia race between Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker is headed for a December runoff after neither candidate passed the 50% threshold on Tuesday.
However, even if Republicans win the Georgia runoff, Vice President Kamala Harris would continue to cast the tiebreaking vote in an evenly divided Senate to ensure a Democratic majority.
Only one Senate seat has changed hands so far in the 2022 midterms: Pennsylvania, where Democratic Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman, who campaigned while recovering from a stroke in May, defeated Republican Mehmet Oz, the celebrated physician. endorsed by former President Donald Trump.
Republicans successfully defended seats in close races in Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, and Wisconsin, while Democrats held their seats in competitive races in Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, and New Hampshire.
Ultimately, the battle for control of the Senate came down to Arizona and Nevada, states with high proportions of mail-in ballots and rules that can delay the processing of those ballots.
In Arizona, Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, a former astronaut and husband of former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, is projected by to defeat Republican Blake Masters, a Trump-backed venture capitalist backed by tech mogul and rising Republican mega-donor Peter Thiel.
US Senator Catherine Cortez Masto speaks at a campaign rally for Nevada Democrats at Cheyenne High School on November 1, 2022 in North Las Vegas, Nevada. Credit: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
In Nevada, projects Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, a former state and former US attorney, to defeat Republican Adam Laxalt, her successor as state attorney and the son and grandson of former senators.
Both Masters and Laxalt at times bought into and repeated Trump’s lies about widespread 2020 voter fraud.
Laxalt was co-chairman of Trump’s 2020 Nevada presidential campaign and played a leading role in legal attempts to reverse the results of that election, which he said was “rigged.” Cortez Masto argued that lies and electoral conspiracy theories espoused by Trump and allies like Laxalt led to the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Masters released a campaign video while running for the Republican nomination in which he said he believed Trump had won the 2020 election.
After winning the Senate primary, Masters appeared to briefly back away from some of that extreme rhetoric, cleaning up his website, for example, of language that included the false claim that the election was stolen. In a debate with Kelly, he also admitted that he had seen no evidence of fraud that had changed the outcome of the election. However, the Republican candidate seemed to change course after receiving a phone call from Trump urging him to “get stronger” in denying the election, a conversation that was captured in a Fox documentary.
