As vote counters in Arizona and Nevada tally the ballots that will determine the balance of power on Capitol Hill for the next two years, Washington awoke on Thursday to a second day of waiting.
As of Thursday morning, with hundreds of thousands of ballots still to be counted, the two key states remained too close to call. On Dec. 6, a third uncalled Senate race in Georgia will be decided by a runoff vote because neither candidate received the required 50 percent of the vote.
The three uncalled races are crucial to the Senate’s future because Republicans need to pick up two Democratic seats to regain the majority. The outcome of the Georgia runoff in December will be the only factor determining senatorial control if the parties divide Arizona and Nevada.
The majority in the House is still up for grabs, but Republicans are on track to win it, albeit by a considerably narrower margin than they had planned.
Arizona’s incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly continues to lead Republican opponent Blake Masters by 5 points with almost 70% of the votes counted. However, election officials in Maricopa County, Arizona’s most populous area and a heavily Democratic county, have stated that it may take until at least Friday to total the hundreds of thousands of uncounted votes.
In Nevada, where 80 percent of the votes have been counted, Republican Adam Laxalt leads Democratic incumbent Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto by a razor-thin margin. Yet uncounted late-arriving mail-in ballots, particularly in the Democratic strongholds of Clark and Washoe Counties, might yet tip the scales in favour of the incumbent.
The uncertainty surrounding the outcome of both chambers of Congress two days after the midterm elections has put congressional leaders on edge. It is possible that the Senate’s outcome will not be known until the Georgia runoff in December.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy took measures on Wednesday to assist assure he has the speakership locked up should his party take control of the House, despite the size of a projected Republican House majority being much smaller than anticipated. He gathered members of the Freedom Caucus in the House who support Donald Trump in order to address some of their concerns while avoiding making compromises to the group.
Both Democrats and Republicans are focusing mostly on Georgia while they wait for results in Nevada and Arizona since that state is likely to determine which party controls the Senate.
In order to ensure incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock’s victory over Republican Herschel Walker, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is investing $7 million in field operations for the runoff. This effort will be done over the course of the next four weeks to increase voter turnout. Republicans from Georgia and across the country have committed to campaign for Walker in order to help him win the election.
As the red wave that Republicans had forecast mostly failed to materialise, Democrats fared better than anticipated in House races across the nation. Even though the House is still likely to have a narrow Republican majority, President Joe Biden said in a press conference on Wednesday that it was a “good day for democracy” once it became clear that a GOP romp was no longer a possibility.
Biden berated the media and pundit class for underestimating his party’s chances, saying, “While the press and the pundits were predicting a giant red wave, it didn’t happen.”
Biden is “quite pleased” with the results of the midterm elections so far, according to White House deputy chief of staff Jen O’Malley Dillon, who also believes that “the House is truly still in play here” for Democrats.
There is undoubtedly still a path for Democrats to hold the House, according to O’Malley Dillon on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “To be here today and to see how close it will be and that there is still a path when we look at the races that are outstanding, when we look at the votes coming in on the west,” he added.
She continued by saying that the president has spoken with McCarthy and other Republicans and Democrats, some of whom won and some of whom lost, and that he is committed to cooperating with the leaders of both parties regardless of the results of the uncalled races. At his news conference on Wednesday, Biden expressed a similar stance, saying he was “willing to work with my Republican colleagues.”
According to O’Malley Dillon, “I think he’s reiterating what he’s made clear to the American people: He’s going to work with anyone to get the business of the American people done.”
