Republicans needs 11 seats to take House majority as vote counting continues

Republicans inched closer to having a majority in the House on Wednesday while the battle for the Senate hinged on the contests in Arizona, Nevada and Georgia.

The slow vote counting out West and Democrats doing better than expected in several competitive House districts means the makeup of the next Congress may not be clear until next week. 

Two days after Americans went to the polls, Republicans are within 12 House seats of the 218 needed to win, with many West Coast contests still being tabulated.  

The battle for the Senate could become clearer when Arizona and Nevada finish counting their votes. Right now, Republicans hold 49 seats and Democrats hold 48.

Democrats or Republicans could win control of the Senate by winning two of the remaining three outstanding races. 

But there is a strong possibility that, for the second time in two years, the Senate majority could come down to a runoff in Georgia next month. Neither Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and nor Republican nominee Herschel Walker garnered the necessary 50 percent to be declared the winner.

In Arizona, Democratic Senator Mark Kelly has a five-point lead over Republican Blake Masters but the race could still go either way, with more than 600,000 votes yet to be counted, according to the Secretary of State’s office, although Kelly’s lead has reached 100,000 votes. 

Remaining Senate races to be called are Georgia, which will likely head to a run-off, Arizona and Nevada

In Nevada’s Senate contest, Republican Adam Laxalt (left) narrowly leads and in Arizona’s Senate contest, Democratic incumbent Mark Kelly (right) is in the lead as votes are being tallied

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

In Arizona, more than half of the outstanding votes, or about 340,000, come from Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix. 

Early votes were coming in favoring Kelly, while ballots cast on Election Day were closer, AZCentral reported. 

There are also about 17,000 outstanding ballots – about 7 percent of those cast in person on Election Day – that were set aside due to a Tuesday printing problem at about a quarter of the county’s vote tabulation centers. 

A judge denied a request from Republicans to keep the polls open, saying he didn’t see evidence that people were not allowed to vote, and officials said those votes would be tallied throughout the week. 

In Nevada’s Senate contest, Republican Adam Laxalt narrowly leads incumbent Democratic Senator Catherine Cortez Masto. 

But election officials in Clark County – the seat of Las Vegas and home to three-quarters of the state’s population – must wait for mail-in ballots postmarked as late as Tuesday, meaning a final count will not be announced until next week.

Ballots are still pouring in. The county received nearly 15,000 ballots Monday and Tuesday that will be counted Wednesday and another 12,700 arrived by mail on Wednesday that won´t be counted until at least Thursday. 

Officials have until Nov. 17 to finish the counting and submit a report to the Nevada secretary of state´s office, according to state law. 

Meanwhile, the GOP is expected to be in the House majority next year – although the party did not get the red wave of seats it was expecting.

On Thursday, Democrats picked up a seat in New Mexico where Republican Rep. Yvette Herrell was defeated by Democrat Gabe Vasquez.

Results are still be tabulated in Colorado, where Democrat Adam Frisch is looking to unseat Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert, and in California, where a couple of competitive seats are waiting on final tallies. 

One of those race is for Democratic Rep. Katie Porter, a rising star in the party’s liberal wing who spent more than $24 million to win a third term. 

With about half the vote counted, she is essentially tied with Republican Scott Baugh, who hammered her on the high cost of food and gas. Porter, in return, campaigned on protecting women’s reproductive rights.

On the GOP side, Rep. Ken Calvert – the longest serving Republican in the California congressional delegation – was first elected in 1992, is in a tough re-election bid.

His support from Trump posed a challenge in a new, reshaped district about equally split between Democrats and Republicans, which included many transplanted Los Angeles residents and liberal Palm Springs, which has a large concentration of LGBTQ voters.

Nevada has two competitive House districts where mail-in ballots are still being counted. 

If the final margins in these races are close – in the Colorado race, for example, about a dozen votes separate Frisch and Boebert – there could be recounts. 

In his campaign, Frisch argued Boebert sacrificed working for her constituents for frequent ‘angertainment’ in accusing President Joe Biden and Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of seeking to destroy the soul of the nation. 

He vowed to join the bipartisan ‘Problem Solvers Caucus’ in Congress, a sharp turn from Boebert´s repudiation of across-the-aisle consensus-building.

Frisch said he wasn’t surprised at the close result.

‘I spent 10 months trying to convince donors and journalists and political strategists everywhere that there was a path forward,’ Frisch told the Associated Press. ‘I have this calm belief that that 40% of the Republican Party wants their party back.’

In House races, Democrats are trying to pick off Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert in Colorado (left) while, in California, Republicans are trying to defeat Democratic Rep. Katie Porter (right)

There is a strong possibility that, for the second time in two years, the Senate majority could come down to a runoff in Georgia next month. Neither Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and nor Republican nominee Herschel Walker garnered the necessary 50% to be declared the winner

President Joe Biden said he was prepared to work with Republican leaders. He spoke with GOP House Leader Kevin McCarthy on Wednesday night.

‘Regardless of what the final tally of these elections show, and there’s still some counting going on, I’m prepared to work with my Republican colleagues,’ Biden said at his Wednesday press conference.

The president was in a jovial mood, having avoid the major losses in Congress that plagued Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.  

He joked with reporters about election predictions.

‘Look, the predictions were and again, I’m not being critical of anybody that played the predictions. This is supposed to be a red wave. You talked about us losing 30 to 50 seats. It’s not going to happen,’ he noted.