Politicsmidterm Election Results 2018: Democrats Win House Gop Holds Senate
Still, the night was not a total loss for Democrats, even as Republicans knocked off a series of Democratic incumbents without taking much damage.
As was the story for much of the 2018 cycle, the Senate map presented Democrats with narrow opportunities to regain the majority. Ten Democrats including Donnelly, Heitkamp, McCaskill and Nelson were up for re-election in states Trump won, whereas just one Republican was up for re-election in a state that 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton won.
That Republican incumbent, Sen. Dean Heller of Nevada, was knocked off early Wednesday by Democratic challenger Jacky Rosen. NBC News projected a Rosen win shortly after Heller called her to concede the race.
One race remained contested into Wednesday. In Arizona, Democratic challenger Kyrsten Sinema narrowly trailed Republican Rep. Martha McSally in a battle for Republican Sen. Jeff Flake’s seat. The race was deemed too close by NBC News as of Wednesday afternoon as hundreds of thousands of votes remained as of yet uncounted.
A Sinema victory would provide Democrats with a morale boost on the Senate side and improve the outlook from the election.
Meanwhile, in Montana, NBC News called Democratic Sen. Jon Tester the apparent winner Wednesday afternoon, defeating Republican challenger Matt Rosendale.
Bleach Peddler: Trump Consumed ‘miracle Cure’
Ed Pilkington
The leader of a spurious church which peddled industrial bleach as a miracle cure for Covid-19 is claiming he provided Donald Trump with the product in the White House shortly before the former president made his notorious remarks about using disinfectant to treat the disease.
Mark Grenon, the self-styled archbishop of the Genesis II church, has given an interview from his prison cell in Colombia as he awaits extradition to the US to face criminal charges that he fraudulently sold bleach as a Covid cure.
In the 90-minute interview he effectively presents himself as the source of Trumps fixation with the healing powers of disinfectant.
We were able to give through a contact with Trumps family a family member the bottles in my book, Grenon says. And he mentioned it on TV: I found this disinfectant.
Full story:
Democrat Jon Ossoff Claims Victory Over David Perdue In Georgia Runoff
Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York is expected to replace GOP Sen. Mitch McConnell as majority leader and will determine which bills come to the floor for votes.
The ambitious proposals addressing climate change and health care and other domestic priorities touted by Biden and Harris will be difficult, if impossible, to advance with more moderate Democrats especially those facing competitive 2022 midterm reelection campaigns reluctant to sign onto partisan proposals. The much smaller-than-anticipated House Democratic majority compounds the challenge for the party.
Instead, Biden will need to consider which domestic priorities can get bipartisan support since Senate rules now require anything to get 60 votes to advance. The president-elect has already indicated that additional coronavirus relief will be his first priority, but he has also said he plans to unveil an infrastructure plan that could get support from Republicans.
In a statement Wednesday, Biden said that “Georgia’s voters delivered a resounding message yesterday: they want action on the crises we face and they want it right now. On COVID-19, on economic relief, on climate, on racial justice, on voting rights and so much more. They want us to move, but move together.”
The president-elect also spoke to Democrats’ potential total control of Washington.
United States Senate Elections
The 2020 United States Senate elections were held on November 3, 2020, with the 33 class 2 seats of the Senate contested in regular elections. Of these, 21 were held by Republicans and 12 by Democrats. The winners were elected to six-year terms from January 3, 2021, to January 3, 2027. Two special elections for seats held by Republicans were also held in conjunction with the general elections, with one in Arizona to fill the vacancy created by John McCain‘s death in 2018 and one in Georgia following Johnny Isakson‘s resignation in 2019. In both races, the incumbent Republican lost to a Democrat. These elections ran concurrent with the 2020 United States presidential election in which incumbent Republican president Donald Trump lost to Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
In the 2014 United States Senate elections, the last regularly scheduled elections for Class 2 Senate seats, the Republicans won nine seats from the Democrats and gained a majority, which they continued to hold after the 2016 and 2018 elections. Before the election, Republicans held 53 seats, Democrats held 45 seats, and independents caucusing with the Democrats held two seats, which were not up for reelection. Including the special elections in Arizona and Georgia, Republicans defended 23 seats and the Democrats 12.
Leader Behind Bleach Miracle Cure Claims Trump Consumed His Product
Daniel Strauss
Ahead of an important procedural vote on Democrats expansive voting rights bill, the feeling among Senate Democrats is a mixture of gloom and defiance.
Daniel Strauss
Asked today if he thought Sen. MANCHIN in the end votes for S1, Sen. Kaine said:”Yes…I’m not giving you intel but I think so. I think so.”
The Senate is scheduled to vote on advancing Democrats voting rights package, the For the People Act, Tuesday afternoon and the wide expectation among Democrats and Republicans is the bill will be blocked through the filibuster, a legislative maneuver that lets a minority of senators stall or block movement on a bill.
For Democrats, in a perfect world the failure of the voting rights bill would trigger an effort in Congress to defang the filibuster.
But there is no support among the Republican caucus for gutting the filibuster, and not quite enough unity in their own caucus to get rid of the rule.
That leaves them with an unclear path forward on passing the Biden administrations agenda or key protections for voting as Republican state lawmakers across the country push new laws that critics say are meant to hinder voting by voters of color.
My hope is that if what we see is a unified effort to filibuster voting rights it will stiffen the spine of my Democratic colleagues to protect our democracy, Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, a Democrat, said.
That spending reflects the sense of defiance among Democratic lawmakers as well.
Donald Trump Reacts To Impeachment Vote Being Passed
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Impeachment has now passed to the United States Senate from the House of Representatives, as Democrats voted on two articles yesterday. Now, Donald Trump faces a trial in Congress upper chamber, but experts expect a different outcome this time around.
Eric Holder: There Is Still A Fight For Democrats Against Gop Gerrymandering
In McConnells Kentucky, for instance, Republicans are divided over how far to go during the upcoming redistricting process, which they control in the deep-red state. The more extreme wing wants to crack the Democratic stronghold of Louisville, currently represented by Rep. John Yarmuth. More cautious Republicans like McConnell are willing to settle for smaller changes that reduce Democratic margins while stuffing more Republican voters into hotly contested swing districts.
Make no mistake: McConnells caution isnt rooted in any newfound respect for the integrity of our electoral process. Instead, Republicans are mainly worried about avoiding the costly and embarrassing court decisions that invalidated their most extreme overreaches and potentially turn the line-drawing over to the courts. So McConnells approach doesnt reject partisan gerrymandering it just avoids the type of high-profile city-cracking that could land the Kentucky GOP in federal court.
How Republicans Pulled Off A Big Upset And Nearly Took Back The House
There seemed to be one safe bet when it came to the 2020 election results: Democrats would easily hold on to their majority in the House of Representatives. Not only that, but the conventional wisdom held that Democrats would pick up more than the 235 seats they won in the 2018 midterm elections.
While Democrats will have a majority next Congress, Republicans vastly outperformed expectations and nearly pulled off an election shocker.
As of this writing, CNN has projected that Democrats have won in 219 seats. Republicans have been projected the winners in 203 seats. There are 13 races outstanding, per CNN projections.
Of those 13, the Democratic candidates lead in a mere two of them.
In other words, if every one of those 13 seats went to the party leading in them right now, Democrats would have 221 seats to the Republicans$2 214 seats in the next Congress.
Talk about a fairly close call for Democrats.
Now, Democrats may end up winning a few of the seats where they are currently trailing, but chances are they will end up at or south of 225 seats.
Compare that to what most quantitative forecasters who look at a slew of indicators predicted. Jack Kersting came the closest at 238 seats. FiveThirtyEight clocked in at 239 seats. The Economist model predicted that Democrats would win a median of 244 seats in their simulations.
Any sort of shy Trump vote was far smaller than a potential shy House Republican vote.
A 4- or 5-point miss is considerable.
Senate And House Elections 2020: Full Results For Congress
As well as electing the US president, the country has been voting for senators and members of the House of Representatives. Here are full results from all 50 states
Mon 9 Nov 2020 09.44 GMT Last modified on Tue 15 Dec 2020 14.28 GMT
Mon 9 Nov 2020 09.44 GMT Last modified on Tue 15 Dec 2020 14.28 GMT
The US legislature, Congress, has two chambers. The lower chamber, the House of Representatives, has 435 voting seats, each representing a district of roughly similar size. There are elections in each of these seats every two years.
The upper chamber, the Senate, has 100 members, who sit for six-year terms. One-third of the seats come up for election in each two-year cycle. Each state has two senators, regardless of its population; this means that Wyoming, with a population of less than 600,000, carries the same weight as California, with almost 40 million.
Most legislation needs to pass both chambers to become law, but the Senate has some important other functions, notably approving senior presidential appointments, for instance to the supreme court.
In most states, the candidate with the most votes on election day wins the seat. However, Georgia and Louisiana require the winning candidate to garner 50% of votes cast; if no one does, they hold a run-off election between the top two candidates.
Who Controls State Legislatures In States With Changes
Thirteen states were affected by the 2020 Census shift in congressional seats.
States are given the task of redrawing districts when they gain or lose seats.
Michael Li, senior counsel for the non-partisan Brennan Center for Justices Democracy Program, said the country could be poised for a battle over gerrymandering, the practice of redrawing district lines to favor one party over the other or to suppress the vote of communities of color.
In some states, the process is fairer than others, he said, because they are not controlled by just one political party or they have instituted an independent redistricting committee, such as in Michigan. But for other states, the party in power stands to control the map.
Manchin Will Vote With Fellow Dems To Advance Voting Rights Bill
Democratic West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin has put an end to a smidge of suspense on Capitol Hill, by issuing a statement that he will vote this afternoon in favor of advancing the For the People Act voting rights legislation to the next stage of congressional consideration.
This is entirely symbolic, unfortunately, as all Republicans in the Senate are expected to support filibustering the legislation – so the bill will not garner the necessary 60 votes to advance to the debate stage and will be blocked.
But the fact that the Democrats in the Senate will now be expected to demonstrate unanimity in advancing the bill is something/
Manchin has proposed a compromise version of the bill, which has won support from Barack Obama, Stacey Abrams, a tentative nod from the White House and zero Republican support. He does not support passing the bill as currently written .
But it appears that after much discussion and thought, Manchin will support his colleagues in voting to advance this bill to the debate stage.
The procedural vote is due at 5.30pm ET today.
In a statement moments ago, Manchin said: Over the past month, I have worked to eliminate the far reaching provisions of S.1, the For the People Act which I do not support. Ivefound common ground with my Democratic colleagues on a new version of the bill that ensures our elections are fair, accessible and secure.
Daniel Strauss
The Biden administration warns: Democracy is in peril.
Filed Candidates By Political Party
As of September 7, 2020, 519 candidates were filed with the Federal Election Commission to run for U.S. Senate in 2020. Of those, 402â199 Democrats and 203 Republicansâwere from one of the two major political parties. In 2018, 527 candidates filed with the FEC to run for U.S. Senate, including 137 Democrats and 240 Republicans.
The following chart shows the number of filed candidates by political party.
Midterms Produce Divided Congress: What Does Future Hold
Most prominently, more Republican senators will help the party and the president continue to push through conservative judges onto the federal bench. Should another Supreme Court vacancy arise before the 2020 elections, Republicans will have more votes to help them get a nominee through a grueling confirmation battle.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said as much in a tweet after the GOP was projected to retain control of the Senate.
When the GOP maintains control of the Senate, the conservative judicial train is going to keep running!
Lindsey Graham November 7, 2018
And with speculation strong that Attorney General Jeff Sessions will be replaced following the election, more Republicans in the Senate means that a potential replacement may have a slightly easier time being confirmed.
Us Senate Representation Is Deeply Undemocratic And Cannot Be Changed
Few, if any, other democracies have anything this undemocratic built into their systems.
The U.S. Senate, as you know, is currently divided 50-50 along party lines, thanks to the impressive double win in Georgia, and counting the two technically independent senators as Democrats, since they caucus with the Democrats.
But, according to the calculation of Ian Millhiser, writing for Vox, if you add up the population of states and assign half to each of their two senators, the Democratic half of the Senate represents 41,549,808 more people than the Republican half.
Millhisers piece is named after that fact: Americas anti-democratic Senate, in one number.
41.5 million. Thats a lot of people, more than 10 percent of the population . You might think that in a democracy, the party that held that much of an advantage might end up with a solid majority in the Senate, rather than have just barely eked out a 50-50 tie in a body that, taken together, represents the whole country.
Republicans have not won the majority of the votes cast in all Senate races in any election cycle for a long time. Nonetheless, Republicans held majority control of the Senate after the elections of 2014, and 2016 and 2018 and still, after the 2020 races, held 50 of the 100 seats.
GOP does better in lower population states
Works to the detriment of Democratic power
Its deeply undemocratic. Nothing can become federal law without passing the Senate.
Smaller states had to be reassured
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For instance, in 2020, Yarmuth won his Louisville district with a comfortable 62.7 percent of the vote. By turning Yarmuths single district into portions of two or three new districts, Republicans could turn his safe blue seat into swing districts and safe Republican strongholds. But the naked politicking of that kind of move would invite dozens of court challenges from outraged Democrats and election integrity organizations, tying up GOP time and treasure in the middle of campaign season.
Yet relying on the Republican-aligned Supreme Court to find a remedy is a gamble that could just as easily backfire on Democrats. In the 2019 case Rucho v. Common Cause, the conservative majority ruled 5-4 that Congress, not the federal courts, must address partisan gerrymandering. As a result, half a dozen Democrat-filed federal cases were tossed out and the gerrymandered district maps allowed to stand. More outcomes like that would be catastrophic both for Democrats and democracy.
For now, the National Democratic Redistricting Committee is fighting back against Republican efforts in a flurry of high-profile lawsuits. The organization, chaired by former Obama administration Attorney General Eric Holder Jr., has said it is committed to countering the Republican plan to split up blue cities.
The Houses Balance Of Power Is Tipped Toward Democrats
The Democrats have a narrow six-member margin in the current House of Representatives, meaning if just a handful of seats flip, Republicans can regain control of the House.
Democrats advantage will grow to seven when Troy Carter is sworn in to fill a seat in Louisianas delegation left vacant by Cedric Richmond, who left the House to join the Biden administration as the director of the White House Office of Public Engagement.
United States House Of Representatives Elections 2020
| U.S. House Republican Party primaries, 2020 |
Democrats maintained a majority in the U.S. House as a result of the 2020 elections, winning 222 seats to Republicans 213. Democrats flipped three seats and Republicans flipped 15, including one held by a Libertarian in 2020.
Heading into the November 3, 2020, election, Democrats held a 232-197 advantage in the U.S. House. Libertarians held one seat, and five seats were vacant. All 435 seats were up for election, with Republicans needing to gain a net 21 seats to win a majority in the chamber.
In 2018, Democrats gained a net 40 seats to win a majority. Republicans had held a majority in the chamber since 2010.
Ballotpedia tracked 41 districts as battleground races: 20 held by Democrats heading into the election, 20 held by Republicans, and one held by a Libertarian. Democrats defended 30 seats that President Trump carried in 2016, while Republicans defended five seats that Hillary Clinton carried that year.
In 2020, 49 U.S. House seats were open, meaning the incumbent was not running for re-election. Thirty-six of those seats were open because the incumbent did not run for re-election, eight were open because the incumbent was defeated in a primary or party convention, and five were open due to a vacancy.
On this page, you will find:
- The number of filed candidates by political party
- A list of districts that changed party hands in 2018
I Do Not Buy That A Social Media Ban Hurts Trumps 2024 Aspirations: Nate Silver
sarah: Yeah, Democrats might not have their worst Senate map in 2022, but it will by no means be easy, and how they fare will have a lot to do with the national environment. And as we touched on earlier, Bidens overall approval rating will also make a big difference in Democrats midterm chances.
nrakich: Yeah, if the national environment is even a bit Republican-leaning, that could be enough to allow solid Republican recruits to flip even Nevada and New Hampshire. And then it wouldnt even matter if Democrats win Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
One thing is for sure, though whichever party wins the Senate will have only a narrow majority, so I think were stuck in this era of moderates like Sens. Joe Manchin and Lisa Murkowski controlling every bills fate for at least a while longer.
sarah: Lets talk about big picture strategy, then, and where that leaves us moving forward. Its still early and far too easy to prescribe election narratives that arent grounded in anything, but one gambit the Republican Party seems to be making at this point is that attacking the Democratic Party for being too progressive or woke will help them win.
What do we make of that playbook headed into 2022? Likewise, as the party in charge, what are Democrats planning for?
With that being said, the GOPs strategies could still gin up turnout among its base, in particular, but its hard to separate that from general dissatisfaction with Biden.
Republicans Secure Half Of Total Us Senate Seats
WASHINGTON – U.S. Republican Senator Dan Sullivan of Alaska won reelection Wednesday, assuring Republicans of at least 50 seats in the 100-member Senate for the next two years, while leaving control of the chamber uncertain until two runoff elections are held in Georgia in early January.
After slow vote-counting in the northwestern-most state of the U.S. after the November 3 election, news media concluded that Sullivan had an insurmountable lead over Al Gross, an orthopedic surgeon who ran as an independent candidate with Democratic support. The contest was called with Sullivan, a conservative, ahead by 20 percentage points.
With Republicans assured of at least half the Senate seats, attention now turns to the two January 5 runoff elections in the southern state of Georgia.
Two conservative Republican lawmakers Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler now hold the two seats, but both failed in separate contests last week to win a majority, forcing them into the runoffs.
Perdue faces Democrat Jon Ossoff, an investigative journalist who narrowly lost a 2017 race for a seat in the House of Representatives before trying to oust Perdue from the Senate seat he has held since 2015.
Loeffler, who was appointed to her Senate seat in early 2020, is facing Raphael Warnock, a progressive Democrat who is senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.
The Budget Reconciliation Request Briefly Explained
Budget reconciliation was always going to be a key tool that Senate Democrats relied on in a 50-50 Senate: By using the 2021 fiscal year bill to pass landmark coronavirus relief, theyve already been able to advance legislation thats far more generous than what a compromise bill with Republicans would have looked like. When it comes to Democrats next priority infrastructure and the expansive plans theyve laid out thus far, Democrats could well do the same.
Video: Democrats move toward $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill without Republicans
If they were able to get a third attempt at budget reconciliation, that would mean that Democrats if they remain united could push through even more of their priorities with little need for concessions to the GOP, though many bills like voting rights and gun control probably cant pass through the reconciliation process.
As Voxs Dylan Scott has previously explained, each budget resolution is able to set up three bills, though lawmakers usually pass them as one large package, meaning they effectively get one shot at using this tool every fiscal year:
United States Senate Elections 2020
| November 3, 2020 |
| U.S. Senate Elections by State |
| U.S. House Elections |
Elections to the U.S. Senate were held on November 3, 2020. A total of 33 of the 100 seats were up for regular election.
Those elected to the U.S. Senate in the 33 regular elections on November 3, 2020, began their six-year terms on January 3, 2021.
Special elections were also held to fill vacancies that occurred in the 116th Congress, including 2020 special U.S. Senate elections in Arizona for the seat that John McCain won in 2016 and in Georgia for the seat that Johnny Isakson won in 2016.
Twelve seats held by Democrats and 23 seats held by Republicans were up for election in 2020. Heading into the election, Republicans had a majority with 53 seats. Democrats needed a net gain of four seats, or three in addition to winning the presidential election, to take control of the chamber. The vice president casts tie-breaking votes in the Senate.
On this page, you will find:
- Information on historical wave elections
