Democrats keep Senate as control of House remains undecided

Our live coverage of the 2022 midterm elections has moved. You can follow the latest news and results here.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina tweeted Sunday that the GOP should delay leadership elections in the Senate until after the runoff in Georgia next month.

CNN has reported Senate GOP leaders plan to hold leadership elections on Wednesday, with leaders arguing that the elections follow a similar timetable as 2020 when two Georgia Senate races headed to runoffs.

GOP Sen. Rick Scott, the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, called for a delay of the elections earlier Sunday, saying, it "doesn't make any sense" to have them this week.

Scott also said "a lot of people" have asked him to run for minority leader. 

While Mitch McConnell is widely expected to easily win the top spot again, making him the longest Senate party leader in history, he is facing some dissension in the ranks. That includes a campaign against his candidacy by former President Donald Trump.

Republican Lori Chavez-DeRemer will defeat Democrat Jamie McLeod-Skinner in Oregon’s 5th Congressional District, CNN projects, becoming the first Latino person elected to Congress from the state.  

Chavez-DeRemer ran as a businesswoman and former budget-balancing mayor of Happy Valley, appealing to voters’ discontent with rising prices, crime and the Biden administration. She attacked McLeod-Skinner, a liberal attorney, as a California expat -- she previously served on the Santa Clara City Council -- with far-left views on environmental and police policy.  

McLeod-Skinner, in turn, attacked her opponent as a “multi-millionaire” and an “extremist.” She said the Republican wouldn’t tackle inflation and accused her of not acknowledging that President Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 election and of backing restrictions on abortion rights after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. 

In the Democratic primary, McLeod-Skinner defeated Rep. Kurt Schrader, a member of the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Coalition who saw his district, which now stretches south from the Portland suburbs to Bend, drastically change in the redistricting process. 

In the general election, McLeod-Skinner tried to refute GOP charges that she would support defunding the police, airing an ad featuring a former Bend chief of police vouching for her. But Republican attacks on the Democrat, particularly on inflation, homelessness and crime, ultimately proved effective.

The high-profile Arizona governor's race remains too early to call Sunday evening after Maricopa County released more unofficial results.

Democrat Katie Hobbs led Republican Kari Lake by 1 percentage point -- 50.5% to 49.5% -- as of Sunday evening. CNN has not made a projection in the race.

Maricopa County election officials estimate that the count in the state's largest county is now 94% complete and that there are about 85,000 to 95,000 ballots remaining. The Elections Department expects to release more unofficial results Monday evening.

Republican Doug Mastriano, a leading voice advancing former President Donald Trump's lies about 2020 election fraud, has conceded his race for Pennsylvania governor to his Democratic opponent.

"Difficult to accept as the results are, there is no right course but to concede, which I do, and I look to the challenges ahead," Mastriano wrote in a statement sent Sunday afternoon. "Josh Shapiro will be our next Governor, and I ask everyone to give him the opportunity to lead and pray that he leads well."

Shaprio, Pennsylvania’s attorney general, will succeed term-limited Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf, CNN has projected.   

Earlier Sunday, Shapiro was asked by CNN’s Dana Bash if Mastriano had ever called him to concede the race.

“Who cares if he calls, right?” Shapiro said on "State of the Union."   

“He doesn’t get to pick the winner, the people pick the winner, and in a resounding way they made clear that they wanted me to lead this commonwealth forward."

Mastriano has been one of the most well-known and extreme GOP election deniers. As a state senator, he has pushed false claims about mass voter fraud in 2020 and worked to try to reverse the results of the last presidential contest.

The battle for control of the House is now the biggest unanswered question of this year’s midterm elections after Democrats kept their narrow Senate majority.

Which party reaches the 218 seats necessary for a House majority will hinge on races in states with a large share of mail-in ballots — including California, where identifying winners in some races could take weeks, Oregon and Arizona.

Another high-profile contest remains too close to call: The Arizona governor’s race. Republican Kari Lake, the Donald Trump-supported election denier, is facing Democratic secretary of state Katie Hobbs, a defender of the state’s election process.

Democratic upset keeps narrow House majority hopes alive

Republicans appear to be slowly inching toward a slim majority, but Democrats’ hopes have not yet fully faded.

Republicans have won 211 of the 218 seats they’d need to take the majority, according to CNN projections, while Democrats have won 204, with 20 undecided as of Saturday evening.

Democrats scored a major victory in Washington’s Republican-leaning 3rd District, where on Saturday CNN projected that Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez would defeat Republican Joe Kent, who had aligned himself closely with former President Donald Trump.

Many of the other undecided races are in California, where counting mail-in ballots can take weeks and significant shifts can occur late in that process. Other states with large quantities of mail-in ballots, including Arizona and Oregon, also have undecided races.

Arizona governor's race still undecided

The Arizona governor’s race between Lake, one of the most prominent election deniers on the ballot this year, and Hobbs, remains tight, with Hobbs clinging to a 34,000 vote lead as of late Saturday with an estimated 290,000 votes to be counted.

If she wins, Lake would be a rare Trump-supported election denier to win a competitive statewide race this year.

In an interview with CNN Saturday afternoon, Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates said that about 190,000 votes remain to be counted in Maricopa County.

He said he was confident that about 95% to 99% of those votes will be recorded by Tuesday. He said the county will continue to report about 85,000 votes per night until they are done.

Other races to keep an eye on:

In Alaska, the state’s at-large House seat and one of its Senate seats will hinge on ranked-choice results.

Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola, who won a special election this summer, is in a strong position to eclipse the 50% mark. But Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski faces a stiffer challenge from Republican Kelly Tshibaka, who is backed by Trump as part of his bid for retribution against Murkowski and others who for his impeachment after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

And in Los Angeles, Rep. Karen Bass on Saturday widened her lead over developer Rick Caruso in the mayoral race.

If elected, Bass would become the first woman and the first Black woman to lead America’s second-largest city.

Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock appealed to Georgians Sunday afternoon to vote in the upcoming runoff election, making an appearance during rapper Lil Baby's Fall Festival and Charity Drive in Atlanta. 

"Tell everybody in your circle it's time to show up. I want you to know it is the honor of my life to represent you in the United States Senate. And to not vote, is to vote. It means somebody else is going to speak on your behalf. I don't want anybody else speaking for me," Warnock told the audience.

Following his brief remarks on stage, Warnock spoke to media during a gaggle.

A reporter asked if his campaign message will change following the projected results in Nevada, which mean that his race will not determine whether Democrats control the Senate.

"Well, congratulations to my colleagues, but our message is the same," Warnock said. "This election is about who's ready, and who's fit to serve the people of Georgia in the United States Senate. It's a race about competence and about character. And on both of those scores, there is a world of difference between me and Herschel Walker."

Remember: Neither Warnock nor his Republican challenger Walker surpassed the 50% threshold needed to win the race outright Tuesday evening, CNN projected, forcing a runoff election in December.

The Georgia runoff election is still really important to Democrats:

Although Democrats are already projected to win control of the Senate, CNN chief political Gloria Borger said the upcoming Dec. 6 Georgia runoff is still really important to the party.

"They want to have a clear majority," Borger said on CNN Saturday. "But, I think that one vote actually does matter in so many ways because it doesn't give anybody the kind of leverage that say a Joe Manchin had."

GOP Sen. Rick Scott, who is the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, called for a delay in the Senate leadership election scheduled for Wednesday, saying it "doesn't make any sense" to have them this week.

"What is our plan, what are we running on? What do we stand for? What are we hellbent ... to get done? There's no plan to do that," Scott said on Fox News. "The leadership in the Republican Senate says you cannot have a plan, we're just gonna run against how bad the Democrats are. And actually they cave into the Democrats. Now they want to rush through an election. We haven't even finished what's happened in Georgia."

He added: "They want to rush through an election because they don't want to do any assessment of what we've done wrong. Insanity is doing the exact same thing and thinking you're gonna get different results. We won't."

Scott also said "a lot of people" have asked him to run for minority leader. 

"A lot of people have called me to see if I'll run," Scott said. "Here's my focus, is: We still got to win Georgia. I'm not going to take anything off the table."

Some background: Several Republican senators in addition to Scott are calling for a delay in next week’s Senate GOP leadership elections, arguing the party needs to regroup after lackluster midterm results and with a Georgia runoff still underway.

While Mitch McConnell is widely expected to easily win the top spot again, making him the longest Senate party leader in history, he is facing some dissension in the ranks. That includes a campaign against his candidacy by former President Donald Trump.

Several candidates made historic runs this midterm cycle and CNN projects that many will win their respective races.

In New York and Arkansas, Democrat Kathy Hochul and Republican Sarah Huckabee Sanders will be the first elected female governors in their respective states.

In Alabama, Republican Katie Britt will be the first woman elected to serve as a senator.

In Maryland, Democrat Wes Moore will be the first elected Black governor in the state.

In Oklahoma, Republican Markwayne Mullin will be the first Native American senator from the state in 100 years.

In Ohio, Rep. Marcy Katpur will become the longest-serving woman in congressional history, once she's sworn in next year.

View more history-making candidates here:

Correction: An earlier version of this post included the wrong political office for Katie Britt. She is the projected winner of Alabama's Senate race.