Democrats retain management of Senate with victory in Nevada

Democrats will proceed to management the Senate following the 2022 midterm elections, after Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto on Saturday was projected by CBS News to win a decent reelection race towards Republican Adam Laxalt.

Her victory provides Democrats 50 seats within the 118th Congress. Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote, ought to or not it’s wanted, provides them the bulk, whatever the end result of the Georgia runoff election in December between Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker. 

“The election is a great win for the American people,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer mentioned in a briefing late Saturday night time. “With the races now called in Arizona and Nevada, Democrats will have a majority in the Senate, and I will once again be majority leader.” 

Republicans may nonetheless take management of the House, the place a handful of races stay unresolved. However, management of the Senate means Democrats could have the flexibility to successfully kill any laws rising from a GOP-led House, enabling them to protect President Biden from politically dangerous laws {that a} Senate led by Republicans might need delivered to a vote. A Democratic Senate additionally makes it a lot simpler for Mr. Biden to win approval for judicial nominations and appoint his desired candidates to positions throughout the federal government over the past two years of his time period.

A happy Mr. Biden — who’s in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, attending the summit for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations — instructed reporters Sunday morning that Schumer has “got a majority again.”

“We’re focusing now on Georgia,” Mr. Biden mentioned. “We feel good about where we are. And I know I’m a cockeyed optimist. I understand that from the beginning, but I’m not surprised by the turnout. I’m incredibly pleased by the turnout. And I think it’s a reflection of the quality of our candidates. And they’re all running on the same program. There wasn’t anybody who wasn’t running on what we did. They’re all staying, sticking with it. And so, I feel good. I’m looking forward to the next couple years.”

Before Election Day, some Republicans had begun to consider Senate management was inside attain, since Mr. Biden is affected by underwater approval rankings amid excessive inflation and voters’ unfavourable views of the economic system in all of the battleground states. 

But within the months earlier than the overall election, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell expressed doubt that Republicans may take the Senate, which he blamed on “candidate quality.” Many of the Republican candidates who misplaced had been far-right and endorsed by former President Donald Trump, which gave them momentum in the course of the major season. But they didn’t enchantment to independents and moderates within the normal election. 

Sen. Pat Toomey, who’s retiring from the Senate, and whose seat was received by Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, blamed Trump for the missed GOP alternative.

“The data is overwhelmingly clear — the more candidates who are associated with Donald Trump, and the ultra MAGA movement, and this false notion that the election was stolen from him in 2020, the more that was the message, the more they lost, and in many places, it was a stark to a more conventional Republican who was winning,” he mentioned in an interview on Fox News Saturday.

Though he did not establish him by title, Toomey referred to the far-right Republican candidate for governor Doug Mastriano as “a weak candidate who loses by 15 points, the most for an open seat since the 1950s.” 

He went on to notice that “we lost three opportunities to flip House seats, lost control of the state House…and the party needs to get past Donald Trump.”

Alaska, the place three candidates had been on the poll in a ranked-choice voting system, has additionally not but been referred to as, however with the highest two finishers each Republicans, CBS News initiatives it should keep in Republican fingers.

On Friday night, CBS News projected Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly will win reelection over Republican challenger Blake Masters.

In different battleground states, CBS News projected the races in Wisconsin, Florida, Ohio and North Carolina will go to Republicans, whereas Democrats will win in Colorado, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania. 

In every of the Senate battlegrounds the place CBS News has carried out exit polls, voters mentioned management of the Senate was necessary to their vote. CBS News carried out statewide surveys in 11 key battleground states: Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, New Hampshire, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin.

In every of those states, voters had unfavourable views of the nation’s economic system.

In a lot of the Senate battleground states, the difficulty of inflation outpaced abortion when it comes to the significance of the difficulty to voters. But in Pennsylvania’s closely-watched race, the place Fetterman got here out forward of Republican candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz, exit polling confirmed abortion outpaced inflation as a priority for voters.

According to early exit polling Tuesday, almost three in 4 voters mentioned they had been dissatisfied in regards to the nation. That contains nearly one-third who mentioned they had been indignant. Almost three-quarters mentioned the economic system is unhealthy, and almost half of voters mentioned their household’s funds are worse than they had been two years in the past.

Thirty-five Senate seats had been up for grabs in whole within the 2022 midterm elections, however underneath one-third had been anticipated to be shut. 

Musadiq Bidar and Jack Turman contributed to this report.