By Eric Bradner and Maeve Reston, CNN
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.
Victories in Arizona and Nevada, according to CNN projections, mean the party will enter 2023 with at least 50 Senate seats — and could add one more if Sen. Raphael Warnock defeats Republican challenger Herschel Walker in a Georgia runoff next month.
But there are other key races for other offices that are still outstanding.
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 — where 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.
A Democratic upset keeps House majority hopes alive
The political world’s eyes are now on the battle for control of the House, where Republicans appear to be slowly inching toward a narrow 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 coup 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.
Her victory came largely as a result of Trump’s efforts to punish Republicans who voted to impeach him. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, a moderate who was widely viewed as a lock for reelection, did not finish in one of the top two slots in the primary and therefore didn’t advance to the general election.
Many of the 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.
Regardless of the ultimate makeup of both chambers next year, Republicans’ lackluster midterm performance has prompted a backlash against House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy.
Senate win also boosts Biden’s power
In retaining their Senate majority, Democrats defied the historical trend of midterm elections breaking against parties in power and overcame anxiety about high inflation. Instead, voters punished Republicans who had opposed abortion rights and parroted Trump’s lies about election fraud.
The outcome is a huge boost to President Joe Biden over the remaining two years of his first term in the White House. It means Democrats will have the ability to confirm Biden’s judicial nominees — avoiding scenarios such as the one former President Barack Obama faced in 2016, when then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to hold a vote on his Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland. It also means that Senate Democrats can reject bills passed by the House and can set their own agenda.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer took a victory lap late Saturday night, saying that voters had vindicated Democrats’ agenda.
He said the Democratic Senate candidates “beat some very flawed challengers who had no faith in democracy, no fidelity to truth or honor. And even when the polls looked bleak, our candidates never gave up and never lost faith.”
He also touted Democrats’ ability to block any GOP measures that would ban abortion rights in the wake of the Supreme Court’s June decision to reverse Roe v. Wade.
“Because the American people turned out to elect Democrats in the Senate, there’s now a firewall against a…
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