As results from congressional election continued to trickle in on Thursday, it appeared increasingly likely that the Senate will remain in Republican hands while Democrats will hold a reduced majority in the House of Representatives.
A total of 468 seats in the two houses of Congress were on the ballot in Tuesday's elections, and the final outcome is still some time away.
House speaker Nancy Pelosi has kept a low profile since polling day. Democrats, who have a 35-seat majority in the House, had expected to increase that in this election cycle, building on the blue wave of the 2018 mid-term elections, but instead they're on course to lose representatives.
Republicans immediately jumped on the surprise outcome.
“Republicans defied the odds and grew our party last night. In districts all across the country, Americans rejected socialism and voted for freedom,” House minority leader Kevin McCarthy said in a tweet. “Nancy Pelosi: you’ve been put on notice.”
Murmurs about Pelosi's future as House speaker have already begun, though a spokesperson for Hakeem Jeffries, a rising star of the Democratic Party, shut down any possibility of a challenge to the speaker.
Pelosi is said to have described the election result as “challenging” in a note to her caucus members on Wednesday.
Latino vote
New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who was comfortably re-elected in her own Brooklyn district, sounded a note of criticism after Tuesday’s elections.
“I won’t comment much on tonight’s results as they are evolving and ongoing, but I will say we’ve been sounding the alarm about Dem vulnerabilities w/ Latinos for a long, long time,” the prominent Latina politician tweeted. “There is a strategy and a path, but the necessary effort simply hasn’t been put in.”
In particular, Democrats lost two seats in the Miami-Dade area of Florida that the party had flipped in 2018. Two Republican Cuban-Americans won the seats this week. The outcome reflects Joe Biden’s disappointing performance in the presidential race in southern Florida, where Donald Trump is believed to have made inroads with Hispanic voters.
Pelosi, who was elected House speaker for the second time in 2019, won the support of her caucus following Democrats’ strong performance in the November 2018 mid-terms. But she is likely to face questions when the House representatives return to Washington after the elections.
While results were still coming in from across the country and could take days or even weeks, there appeared to be some good news for Pelosi on Wednesday. Irish-American Conor Lamb, for example, caught up with his Republican challenger Sean Parnell in Pennsylvania as votes were counted. He declared victory with 96 per cent of the vote counted, though this was disputed by Parnell's team. Similarly, Illinois Democrat Cheri Bustos was expected to win, following a tough Republican challenge.
However, hopes of picking up congressional seats in the suburbs of Texas appeared to have been dashed, with Republican candidates ahead in several key races, though a final result is still not known. Further, Congress was due to welcome its first open supporter of the QAnon right-wing conspiracy movement, following Marjorie Taylor Greene's election in Georgia.
US Senate
On the Senate side, continued uncertainty about the outcome was on the cards amid signs that the second of Georgia’s two races could go to a run-off in January. The special election contest there has already been moved to a run-off after no candidate reached the 50 per cent threshold. But there were signs that the second Senate race could also be extended to January.
Republican incumbent David Perdue was barely at the 50 per cent mark on Thursday as he led Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff. If he dips below that level as the final votes are counted then this race will also be run again early next year.
Results had yet to be confirmed in Alaska and North Carolina, though both were expected to stay red. This means that New York Democrat Chuck Schumer’s hopes of becoming Senate majority leader are fading rapidly.
Definitive victories by Republican senators such as Lindsey Graham in South Carolina and Susan Collins in Maine, mean that the Senate is likely to remain under Republican control. If Joe Biden is elected president, this will act as a brake on his powers and could curtail his ability to deliver on policy priorities.