Democrats are fighting an unexpectedly tough battle after results emerged from the US midterm elections that will decide which party controls Congress, even as Republicans led by Gov. Ron DeSantis scored a string of landslide victories in Florida.
Early reports from Tuesday’s midterm elections showed many battleground races across the country too close to call, with control of the Senate hanging in the balance and Republicans struggling to secure sweeping victories in swing House districts .
“It’s certainly not a wave,” said Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator from South Carolina, referring to the “red wave” that many pollsters predicted heading into Election Day. However, Graham said his party was on course for a “very good night” and predicted it would win a majority in the lower house of Congress.
Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster, told the Financial Times: “This is not a tsunami. . . I think the Republicans got ahead of themselves.
The best early result for Republicans was in Florida, where DeSantis, seen as a likely contender for his party’s 2024 presidential nomination, was quickly expected to win re-election along with Sen. Marco Rubio.
“I’m looking forward to the road ahead,” DeSantis said. “We have achieved more than anyone thought possible four years ago. But we still have a lot of work to do, and I have only just begun to fight.”
Luntz called DeSantis “the real winner” Tuesday night. “He turned a successful governorship into a nationwide movement. I think he will [Donald] Trump is fighting for his money.
But despite a strong showing in Florida — which until recently was considered a swing state — the results were more mixed in other races in the battleground. The primary Senate races in Georgia, Arizona and Nevada remained extremely tight, with many outcomes uncertain.
In Pennsylvania, Democrat John Fetterman won the Senate seat being vacated by Republican Pat Toomey, despite being hampered on the campaign trail by his recent stroke.
The White House said President Joe Biden sent his congratulations to Fetterman via text message.
Fetterman campaigns as a working-class progressive, sporting a goatee and almost always appearing in a hoodie and shorts. “This race is about the future of every community across Pennsylvania,” he told supporters. “For any small town or person who has ever felt left out.”
Democrats held several key East Coast districts where their candidates were considered vulnerable, with wins for Abigail Spanberger in Virginia and Seth Magaziner in Rhode Island.
Meanwhile, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul was re-elected after holding off Republican challenger Lee Zeldin. The result will bring some relief to Democrats after polls have shown Zeldin has been closing in on a huge margin in recent weeks with a relentless focus on crime.
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Republicans need only a net gain of five seats to win a majority in the House and still hold an advantage in the lower chamber, but they may take control by a narrower margin than they had hoped.
In a belated victory speech delivered at 2 a.m., Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, said: “When you wake up tomorrow, we will be in the majority and Nancy Pelosi will be in the minority.”
The White House, bracing for heavy losses in the House, said Biden began calling Democrats, including Spanberger and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, to congratulate them on winning their races.
Even the slim Republican House majority threatens to derail the next two years of Biden’s presidency. Republican leaders have suggested they will use the debt ceiling as leverage to push their own policy priorities, such as cuts in federal spending.
They also indicated they would disband the Democratic-led investigations, including the special committee investigating Trump’s role in the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol, and launch their own investigations into everything from the origins of the Covid outbreak -19 to the business dealings of Hunter Biden, the president’s son.
Republicans scored a number of significant victories outside of Florida as well, with Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, winning re-election and JD Vance, the former venture capitalist and Trump-backed author, winning the Ohio Senate race.
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