US midterms 2022: Democrats’ Senate hopes grow as vote count

Meanwhile in Alaska, the state’s Democratic House representative is warning that it could be a while before voters learn whether she’s won election to a full term:

Alaska’s ranked choice voting system has made calling their elections particularly complex, and the Anchorage Daily News says don’t expect the final results in Peltola’s race until 23 November. Their preliminary data shows her in the lead over Republican challenger Sarah Palin – yes, that Sarah Palin, the one-time vice-presidential nominee known for her folksy brand of conservatism.

Peltola won a special election in August to replace Alaska’s longtime Republican House representative Don Young, who died in office.

Biden exhorts other nations to join US in climate pledges, action

Joanna Walters

The day so far

In the days before the election, another veteran Democratic pollster predicted a rough night for the party, in part due to frustration over crime.

Writing in The American Prospect, Stanley B Greenberg, who played a part in Bill Clinton’s successful White House campaign, argued that Democrats had failed to convince voters of their ability to stem rising crime. So bad was their handling of the issue that many voters believed the party wanted to defund the police, even though many Democrats reject the idea.

Greenberg spoke to New York Magazine in an interview published today about the reasons why Democrats ended up doing better in the midterms than his analyses predicted:

It’s important not to take the wrong lessons from the fact that we were saved by late partisan polarization, which reflects the post-2016 era where we have high turnout and consolidation of both parties. A lot of moderate Democrats in our October poll said they were voting for Republicans, about twice as many Republicans who said they were voting for Democrats. But that disappeared in the intense partisan polarization at the end. And that was driven on the Democratic side by worries about abortion, Social Security, and democracy. On Tuesday, about 3% of Democrats voted for Republicans and about 3% of Republicans voted for Democrats. A quarter of people in our survey said they made up their mind on the last day, or in the last few days before the election, which we’ve never had before. So we were on a knife’s edge, and it could have been and was poised to be much worse.

He also addressed why his prediction about the crime issue does not appear to have come true:

If you look at the candidates who won, they addressed the crime problem early on and spent a lot of money being clear that they were against defunding the police, and being clear that they opposed those in the party who are advocating it. Voters believe that we wanted to defund the police. And so if you didn’t make your message almost entirely about respect for police and funding the police, you were not going to make any progress.

I’m actually surprised how much voters are open to rethinking Democrats on crime, but not in the context of this election, where Democrats were mostly saying the wrong thing. They were making the issue more important, but without the right message. The national Democratic message was block grants for more police, banning assault weapons — a range of government programs that our data showed hurt us. If you look at what happened in New York, they led with that kind of messaging.

The Democrats’ success in Tuesday’s elections took many by surprise. But not Simon Rosenberg.

The veteran Democratic pollster and president of the NDN and New Policy Institute think tanks has been arguing for weeks that his party would perform better than polls indicated in the midterms, and ended up being more right than wrong.

Yesterday on Twitter, he shared some thoughts about what propelled Democrats to their surprisingly strong showing:

Have you heard of Chase Oliver? Democratic and Republican party leaders in Georgia certainly have. The Libertarian candidate garnered 81,000 votes in the tight race for Georgia’s Senate seat, which will now go to a run-off, in part because of his presence on the ballot. Here’s more about the “armed and gay” politician, from The Guardian’s Andrew Lawrence:

The morning after the midterms, Chase Oliver was back at work. “That’s what most other Georgians have to do after an election,” he tells the Guardian. “I have a job and have to pay rent and the bills.”

Oliver, 37, has two jobs, actually – one as a sales account executive for a financial services company and another as an HR rep for a securities firm. And as he toggled between email replies and Zoom interviews from his north-east Atlanta home, with three cats and a dog, Delilah, underfoot, you’d never suspect this natty, young Georgian had thrown a spanner into the cogs of American power. “You are possibly the most hated man in America right now,” read one post to his Facebook page.

Oliver was the third candidate in Georgia’s US Senate race: a pro-gun, anti-cop, pro-choice Libertarian who proudly announces himself as the state’s first LGBTQ+ candidate – “armed and gay”, he boasts. And on Tuesday night, this surprise spoiler scored an historic upset of sorts, siphoning enough support away from the Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock and his Republican challenger Herschel Walker to force the election to a 6 December runoff – Georgia’s second in as many election cycles. Until then, there’s no telling whether the Democrats will retain control of the Senate.

Vote counting is proceeding at an agonizingly slow pace in Nevada, where Democrats are locked in tight races to keep a Senate seat and the governor’s mansion.

For an idea as to why, take a look at this explainer from the Associated Press:

The vote counting is taking days, but that’s not abnormal for Nevada, where a chunk of votes have previously not been tallied until after election night. In the two most populous counties, officials warned up front that it would take days to process the outstanding ballots.

NEVADA’S WAY

A few things have slowed Nevada’s vote counting in recent elections.

First, Nevada has also had problems with long lines of voters at poll close, although Nevadans have traditionally opted to vote early. The state won’t release vote counts until all voters who were in line at poll close have cast their vote.

Second, in 2020, Nevada greatly expanded absentee voting, sending a ballot to every registered voter. The state passed legislation to do that in future elections as well.

Also that year, nearly 15% of Nevada’s vote was not reported until after election night — and it took three days for the state to report 100% of the vote.

This year, voting officials in the two most populous counties, encompassing the population centers of Las Vegas and Reno, warned it would take days to process the outstanding ballots.

County election clerks will count mail ballots received until Nov. 12 as long as they were postmarked by Election Day.

Officials have until Nov. 17 to finish the counting and submit a report to the Nevada secretary of state’s office, according to state law.

The state has no mandatory recount law.

If you couldn’t tell from his social media posts, CNN confirms it: Trump is “cranky”.

That’s according to this story that gets into the intra-family drama playing out ahead of Saturday’s planned wedding of the former president’s youngest daughter, Tiffany Trump. Donald Trump is, of course, expected to attend, but CNN reports he’s distracted by his “special announcement” set for Tuesday, which will likely be where he makes public a new campaign for the White House in 2024.

As for what’s fueling Trump’s annoyance, CNN chalks that up to the underperformance of his candidates in Tuesday’s midterms, and the handful of calls from Republicans for the ex-president to step aside.

Next up on Trump’s hit list is Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin.

Last year, Youngkin managed to win the governor’s office in a state that typically leans Democratic. In a post on this Truth social network Trump said Youngkin “couldn’t have won without me.”

“I Endorsed him, did a very big Trump Rally for him telephonically, got MAGA to Vote for him – or he couldn’t have come close to winning. But he knows that, and admits it. Besides, having a hard time with the Dems in Virginia – But he’ll get it done!”

Trump began his post by misspelling Youngkin’s name as “Young Kin (now that’s an interesting take. Sounds Chinese, doesn’t it?).”

Yesterday, Virginia’s lieutenant-governor Winsome Sears called Trump “a liability” for Republicans, and said if he ran in 2024, she “could not support him.”

Trump attacks DeSantis with baseless claim of fraud, FBI involvement

Donald Trump’s plan to announce a new presidential campaign is causing controversy among some Republicans who worry it will jeopardize their chances of winning Georgia’s Senate runoff, Hugo Lowell reports:

Donald Trump’s top political staffers at Mar-a-Lago are pressing him to move forward with his planned 2024 presidential campaign announcement next week but a chorus of allies are suggesting delaying until after the Senate runoff in Georgia in December, according to sources familiar with the matter.

The former US president has been forced to reckon with Republican blame for underwhelming performances from rightwing candidates he endorsed in the midterm elections, with the defeat of Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, contributing to uncertainty over which party will control the Senate.

Trump has suggested publicly that he intends to announce his 2024 presidential campaign next week as planned. Behind the scenes at Mar-a-Lago, in a sign of concern about his standing after disappointing results in the midterms, he remains undecided on how to proceed. However, some initial invites for the “Special Announcement” event have been sent.

Trump’s top staffers have firmly pressed him to announce his latest White House campaign as planned on Tuesday, the sources said, suggesting that he would appear weak and wounded by the results were he to cave to demands that he hold off until the Senate runoff early next month.

Trump also has no upside in waiting until the Senate runoff, where his handpicked Republican candidate Herschel Walker trails Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock. His staffers are said to have told him: if Walker wins, he can take credit, and if Walker loses, his position would be no different.

If Republicans win a majority in the House, Kevin McCarthy could be the man to lead it for the next two years. The Guardian’s Edward Helmore reports on McCarthy’s conversation with Joe Biden yesterday, and the president’s acknowledgment that Democrats face long odds in keeping the chamber:

The eyes of the political world remained focused on Arizona and Nevada on Friday, where hundreds of thousands of uncounted votes held the key to control of the US Senate, three days after Americans cast their final ballots in midterm elections.

The delay in districts such as Arizona’s Maricopa county, which includes Phoenix, is attributed to the record number of ballots cast on Tuesday. Election officials had estimated they would have a tally by Friday but now say they will count through the weekend.

In Nevada, election officials had estimated a finish by Friday but, again, the high number of ballots cast means counting will continue through next week. However, a winner could be called as soon as any candidate is judged to have passed a majority threshold.

The Associated Press has not called the Senate races in Nevada and Arizona, where Democratic incumbents are fighting for re-election.

But the Cook Political Report has weighed in on Arizona, saying that Democrat Mark Kelly won his race:

Nevada conducted its election mostly by mail, and is slowly releasing the results of ballots that have been counted. According to the Nevada Independent, the results are looking good for Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto in her bid for another term against Republican Adam Laxalt – but it’s not over yet:

We do not know all the results of the midterms, but we do know that Joe Biden will be president until January 2025. So let’s go through a few scenarios about how the outcomes of the still-uncalled House and Senate races will affect his presidency.

Democrats seem to be on course to win the Senate again, which is a significant prize for any president. Besides passing laws, the chamber is tasked with confirming the White House’s nominees – including supreme court justices, federal judges and cabinet secretaries. The last time Republicans controlled the chamber under a Democratic president, Barack Obama, they held up nominations of judges and most famously refused to consider his nominee for a vacant supreme court seat, which ended up being filled by Donald Trump. Keeping control of the chamber would be majorly helpful to Biden, even if he doesn’t have the House.

Congress’s lower chamber has fewer unilateral powers than the Senate, and was always seen as unlikely to remain in Democratic hands after the midterms. That does not mean the party is out of contention there. Several races remain to be called, and a return to power by Biden’s allies is still possible – though as this thorough Politico piece makes clear, it will be harder for them to pull that off than for the GOP to regain the majority.

The most likely outcome at this point appears to be a narrow Democratic majority in the Senate and a small Republican majority in the House, similar to the situation Trump faced from 2019 to 2021. If that happens, expect the House GOP to pass lots of bills that the Senate will ignore, as its Democratic leaders focus on confirming judges and whatever other nominees the White House sends them.

If Republicans take both House of Congress – aided by wins in Nevada and Georgia’s still-to-be-determined Senate elections – then Biden will probably be using his veto pen repeatedly over the next two years against whatever legislation they manage to pass. But if Democrats somehow defy the odds and pull off a history-making victory in both chambers, Biden will get another shot at accomplishing a laundry list of priorities – including codifying abortion protections that previously were guaranteed by Roe v Wade, which the president said would be the first bill he sends to the new Congress.

Democrats edge towards Senate majority as counting continues