The midterm elections – marked by exceedingly high turnout and media attention – are finally over, and brought mixed results for both parties.
Democrats regained control of the House, gaining 28 seats, with a handful still to be declared. The party’s slim majority will allow Democrats to stymie Republican legislation and push for investigations into the president’s conduct. Massachusetts Rep. Richard Neal has already said that he intends to formally request President Trump’s tax returns.
“When Democrats come into power, what are they going to do? Are they going to actually legislate or is it going to be two years of just investigation after investigation, because I think that plays exactly into Trump’s hands for 2020,” Ned Ryun, founder and CEO of the American Majority NGO told RT.
While Democrats got the upper hand in the lower house, Republicans extended their majority in the Senate by three seats. The GOP now holds 51 seats to the Democrats’ 43, with independents taking two and four yet to be declared. Once all votes are accounted for, the GOP is expected to hold a 53-47 majority in the upper house.
A comfortable Senate majority means President Trump will have a far easier time confirming another conservative Supreme Court justice, should a seat become vacant.
Trump-backed gubernatorial candidates Ron DeSantis (Florida) and Brian Kemp (Georgia) also beat their progressive challengers, Andrew Gillum and Stacey Abrams.
Live updates from election day and night have now ended, as business as usual resumes in America.
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07 November 2018
Democrat Tony Evers has unseated rising GOP star and incumbent Scott Walker in the Wisconsin governor’s race. Media reports initially predicted that the tight contest would trigger a recount. According to AP, Evers won with 49.6 percent of the vote, compared to Walker’s 48.5 percent.
A record number of women were elected to the House of Representatives on Tuesday, NBC News reports. As of Wednesday morning, at least 89 women have won seats. The House has never had more than 84 female representatives during one session.
Democrat Stacey Abrams says she is not ready to concede in the Georgia governor’s race against Republican Brian Kemp. Although Kemp holds a slight lead, Abrams’ campaign said that they were waiting for tens of thousands of absentee and provisional ballots to be counted. Campaign manager Lauren Groh-Wargo predicted that the contest would have to be settled in a runoff election next month.
Democrats have flipped 28 seats in the House of Representatives, for a net gain of 26, one more than they needed to secure a majority. Republicans have only picked up two so far.
Republican ex-congressman Ron DeSantis narrowly edged out Democrat Andrew Gillum, mayor of Tallahassee, to become Governor of Florida. Gillum conceded with 99 percent of precincts reporting and DeSantis leading by 49.9 percent to 48.9 percent.
Republican Kevin Cramer has unseated Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota, confirming the Republican Party will hold the Senate for the rest of Trump’s term with at least 50 seats plus the Vice President. Heitkamp’s seat was considered one of the most vulnerable in the Senate.
Republican Ted Cruz edged out Beto O’Rourke to keep his Senate seat in one of the most watched races of the 2018 midterms. Despite O’Rourke’s massive $38.1 million war chest – three times as much as his opponent – he was unable to break the Republican party’s hold on Texas, which has governed the state since 1994.
Democrats are being projected to take over the House. Conservative Fox News channel was the first major US network to call the victory for Democrats. It didn't specify a margin, however.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders has shared her first reaction to the ongoing close race for the US House of Representatives. She doesn't think there's going to be a 'blue wave' of Democrats overwhelmingly flipping seats, she said.
"Maybe you get a ripple, but I certainly don't think that there's a blue wave," she told reporters.
Democrat Rashida Tlaib, who ran unopposed in Michigan’s safely blue 13th congressional district, has become the first Muslim woman and the first Palestinian-American woman to be elected to Congress. Former Michigan Rep. John Conyers, who served as a state representative from 1965 to 2017, resigned last year over sexual harassment allegations.
Polls have closed in Texas, where Democrat Beto O’Rourke is vying to unseat Republican Senator Ted Cruz. Early projections show Cruz is neck and neck with the Democratic challenger, who has amassed a record-breaking $38.1 million for his Senate campaign in the last quarter, three times as much as Cruz. No Democrat has won statewide elections in Texas since 1994.
In what is projected to be the first flip to red in the 2018 midterm elections, Democrat Joe Donnelly is losing the Senate seat for Indiana to Republican Mike Braun. With half of the ballots counted, Braun is ahead with 53.7 percent while Donnelly is trailing behind with 42.1 percent of the vote, AP reports. Donnelly has been Senator from Indiana since 2012 and was favored to win the race on Tuesday.
Democrats have so far flipped two seats out of 23 they need to reclaim the House. In Virginia, Jennifer Wexton has defeated Republican Rep. Barbara Comstock, while in Florida, former Clinton administration official Donna Shalala claimed 27th Congressional District, finishing ahead of Republican TV anchor Maria Elvira Salazar.
Democrat Tim Kaine has beaten Republican Corey Stewart, a vocal supporter of President Trump, to claim Virginia Senate race. Kaine, a former governor, has been a Senator from Virginia since 2013. Along with Kaine, several Democratic senators have been reelected, including Senator Elizabeth Warren (Massachusetts), Chris Murphy (Connecticut), Ben Cardin (Maryland), Tom Carper (Delaware) and Sheldon Whitehouse (Rhode Island), AP reports.
Polls closing at 7:30 pm ET
Polls have now closed in Ohio, North Carolina and West Virginia.
In Ohio, Trump-backed Republican Jim Renacci is hoping to oust the incumbent Senator Sherrod Brown, while Democrats are hoping to defeat Rep. Troy Balderson in a rematch of August’s special election.
In North Carolina, nine Republican and three Democrat incumbents are defending their House of Representatives seats.
Democrat Joe Manchin is thought likely to hold on to his Senate seat in West Virginia, despite Trump’s strong support for challenger Patrick Morrisey.
Former Democratic presidential nominee Bernie Sanders, who ran as an Independent, has beaten Republican Lawrence Zupan in a race for a US Senate seat in Vermont, AP reports. Sanders was projected to win by a landslide. It will be a third term for Hillary Clinton's former opponent, who has been a Senator since 2007.
Polls closing at 7 pm ET
All polls in Indiana and Kentucky are now closed, as well as in New Hampshire, South Carolina, Vermont, Virginia, Georgia and most of Florida.
The gubernatorial races the latter two states have attracted a lot of national attention, with Democrats hoping to make history with African-American candidates Stacey Abrams and Andrew Gillum. Republicans are hoping to keep both governorships and take over a Senate seat held by Democrats in Florida.
Democrats hope to flip three House seats in Virginia.
06 November 2018
Republicans are showing an early lead in Kentucky and Indiana with the first precincts reporting their ballot counts. Republican Mike Brown is ahead of Democrat Joe Donnelly for Indiana senator, and Republican Andy Barr is leading Democrat Amy McGrath to represent Kentucky's 6th District in the House of Representatives. Republicans lead in four of Kentucky's six house districts and three of Indiana's nine. These results represent a small fraction of either state's total votes, however.
First polls close
The first polls closed at 6 pm Eastern time, in most of Indiana and eastern Kentucky. Senator Joe Donnelly (D-Indiana) is trying to hold on to his seat in the face of a Republican challenger.
New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson is demanding the resignation of the city’s Board of Elections director as the city’s voting apparatus is once again plagued by mishaps. BOE Executive Director Michael Ryan blamed higher-than-usual turnout and wet ballots caused by the weather for the jammed and broken machines that had voters at some precincts standing in line for hours.
Elections staff, who normally serve four-year terms, can only be removed for cause. But this isn’t the first New York election in recent years to be marred by widespread dysfunction. During the 2016 primaries, thousands of New Yorkers were inexplicably dropped from the voting rolls.
Limited malicious activity on social media - DHS
The Department of Homeland Security has observed “misinformation” targeting voters through “limited social media activity” on Tuesday, Reuters reported citing an unnamed DHS official. While the government is working with law enforcement and social media companies to respond, it has “not been determined” yet who is behind the activity, the official said.
Man arrested for threatening to ‘shoot up’ polling station
A man was arrested for threatening to “shoot up” a polling station in Washington County, Pennsylvania, after staff there told him he wasn’t registered to vote.
The man reportedly told workers at the small town polling station that he had been promised a gun and money if he voted “straight party,” and became angry when staff told him he wasn’t registered to vote. He has been charged with felony terrorist threats.
Washington is less than an hour's drive from Pittsburgh, where a gunman murdered 11 worshipers in a synagogue last month.
‘The Russians are up to their old tricks’ warns the media
There is "no indication" that foreign actors have compromised election infrastructure, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen told reporters on Tuesday.
That hasn’t stopped the mainstream media in America bristling with accusations of Russian “meme warfare” and “James Bond evil villain level plotting.” And it’s not just Russia. Talking heads have accused China and Iran of meddling with the midterms, and warned that only one institution can save American democracy: the media, of course.
Trump keeps up Twitter efforts, retweeting support for Republican candidates
As Americans line up to vote, President Trump has kept up a sustained barrage of tweets all day, reiterating endorsemets for Republican candidates, reposting pictures from his recent rallies, and warning against illegal voting.
By early Tuesday afternoon, Trump had given props to New York congressional candidates Peter King, John Faso, and Claudia Tenney, Montana’s Greg Gianforte and West Virginia’s Carol Miller. All these candidates are leading their Democratic rivals in the polls, albeit by single digits.
Trump also rooted for Senate candidates Josh Hawley (Missouri), Rick Scott (Florida), Martha McSally (Arizona), Matt Rosendale (Montana), Dean Heller (Nevada), Mike Braun (Indiana), Patrick Morrisey (West Virginia) and Bob Hugin (New Jersey), as well as Gubernatorial candidates Ron DeSantis (Florida) and Brian Kemp (Georgia).
Save for Hugin, who trails incumbent Democrat Sen. Bob Menendez by ten points, all of Trump’s Senate candidates are tied with or within a few points of their opponents. DeSantis and Kemp are both polling within three points of their Democratic rivals.
Trump’s storm of retweets comes after a week of full-throttle campaigning, which saw the president hold ten rallies in one week, focusing on states where Republican senators are under threat.
‘Who to vote for’ the number 2 trending question on Google
Despite a record-breaking campaign spend by candidates and near-total saturation of political content online, some American voters remain clueless who to vote for, and are turning to all-seeing, all-knowing Google for answers.
“Who to vote for today” is the second most asked question on Tuesday, behind “what time does voting start today?” Other top questions asked all relate to voting, and concern the how, where, and when of casting a ballot.
What does Google reckon? Asking the search engine who to vote for returns a selection of news articles, mostly concerning how to vote, and mostly skewed towards New York for whatever reason.
Google doesn’t directly tell users who to vote for, but after video leaked of the company’s top officials calling Trump voters “extremists,” and after one of its senior employees went on an expletive-laden anti-GOP rant last month, it’s safe to say the search giant would probably lean ever so slightly left.
According to Google, healthcare and immigration are the top issues voters are interested in, followed by abortion, social security and minimum wage.
New York voting woes
In New York City, many polling places are plagued by broken machines. Several have also opened late due to mix-ups with the public housing administration, local media reported. Some social media users are urging fellow New Yorkers to bring their own pens, due to the reported shortage of writing instruments at polling stations.
Mayor Bill DeBlasio is urging voters to “stay in line” and vote.
NC having trouble due to humidity
There are reports that voting machines in Raleigh, North Carolina are having trouble processing some ballots due to high humidity. All ballots will be counted eventually, state authorities say.
Florida could give the vote back to 1.5 million convicted felons
While national attention has focused on Florida’s tight gubernatorial race, voters in the Sunshine State will also be asked to weigh in on Amendment 4: a piece of legislation that would restore the voting rights of some 1.5 million convicted felons in the state.
Florida bans convicted felons from voting, even after they have been released from prison and completed their parole or probation. Currently, Floridians must wait five years, embark on a long application process, and have their rights restored personally by the state’s governor. Since current Governor Rick Scott took office in 2011, only 3,000 people have had their voting rights reinstated.
The amendment has bipartisan support, but Democrats, like progressive Andrew Gillum, have been more vocal about this support. Republicans have been less enthusiastic, especially as around one third of Florida’s disenfranchised felons are black, a demographic that usually votes Democrat. Their votes could turn the swing state blue for years to come.
Amendment 4 is supported by 70 percent of Floridians, according to a recent poll, and is likely to pass comfortably on Tuesday.
Spoof signs and hoaxes designed to throw off voters
Voters have been advised to remain vigilant for misleading information as the nation heads to the polls on Tuesday. The Secretaries of State for Rhode Island and New Jersey both warned on Monday of fake maps circulating with incorrect polling station information.
Democrats in Seminole County, Florida, also sounded the alarm this weekend after discovering fake posters claiming the party stands for socialism, open borders, and the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“These signs are not affiliated” with the Florida or Seminole County Democrats, the party warned on Instagram. “Any political signage requires disclaimers that these signs do not have. If you see one, please remove it.”
While the signs were designed to represent the party as leftist radicals, their claims are partially truthful. Florida Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum has called for the abolition of ICE “in its current form,” and while he stops short of using the ‘s’ word, Gillum shares his stance on several key policy issues with the Democratic Socialists of America.
Days before the election, Democrats in North Dakota tried to spoof Republican-leaning hunters by running a Facebook ad warning them that voting in the midterms would see them lose their other, out-of-state hunting licenses.
The state GOP condemned the ad, which was eventually pulled by Facebook.
“Heidi Heitkamp is using her anti-Kavanaugh campaign coffers to suppress voter turnout in North Dakota,” a GOP spokesman told the Daily Caller. “On the day she’s starting her de-facto farewell tour, Heitkamp is making it clear to voters that she only cares about winning re-election, not helping her constituents.”
Medicaid expansion features on ballots
Residents of Idaho, Nebraska and Utah won’t just vote on who to send to Washington DC. Residents of these states will also vote on whether to expand access to state Medicaid programs under the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare.
34 other states and the District of Columbia have already done this, while 17 have not. Even in red states like Idaho, Nebraska and Utah, expanding Medicaid access is popular. 59 percent of Utah voter support the expansion, according to a recent poll, while Idaho’s outgoing Republican governor has given the expansion measure his blessing.
Meanwhile in Montana, voters will decide on whether to continue with their state’s ongoing rollout of the expansion. A ‘no’ vote will see the expansion expire next year. Tight gubernatorial races in six other states - including the much-publicized DeSantis vs. Gillum race in Florida - could decide whether these states will eventually implement the ACA’s Medicaid expansion.
Regardless of how voters cast their ballots, a Republican-controlled Congress could still repeal the ACA entirely. This threat has been capitalized on by Democrats like progressive godfather Sen. Bernie Sanders:
Trump-hatred and familiar mantras drive the #resistance to the polls
For some voters, no matter whose name appeared on the ballot, Tuesday’s election was always going to be about President Trump.
One anti-Trump voter described why she voted, in a series of slogans that have become mantras to the progressive left: “because science is real, black lives matter, no human in illegal, love is love, women's rights are human rights, kindness is everything.”
Whether the chance to put a spanner in Trump’s machine is enough to counter Republican voters’ advantage in early voter turnout remains to be seen. Young voter turnout is often poor on both sides, but a Harvard poll taken last month found that 54 percent of young Democrats - many of them left-leaning progressives - say they’ll “definitely vote,” compared to 43 percent of young Republicans.
82yo Texas woman dies, days after voting for the first time
82-year-old Gracie Lou Phillips has passed away, days after she went to the polls for the first time in her life last Thursday, NBC reported.
Phillips, who was old enough to vote when Dwight D. Eisenhower was in office, said that she avoided it for all of her life, but was motivated to cast her ballot this year by “political vitriol.”
The great-grandmother was driven to a polling center in Grand Prairie on Thursday, and was wheeled in with her portable oxygen tank. Phillips returned to her hospice afterwards, and passed away peacefully on Tuesday.
Kavanaugh Supreme Court battle energizes Republican voters
The GOP’s bitter fight to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh - in the face of uncorroborated sexual assault claims pushed by Democrats - was referenced often by President Trump in the runup to Tuesday’s election.
Trump decried Senate Democrats’ attempts to derail Kavanaugh’s confirmation, telling a crowd at a rally in Missouri on Monday that the case against the judge “was false accusations, it was a scam, it was fake, it was all fake!”
Trump’s steadfast defense of Kavanaugh seems to have energized his base to turn out and vote Republican.
Inclement weather expected nationwide
Election day looks set to be a wild one, weather-wise at least. Thunderstorms are expected throughout Florida, with severe weather forecast a little further north in Georgia and the Carolinas.
Flash floods are expected in New England and New York, with Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Washington all looking forward to some heavy rainfall too.
While inclement weather can deter some voters, competitive races are likely to be unaffected in all but the most severe conditions.
Trump and the GOP might want to pray for rain, however. One Dartmouth College study last year found that rain increases voters’ pessimism and fear of risk, and makes them more likely to vote Republican, perceived as the party of choice for the risk-averse.
Lack of choice frustrates some voters
While this year’s elections have been pitched as a life-or-death showdown between Democrats and Republicans, voters in many districts don’t get to make that choice.
Among House candidates, three Republicans are running unopposed in districts in California, Georgia, and North Carolina.
However, a total of 39 Democrats in 16 states are running unopposed, mostly in states that lean left. In Massachusetts, Joe Kennedy and progressive up-and-comer Ayanna Pressley are among four shoe-ins.
Eight Democrat-controlled seats in California will be uncontested, as will six in New York.
Long queues to vote reported already
Around the country, voters have turned out in droves since polling stations on the east coast opened between 6am and 7am. A rush of voters looking to cast their ballots before work led to long queues in several states.
Turnout is already expected to surpass 2014 figures, in a midterm election that both sides are portraying as the most important of a lifetime.
Massive turnout, but Americans losing faith in democracy
Despite unusually high early turnout - 36 million voters cast their votes early, compared to 27 million in 2014 - and a record amount of money spent by both sides, a new survey has found that only half of Americans have faith in democracy.
The poll, conducted late October, found that only 51 percent of Americans say they have faith in democracy, down from 60 percent after the 2016 presidential election. Meanwhile, 37 percent say they’ve lost faith in democracy, while nine percent say they never had faith in it to begin with.
While faith in democracy may be down, voters are opinionated on President Trump’s leadership. Trump’s involvement has turned this year’s midterms into a national spectacle, and motivated high numbers of young and first-time voters to show up and have their say.
Congressional elections and scandals go together like peas and carrots – and today’s midterms are no exception. RT compiled a list of the biggest political scandals across the country.
No selfies, please
Want to show the world (or at least your Instagram followers) that you voted today? Be warned: In 18 states, selfies (and all manner of photographs) are strictly prohibited in polling places and voting booths. You probably won’t be cuffed for violating the anti-duck face rule, but better safe than sorry?
States with rules restricting selfie-taking at polling stations: Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia.
Deplorables vs nasty women?
The run-up to the midterm elections hasn’t just been full of trash-talking – the political vitriol has also sparked physical altercations and even outright violence. RT takes a closer look at America’s political climate as the nation heads to the polls:
'Orange Man Bad' blowback?
Americans are heading to the polls today, in what has been described as one of the most fateful elections in recent memory. But have the Democrats misplayed their hand the same way they did in 2016?
“Instead of criticizing Trump’s policies - and there is plenty there to pick a fight with - his critics settled into the mantra of ‘Orange Man Bad.’ Though it failed in 2016, they’re betting the bank it will work this time,” Nebojsa Malic writes.
Tensions are high as rhetoric from both sides has drifted towards confrontation, and occasionally open insults of opponents. The blame for the toxic environment is often attributed to party politics.
Democrats are hoping for a “blue wave” which would give them back control of at least one chamber of Congress and allow them to block nominations and policies they don’t like. Republicans are "fighting" to at least preserve their majority in the Senate.