Senate race neck-and-neck; Republicans to clinch control of lower house
Results are still being declared in the US mid-term elections, with control of Congress hanging in the balance. Republicans are likely to take control of the House of Representatives, according to projections, but the Senate fight remains on a knife-edge. If Democrats lose control of either, Republicans will be able to block President Joe Biden's agenda.
Issued on: Modified:
"I don't know what's going to happen, but everybody expects a Republican sweep," Jake Pasci, sporting a Reagan-Bush baseball cap, told RFI after casting his ballot in a voting station at the Presbyterian Church on North Avenue in Atlanta.
There was no Republican sweep.
Jake was talking at just 07:30 in the morning, as voters flocked into the station before going to work.
But Jake was not happy, even before the results began to trickle in. "I would like to answer the Trump question once and for all," he says. "I'd like to see him go away, but I'm a Republican. I supported Trump for the first three years of his presidency.
"I think that he screwed up Covid, and then him screwing around with Georgia in the 2020 election, costing the Republicans the Senate, made me mad. I don't support him anymore. He's also crazy, so that's not good."
When he votes for the 2024 presidential elections, Pasci will support another Republican nominee.
In the evening, Republican supporters met in the Coca Cola Roxy event hall, located in a modern suburb of Atlanta. Large television screens showing right-leaning Fox News are projecting estimates of the election results.
Enormous posters with "Kemp Governor" are plastered over the walls. A live musician is singing country music, and the guests, in evening dress, queue up to grab some food at the counters – courtesy of the Georgia Republican Party.
The atmosphere is charged – Kemp was predicted to keep his governorship, but the evening is still early.
As things turn out later, Brian Kemp retains the state governorship over high-profile challenger Stacey Abrams.
Professor Charles Bullock III, a political scientist at the Georgia University in Athens, a leafy college town about an hours' drive west of Atlanta, told RFI that "if Democrats manage to keep their 50 seats in the Senate, then they've got an operating majority" as Vice-President Kemala Harris' vote will decide.
"That means Democrats would chair all the committees in the Senate," he says.
It now looks as if the Georgia Senate race will have to be decided in a December run-off.
With 95 percent of votes counted, neither of the two leaders, incumbent Democrat Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker, had obtained 50 percent of votes cast. If neither gets past the halfway mark, they will face a run-off on 6 December.
The Senate race in Nevada is also too close to call, with 75 percent of ballots checked. Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto - the first Latina to serve as senator - is trailing her Republican rival Adam Laxalt. Election officials say they have been flooded by thousands of postal ballots which will take several days to count.
In a surprise result, John Fetterman won the Pennsylvania Senate seat for the Democrats, beating Mehmet Oz
Meanwhile, Republicans are "almost certain to take the House," according to Bullock. "So it means it's going to be hard to get much legislation passed at all.
"But if Democrats have the Senate, then they can block what the House is doing, and they can do a few things on behalf of the president."
During the 2020 elections, Democrats won 220 seats in the 435-seat House of Representatives, Republicans 212, while 3 places were vacant. The Senate was equally divided between the parties, with 50 seats each – giving the Democrats the upper hand because the Vice President, Democrat Kemala Harris, has the deciding vote.
Daily newsletterReceive essential international news every morning
Subscribe