Republicans will win control of the Senate for the next two years, NBC News projects, though control of the House is still up for grabs.
Senate Republicans ousted Democrats in red states to secure the majority, flipping seats in West Virginia, Montana and Ohio, states that have swung heavily to the GOP. And they held their ground in friendly states like Texas and Florida, assuring them at least 51 seats when the new Congress is sworn in next January.
The GOP's success at converting a dream Senate map to victories where it counted most will give the party control of legislation and nominations under the next president. NBC News has not yet projected a winner in the race for the White House or which party will control the House.
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Democrats had hoped their slate of incumbents and heavy outside spending by allied groups would help overcome headwinds in those red states. But ultimately the force of political gravity won out.
The GOP senators are expected to elect a new leader next week as longtime Republican leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is stepping down from the role after a record 18 years. His current deputy, Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., and former deputy, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, are battling to take the job when the new Congress begins.
“The Biden-Harris administration has forced the American people to endure four years of high prices, open borders, and chaos on the world stage," Thune, the GOP whip, said in a statement. "Tonight, with Republicans reclaiming majority control of the U.S. Senate, we can begin to turn the page on this expensive and reckless chapter of American history."
Every nonincumbent president since 1992 has entered office with their party controlling both chambers of Congress. But with the House still up for grabs, there’s no guarantee that’ll happen this year for either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump.
Republicans were favored to win the Senate
Democrats entered Election Day with a 51-49 edge. As expected, Republicans will pick up an open seat in deep-red West Virginia, with NBC News projecting that Gov. Jim Justice has won the election to succeed retiring Democrat-turned-independent Sen. Joe Manchin.
In the red state of Ohio, Republican candidate Bernie Moreno has defeated Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, NBC News projected.
And the party flipped a Democratic-held seat in red Montana, where Democratic Sen. Jon Tester lost to GOP rival Tim Sheehy.
Democrats are defending another five seats in purple states that are highly competitive at the presidential level: Sen. Bob Casey in Pennsylvania; an open seat in Michigan, where Sen. Debbie Stabenow is retiring; Sen. Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin; an open seat in Arizona, where Democrat-turned-independent Sen. Krysten Sinema is retiring; and Sen. Jacky Rosen in Nevada.
But Democrats’ best hopes for capturing a Republican-held seat faded in Texas, where Sen. Ted Cruz won re-election to a third term, NBC News projected. In red-trending Florida, Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., also won re-election, defeating former Democratic Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, NBC News projected. Some Democrats had held out hope for a miracle in Florida but outside groups largely voided the race.
In deep-red Nebraska, the populist independent candidate Dan Osborn was running competitively against low-profile Republican Sen. Deb Fischer, but Fischer held on.
A close fight for the House
The race for the House is on a knife-edge, with redistricting accounting for some early seat changes but no clear trend about which way control of the chamber is headed.
Republicans came into Election Day holding a 220-212 majority, with three vacancies — two in safe blue seats, one in a safe red seat. Democrats will need to pick up just four seats in order to capture control of the House and, with it, the speaker’s gavel and chairmanships of all committees.
The battlefield is narrow. According to the Cook Political Report, there are 22 “toss-up” seats at the heart of the fight — 10 held by Democrats and 12 held by Republicans. A few dozen more seats are being hotly contested but lean toward one party.
Notably, the blue states of New York and California host 10 ultra-competitive House districts. Those two states are expected to be comfortably won by Harris at the presidential level, but Republicans are investing heavily in holding and flipping downballot seats there.
In New York, Republicans were defending four seats they flipped in 2022, which helped propel them to the House majority. Democratic challenger John Mannion on Tuesday knocked off GOP Rep. Brandon Williams in a Syracuse-based district, while Republican Rep. Mike Lawler held on against former Democratic Rep. Mondaire Jones. The other GOP freshmen fighting for re-election are Reps. Marc Molinaro and Anthony D’Esposito. Meanwhile, Democratic Rep. Pat Ryan beat back a challenge from Republican Alison Esposito in New York's Hudson Valley in a race that was rated “lean Democrat.”
In Pennsylvania, six-term Democratic Rep. Matt Cartwright, a former member of leadership who represents President Joe Biden's hometown of Scranton, lost to Republican Rob Bresnahan.
And in central and southern California, at least five GOP incumbents are also facing tough re-election bids.
Freshman Rep. John Duarte is facing Democrat Adam Gray in the 13th District; Rep. David Valadao has a rematch against Democrat Rudy Salas in the 22nd District; Rep. Mike Garcia is fending off a challenge from Democrat George Whitesides in the 27th District; longtime Rep. Ken Calvert is trying to hold off Democrat Will Rollins in the 41st District; and Rep. Michelle Steel is squaring off with Democrat Derek Tran in the 48th district.
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and the man who wants to replace him, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., have spent the past weeks crisscrossing those key House battlegrounds, as well as a slew of swing districts in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, Nevada and the Pacific Northwest.
When polls opened Tuesday morning, the chair of the House Democratic campaign arm sounded a note of optimism.
“We are in a very strong position,” Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., told NBC News. “We have great candidates. We are with the American people on policy, in our message. We’ve had the resources to get out the vote and communicate with voters all across the country, and that has all put us in a very strong position today to take back the majority, take back the gavels and make Hakeem Jeffries our next speaker.”
Still, she warned that the battle for the majority could be close and take “a few days” to count all the votes.
But in a speech to supporters in his hometown of Shreveport, Louisiana, Johnson said he would fly late Tuesday to Mar-a-Lago to be with Trump — a sign that the speaker and Republicans feel they are having a good election night. Spokespeople for Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., and GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., said those leaders were also on their way to see Trump.
"I think it is a night, when they tabulate all this, I am very hopeful that we're going to have not only a larger majority in the House to make my job easier," Johnson told the crowd in Shreveport, "but we retake the Senate and the White House as well. I think that's what's going to happen."
A full plate
The new Congress will have to work with the new president from the very start.
The Fiscal Responsibility Act, the product of a deal between President Joe Biden and then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy, extended the nation's debt limit until January 2025. The Treasury Department will be able to avert an immediate catastrophic debt default by using extraordinary measures to free up cash, but another bipartisan agreement will likely be needed.
The Senate will spend the first part of the New Year confirming the president’s judicial and Cabinet nominees, as well as hundreds of others nominated for other political roles.
If Republicans manage to win complete control of the White House and Congress, they will be in the same situation they were in 2016 — with Trump back at the helm.
In that scenario, Republicans will have to determine how to use budget reconciliation, an arcane process that Johnson, ould allow them to fast-track legislation without Democratic support: Do they push forward first with another round of Trump tax cuts? Or do they try once again to repeal or overhaul Obamacare, as they failed to do in 2017?
Johnson, whose political fate is tied to the outcome of the election, has recently said Republicans would go big and pursue a “massive reform” of the Affordable Care Act if his party wins.
“The ACA is so deeply ingrained, we need massive reform to make this work, and we got a lot of ideas on how to do that,” Johnson said at a campaign stop in Pennsylvania.
If Democrats are able to capture the White House and Congress, it would be a remarkable coup for a party faced with one of the most daunting Senate maps in the modern era. That would give Harris' aggressive economic agenda a fighting chance and put legislation to codify abortion rights high on the agenda.
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