How Election Week 2022 Went Down

Well, it looks like Democrats managed to hold onto at least two of the three border-area congressional seats we were keeping a close eye on. In the 28th District, ABC News projects that Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar won his reelection bid against Republican Cassy Garcia, 57 percent to 43 percent (with roughly 77 percent of the expected vote in). Meanwhile, in the 34th District, it looks like Democrat Vicente Gonzalez will unseat Republican Mayra Flores, who briefly held the seat after winning a special election over the summer.

To be clear, these were arguably the easiest seats for Democrats to hang onto in this region. In the 28th District, not only did Cuellar out-raise Garcia, but our forecast gave the incumbent a 76-in-100 chance of winning. Moreover, Cuellar’s anti-abortion, pro-gun rights views and his tough-on-the-border posture fits well with his culturally conservative seat, as made clear by how he sailed to reelection in 2020 — outperforming President Biden by 15 points. The 34th District, meanwhile, was expected to be more of a toss-up, but Gonzalez was able to pull ahead of Flores: 53 percent to 44 percent (with 85 percent of the expected vote in.) Now, we just await results in Texas’s 15th District.

With 79 percent of the expected vote reporting in Colorado’s 3rd District, incumbent Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert is still behind Democrat challenger Adam Frisch, but it is nail-bitingly close. Frisch has 52 percent while Boebert has 48 percent — fewer than 10,000 votes separate them. If Frisch wins, it will meet our definition for an upset, as Boebert had 97-in-100 odds of winning according to our final Deluxe forecast.

What’s shaking in Pennsylvania’s marquee Senate race? An extremely tight contest, that’s what. Fetterman leads Oz 49.4 percent to 48.1 percent with 84 percent of the expected vote reporting. But Fetterman has been running ahead of our benchmarks in much of the state, so he’s probably in a somewhat better position than Oz at this point. And the good news for Fetterman is that deep-blue Philadelphia has only reported about two-thirds of its expected vote, meaning he can likely expect to gain a bunch of votes there as more gets reported.