How Election Week 2022 Went Down

We’re still waiting on final results in Michigan, where the vote-counting has been proceeding at a leisurely pace. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer leads Republican Tudor Dixon, 52-46 percent, with 68 percent of the vote counted. And ABC projects that a ballot measure enshrining the right to an abortion has passed; it leads 55-45 percent. In the state’s 3rd District, just half of the vote has been counted, but Democrat Hillary Scholten leads Republican John Gibbs, 54-43 percent, in a top pickup opportunity for Democrats. In the 7th District, Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin trails her GOP challenger, Tom Barrett, 48-50 percent, with just over 80 percent of expected votes counted. And in the 8th District, Democratic Rep. Dan Kildee leads Republican Paul Junge, 49-46 percent, with just over half of the vote counted.

There’s a host of House races in New York we’re watching that remain uncalled. Here’s a quick roundup of where things stand.

In the three Long Island-based districts that are not currently projected by ABC News, the Republican candidates are all ahead:

• In the 1st District, Republican Nick LaLota is ahead of Bridget Fleming, 53 percent to 46 percent, with 69 percent of the expected vote in.
• Republican George Santos is ahead of Democrat Robert Zimmerman in the 3rd District, 54 percent to 46 percent, with 89 percent of the expected vote in.
• Republican Anthony D’Esposito is 4 percentage points ahead of Democrat Laura Gillen, with 93 percent of the expected vote, in the 4th District.

In the four upstate races we’re watching:

• DCCC head Sean Patrick Maloney trails his Republican challenger Sean Lawler by 6 percentage points, with 85 percent of the expected vote, in the 17th District.
• The 18th District has Rep. Pat Ryan and Republican Colin Schmitt tied at 50 percent with 97 percent of the expected vote in (Ryan has about 2,000 more votes, but it’s within a rounding error).
• In the 19th District, Republican Marc Molinaro is up, 51 percent to 49 percent, over Democrat Josh Riley, with 99 percent of the expected vote in.
• And finally, in the 22nd District, Democrat Francis Conole and Brandon Williams are within 300 votes of each other, with 87 percent of the expected vote in.

New York is another state that allows ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted provided they arrive within a week, so particularly in the close races upstate, we might not have calls in the short term.

ABC News has projected Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman will win Pennsylvania’s Senate race. This is an extremely important result for the overall Senate math, as it represents a net gain for Democrats in a seat held by retiring Republican Sen. Pat Toomey. With this win, Democrats need to hold just two of their three most endangered seats in Arizona, Georgia and Nevada to retain a status quo total of 50-50 in the upper chamber, which would keep Democrats in power via Vice President Kamala Harris’s tie-breaking vote. Beyond the numbers, Fetterman’s win is especially notable given that he had a stroke earlier this year, which has been a major focus of the campaign because of debates over his perceived ability to perform the job of a U.S. senator. However that affected the race, Oz may have been too unpopular with Pennsylvania voters, who in polls regularly said they had more favorable views of Fetterman than Oz.