How Election Week 2022 Went Down

Yeah, at the risk of using a cliche, that 13th District call is a little bit of a game-changer. If Democrats can pick off some of the “likely Republican” seats, they have more pathways to hold the House. I wouldn’t bet on them doing so, but they have a chance.

So it’s midnight and we still have more than four dozen unprojected House races — meaning we’ve likely got quite some time until we get a call for control in Congress’s lower chamber.

For much of the cycle, North Carolina’s 13th District was one of the likeliest tipping-point districts according to the forecast. That’s a fancy way of saying that it’s one of the most likely to put the winning party over the edge of a majority in the House. The fact that the Democrat just won it is more evidence that tonight is one of the better outcomes Democrats could have hoped for, given the national political environment.

Wow, ABC News just projected a pretty big upset in North Carolina’s 13th District. Republican Bo Hines, the 26-year-old former college football player who was backed by Trump, is trailing Democrat Wiley Nickel 49 percent to 51 percent with about 99 percent of the expected vote in. Our forecast gave Hines a 77-in-100 chance of winning, so Nickel’s expected win here is pretty notable.

Hines has been noncommittal about whether President Biden won the 2020 election fair and square (he did). And other election deniers — like Arizona GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado — are similarly trailing in their races tonight despite our forecast giving both candidates an edge over their respective Democratic opponents.

Returns in the Kansas attorney general race have crept forward, to 86 percent reporting … and it is still a statistical tie between Chris Mann and Kris Kobach.

The NYT needle says it’s very likely that Fetterman wins Pennsylvania, and if you look at the outstanding vote you can see why. He’s ahead already and far more of the outstanding vote is in Philly and other blue areas.

It’s taking a minute to count ballots in Arizona, as expected! Right now in the Senate race, with 51 percent of expected votes reporting, incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly has gained a lead over Trump-backed Republican Blake Masters: Kelly has 58 percent to Masters’s 40 percent (Libertarian candidate Marc Victor is pulling 2 percent of the vote). In the governor race, also with 51 percent reporting, Democrat Katie Hobbs is also leading with 57 percent over Republican Kari Lake at 43 percent. As I mentioned earlier, we’re expecting these races to tighten as more same-day ballots (which lean red) are tallied, but these healthy leads are good sign for the Democrats — they need to pull ahead like to fend off a GOP surge from those Election Day tallies.

There are now 14 gubernatorial and secretary of state races where election deniers are on the ballot that have been called. More than half of these election deniers have won their races so far, with 12 races still to go.

According to CNN, New Mexico’s Democratic Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver is projected to win reelection after fending off Republican nominee Audrey Trujillo, a staunchly conservative election denier who campaigned almost completely on a voter integrity-related platform.

ABC News is reporting that Cortez Masto has filed a lawsuit in Nevada to keep polling places open longer, citing long lines and delays in some polling places in Clark County, which includes Las Vegas, because some ballot printers ran out of paper. The issue required the machines to be replaced entirely, which in some locations took up to two hours, according to the campaign. The campaign cited a state law that polling locations must be open for 12 hours.

In this video, Amelia and Galen discuss two historic governor’s races. Voters in Massachusetts have made history by electing the first openly lesbian governor, Maura Healey, and it’s also the first time any state has elected women for both governor and lieutenant governor. Voters in Maryland elected the state’s first Black governor, Wes Moore.

With 52 percent reporting, Lee’s lead in the Utah Senate race has narrowed somewhat. He still leads McMullin, though, 53 percent to 43 percent.

After the 2020 election, I promised myself that in thinking about future elections, I would down-weight polls relative to the fundamentals — things like control of the presidency. But so far, the results from today’s elections may force (yet) another rethinking.

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper is claiming that Democrats successfully stopped Republicans from nabbing a supermajority in the state legislature. If that’s true, that’s big news for abortion access in the state — without a veto-proof majority, the legislature will be unable to pass further restrictions on abortion while Cooper, a Democrat, is governor. North Carolina is one of the states that saw the biggest increase in abortions in the two months after Dobbs, suggesting that it’s become a destination for women traveling outside their state for abortion, so continued access to abortion in the state is a big deal.

With around half the expected vote reporting in New Hampshire, Democrats are on track to hold both U.S. House seats. Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas leads in the 1st District 54 percent to 46 percent, and Democratic Rep. Annie Kuster leads in the 2nd District 57 percent to 43 percent.

Oz just told an audience in brief remarks that when all the ballots are counted, he believes he will win. He knows something about extended counts — his primary win was only affirmed weeks after the primary.

We’ve written about ballot initiatives that would make marijuana legal for recreational use in Arkansas and Maryland, but three other states — Missouri, North Dakota, and South Dakota — are also voting on that issue this year. The “Yes” vote is slightly ahead in Missouri, 51 to 49 with 62 percent of the expected vote in. In North Dakota and South Dakota, the “No” vote is ahead 55 to 45, with 68 and 57 percent of the expected votes in, respectively.

In Rhode Island’s 2nd District, ABC News projects that Democrat Seth Magaziner will defeat Republican Allan Fung.

ABC News projects that the ballot measures that would enshrine reproductive freedom — including abortion rights — in the California and Vermont state constitutions have passed. This is not a big surprise, since voters in both states overwhelmingly support abortion rights. The aftermath of the California amendment could be interesting, though, because it’s not clear whether it will actually change state law. Right now, abortion is legal in California only through fetal viability. That’s likely to be challenged in the courts now.

As Amelia and I wrote for the site recently, we could soon see more female governors serving at one time than ever before. Up until now, only nine women have simultaneously occupied governors’ mansions. Women have a hard time at this level because voters’ prejudice against female candidates are particularly strong when women run for executive-level offices. Several decades of social science research has found that voters are more comfortable electing women when they run to be part of a group — like a state legislature or Congress — rather than a position of high-level leadership, although some evidence shows that Democratic-leaning voters have become more open to the idea.

Plus, states’ cultures play a role and can influence the number of women on the bench, ready to be called up. But so far, it has been a pretty good night for women running for governor. In New York, Democrat Kathy Hochul is the projected winner, making her the first women elected to that position in the state. And in Arkansas, Republican Sarah Huckabee Sanders will be the first female governor there. The women running in toss-up races were largely facing other women (like in Oregon and Arizona), so women will win there, it just remains to be seen from which party. There are still 18 states that haven’t had a woman lead their state, but women are slowly chipping away.

Going into tonight, there were 10 states with governors from the party that the state didn’t vote for in the 2020 presidential election. With Maryland and Massachusetts electing Democrats, that number is momentarily down to eight, although we await results from a host of states that could bring it back up.

Oregon has had one of the stranger gubernatorial races this cycle, with independent Betsy Johnson making a splash and state Rep. Christine Drazan positioned to potentially be the first Republican to win the governorship since 1982. And things are looking close, with Democrat Tina Kotek, the former speaker of the state House, leading Drazan by 2 points, 46 percent to 44 percent, with 55 percent of the expected vote reporting. Still quite a ways to go, but Kotek might keep the Democratic winning streak alive, as the final polls suggested she had consolidated Democratic support to some extent.

We just got another House upset in Ohio, as Kaleigh mentioned. Both the 13th and the 1st Districts, which our forecast saw as likely Republican, have been projected for Democrats. It’s a notable development and one that a podcast listener inquired about earlier this week.

The question was whether statewide over-performers like Tim Ryan end up having an effect on down-ballot races in the forecast. The answer was that such effects are not considered by the forecast, but they probably should be! That’s because it looks like the victorious Democrats have Ryan to thank for their upsets. While Ryan did not ultimately win, he likely turned out voters sympathetic to Democrats who might have otherwise stayed home.

I posted about Minnesota’s 2nd District race recently, and not much has changed there, but there is one thing I want to point out — at 29 percent reporting, 3 percent of the vote is going to Legal Marijuana Now Party candidate Paula Overby.

Paula Overby is dead. After her death on October 5, conservative groups continued to urge voters to cast a ballot for her anyway “in loving memory“. The last Legal Marijuana Now party candidate in this district also died before the election. But the late Adam Weeks got 6 percent of the vote in this district in 2020 anyway.

Amazingly, it’s not the unfortunate habit of dying before the election that makes the Legal Marijuana Now candidates kind of sketchy. Weeks was one the members of two different marijuana legalization parties implicated in GOP plans to split the vote in several races in 2020. Before he declared his candidacy, Weeks had posted pro-Trump posts on Facebook, as well as posts supporting other Republican candidates — only to take them down later.

🚨 UPSET ALERT 🚨 In our first two upsets of the night (whenever the projected winner had less than a 40-in-100 chance in the final Deluxe forecast) ABC News projects that Democrat Emilia Sykes will win OH-13 over Republican Madison Gesiotto Gilbert. Sykes had a 18.6 percent chance of winning in FiveThirtyEight’s final Deluxe pre-election forecast. And in Ohio’s 1st District, Democrat Greg Landsman is projected to win over incumbent Republican Rep. Steve Chabot. Landsman had a 16.1 percent chance of winning in the final Deluxe preelection forecast.

ABC News projects that embattled Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has won his reelection bid against Democrat Rochelle Garza.

Eighty-two percent of the vote is now in in the Kansas attorney general race, and Kobach and Mann are now tied, 50/50. A Kobach win here would have some big implications for immigrant communities in Kansas, as well as for voting rights in the state. At every stage of his career, Kobach has focused on rooting out voter fraud (which he heavily blames on illegal immigrants) — even when he couldn’t find evidence of fraud was happening.

With some surprising House wins in Ohio and 56 seats yet to be called, the balance of power in the House has Democrats at 176 seats and Republicans at 204.

The voters of Maryland have spoken — ABC News projects that the ballot measure legalizing recreational marijuana in Maryland has passed.

Elsewhere in Maryland, the incumbent House member in Maryland’s 6th District could be in trouble. Democrat David Trone won his seat in 2018, and this year’s race is a rematch against state delegate Neil Parrott. The seat got a LOT more competitive during redistricting, which is why we’re watching it tonight. Trone is one of the wealthiest members of Congress, and he’s spent millions on his reelection bid. Right now, with 63 percent of the expected vote reporting, Parrott is leading with 53 percent of the vote.

ABC News projects that Democrat Janet T. Mills will win the governor race in Maine.

We have a projection in Ohio — ABC News projects incumbent Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur will win re-election in Ohio’s 9th District, fending off Republican challenger J.R. Majewski. During redistricting, Republicans in the Ohio Legislature redrew the 9th District to make it much more favorable to the GOP. In the old map, Kaptur’s district had a partisan lean of D+16. Under the new map, it’s R+6. This made it fertile ground for Republicans to pick up a seat in the House, but Majewski proved to be a weak candidate. He’s an election denier, attended Jan. 6 and — perhaps more crucially — had a minor scandal when the AP reported that he had misrepresented his military service record. After that news broke, the National Republican Congressional Committee spiked a nearly $1 million ad buy it had planned in the race. In the end, that plus Kaptur’s incumbent edge looked to be enough to keep this seat blue.

ABC News projects that Democrat Greg Landsman will win in OH-1. Landsman had a 16.1 percent chance of winning in FiveThirtyEight’s final Deluxe pre-election forecast.

As Senate races get projected, Galen Druke looks at FiveThirtyEight’s interactive forecast to see how the odds have changed. In fact, they’ve changed since we made this video — ABC News has since projected a win for Republican Ted Budd. (A projection Galen guessed while filming this video.)

With Washington’s Senate race projected to be won by Democrat Patty Murray, the balance of power in the Senate is exactly even. Both Democrats and Republicans currently hold 46 seats each.

ABC News projects that Connecticut Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont will win reelection.

With ABC News’s latest projection on Virginia’s 2nd District, we now have four House seats that Democrats have lost. Virginia’s 2nd used to be highly competitive prior to the redistricting cycle, but its new congressional lines now mean a Republican-leaning district with an R+6 partisan lean.

ABC News projects that Patty Murray will win reelection, defeating Republican Tiffany Smiley. A triage nurse in her first run for office, Smiley had impressed Republicans in D.C. but falls short in the Evergreen State.

I was always pretty skeptical of the polling showing Zeldin tight. It had the feeling of wish-casting since the media cares so much about New York. But it’s also the sort of race where Democrats may have been motivated to turn out by the narrative that the race was close. There’s otherwise not a ton to vote for if you’re a New York City voter, for instance, since the mayoral election occurs in off-years and since there aren’t many competitive congressional districts in NYC.

As others on this live blog have noted, and as I’ve written previously, a loss for Abrams isn’t too surprising — but I’ll be curious to see where she lands next. Back in 2018, she was heralded by the Democratic Party as a promising new leader and there was speculation about whether she’d be chosen as Biden’s running mate during his 2020 bid for the presidency (a prospect Abrams welcomed). Of course, it’s probably way too early for Abrams to announce what’s next for her, but she could risk her political credibility if she decides to run again and loses. I’ve plugged this story once before — but one last time won’t hurt, right? In short, candidates who fail to win two consecutive runs for office could be marked as perennial candidates. Plus, candidates who have had multiple unsuccessful bids for higher office often don’t have great track records.

Meanwhile, Johnson leads Barnes 51 percent to 49 percent. There really hasn’t been a lot of split-ticket voting in Wisconsin, but the tiny bit there was may have been enough to lead to a Democratic win for governor and Republican win for Senate.

It’s been slow count from Connecticut so far, but we’re finally starting to get some clarity: ABC News projects that incumbent Sen. Richard Blumenthal will win reelection for the Senate. Meanwhile, we’re still awaiting results for the governor’s race and all five House seats. That said, there’s really only one major race in the state that’s raising eyebrows: Incumbent Rep. Jahana Hayes (another 2018 “blue wave” freshman) is hoping to keep her seat.

ABC News projects that Democrat Patty Murray will win the Senate race in Washington.

We’re up to 69 percent reporting in the race for Wisconsin governor, and Evers leads Michels 51 percent to 48 percent. This race could still go either way, but it sounds like Republicans are pessimistic:

ABC News has projected that Democratic Rep. Sanford Bishop has won reelection in Georgia’s 2nd District. (He currently leads Republican Chris West 55 percent to 45 percent.) This district got a bit redder in redistricting, leading to early speculation that Bishop could lose, but he was always a pretty clear favorite in our forecast.

Keeping an eye on other important pairs of Senate and governor races, Wisconsin is near the top of the list. In the governor’s race, Democratic incumbent Tony Evers leads Republican Tim Michel by 3 points, 51 percent to 48 percent, while in the Senate race Republican incumbent Ron Johnson leads Democrat Mandela Barnes by a bit more than 1 point, 50.7 percent to 49.1 percent. That means there’s about a 5-point gap in margins between the two races (D+3 vs R+2). The closeness between the two races might mean that Barnes has a real shot at overtaking Johnson — or that Michels might be able to catch Evers. Much depends on what votes are outstanding: Overall, 66 percent of the expected vote has reported, but Wisconsin’s vote is very much about how much is left in Milwaukee and Dane (home to Madison) counties, the two deep-blue vote sources. The good news for Republicans is that much of Dane County’s vote is in, but Democrats can pin their hopes on the fact that just 57 percent of Milwaukee’s expected vote has reported at this point.

Well, it looks like another close Senate contest in North Carolina. But, once again, Democrats failed to prevail. Despite an early lead for Democrat Cheri Beasley, ABC News has projected a win for Republican Ted Budd — who currently leads 51 percent to 47 percent, with 91 percent of the expected vote in. On the one hand, this shouldn’t be too surprising since North Carolina Democrats haven’t won a Senate race in the state since 2008. And we always expected this race to be competitive given that recent North Carolina federal elections have been very close. But I’m curious as to just how much of Beasley’s loss can be attributed to lackluster support from national Democrats for her campaign.

Polls closed in California 20 minutes ago, but nobody should be holding their breath. With Democrats expected to run the table at the state level, and incumbent Sen. Alex Padilla already projected to win twice (OK, yes, in different elections — one to finish the final two months of Vice President Kamala Harris’s term and one for a new six-year term), there are only a few House races we’re following. They’re mostly in Southern California and the Central Valley, but given how California conducts its elections, we’re not expecting a ton of calls in quick succession. The state will count ballots postmarked by Election Day that arrive up to a week later, and some of the counties in the congressional districts we’re interested in are notoriously slow, so if you’re hoping to hear about the fates of Reps. Katie Porter, Michelle Steel, Young Kim, Josh Harder, Mike Garcia, et. al — you might need to wait a bit longer.

Elsewhere on the New York ballot, 54 percent of the expected vote in the governor’s race is reporting and Hochul still has a wide lead over Zeldin (60 percent vs. 40 percent). This is not what the media narrative predicted going into the race — in October, there were reports of a Zeldin “surge” and a race that was “uncomfortably close” for Democrats. However, Hochul was favored to win in our forecast, and things are certainly looking good for her right now.

Santos, in New York’s 3rd District, is also someone who attended the Jan. 6 rally. He has said he was “at the Ellipse” where Trump made his speech that day.