Nov. 11, 2022 US election coverage

Our live coverage of the 2022 midterm elections has moved. You can find the latest news and results here.

The chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Bill Gates pushed back on allegations of misconduct from Arizona Republican senatorial candidate Blake Masters, the Republican National Committee, and the Republican State Party of Arizona on Friday night.

“The suggestion by the Republican National Committee that there is something untoward going on here in Maricopa County is absolutely false and again, is offensive to these good elections workers,” he said.

On Friday night the RNC and the Republican Party of Arizona tweeted a statement criticizing the process in Maricopa County, and demanding that the county require “around-the-clock shifts of ballot processing” until all of the votes are counted.

Addressing the specific accusations from the RNC statement, Gates said “I would prefer that if there are concerns that they have, that they communicate those to us here. I’m a Republican. Three of my colleagues on the board are Republicans. Raise these issues with us and discuss them with us, as opposed to making these baseless claims.”

“Let the count continue on and at the end, if they have issues they choose to take to court, they have every right to do that, and we’ll let that process play through.” Gates added. 

Responding to claims that the count is “taking too long,” Gates said the county’s pace is in line with previous years. 

Tabulation concerns: Gates also responded to an assertion from Masters that the county had mixed up uncounted ballots with counted ballots and should “wipe the slate clean” and start counting all over again.  

In an interview Friday with Fox News’s Tucker Carlson, Masters said that on “at least two occasions,” the county mixed up uncounted ballots placed in a secure drop box after they were not able to be processed on-site because of technical glitches, with ballots that had already been counted.

Gates said that there were two vote centers where ballots “co-mingled” -– but said that the county has a process to separate them out. 

And addressing the suggestion from Masters that the county should wipe the slate clean and start counting over again, Gates said that “is simply not allowed for under Arizona law.”

The voting tabulator glitches in Maricopa County on Election Day have become fodder for right-wing conspiracy theories. 

CNN projected Friday night that Arizona Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly would hold his seat.

Maricopa County official speaks with CNN:

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Democratic Rep. Greg Stanton will defeat Republican Kelly Cooper to win Arizona’s 4th Congressional District, CNN projects.

The win would be a hold for the Democratic Party.

CNN projects Democrats now have 203 of the 218 seats needed to control the House.

CNN projects Republicans have 211 seats.

Democrats did better than the historical average in this midterm election, CNN’s John King said Friday night.

But even so, if Democrats hold the Senate while Republicans control the House, it will be complicated for President Joe Biden to advance his agenda, King says.

CNN has not yet projected who will win control of the Senate or the House.

Watch below for CNN’s John King’s analysis:

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Democrat Adrian Fontes will win Arizona’s secretary of state race, CNN projects, and defeat Republican state Rep. Mark Finchem.

Finchem is one of Arizona’s most strident backers of former President Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election. Finchem, a self-proclaimed member of the far-right extremist group the Oath Keepers, has called the 2020 election “irredeemably compromised,” co-sponsored a bill that would’ve allowed the legislature to reject election results and attended Trump’s speech on Jan. 6 (but he’s denied he participated in the riot).

Fontes had called Finchem’s ideas “dangerous” and shortly after announcing his campaign called the state representative a “traitor clown.”

Arizona’s secretary of state serves as next in line to the governor, as the state doesn’t have a lieutenant governor.

The race had been one of the most closely watched contests for state election chief in the country, and national Democratic groups spent heavily to keep the open seat in their party’s column – as Finchem outraised Fontes. 

The current officeholder, Democrat Katie Hobbs, ran for Arizona governor this year. 

Fontes oversaw the 2020 election in Maricopa County, home to Phoenix. But he lost his reelection bid as county recorder that year after facing criticism for some of the changes he made to the county’s procedures during the pandemic. 

The latest results from Maricopa County are “not what the Republicans needed,” CNN’s John King said Friday night.

Shortly after the new batch was released, CNN projected that Democratic incumbent Mark Kelly will win against Republican Blake Masters.

“When the new votes come in, you have to meet your target because every time new votes come in, there’s a smaller pool left to count. So you need to meet or exceed your target if you’re the trailing candidate,” King said.

In Maricopa County, Arizona’s most populated, Democrat Katie Hobbs now has 667,833 votes to Republican Kari Lake’s 607,359 votes.

Lake’s vote count is competitive, King said. “But if you’re trailing you need a bigger percentage than that.”

After the latest batch of Maricopa County votes, Hobbs has increased her lead state-wide, King noted.

But as more vote counts are released, it’s still mathematically possible for Lake to make up the difference, he said.

Arizona Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly will win a full six-year term, CNN projects, defeating Republican Blake Masters, a venture capitalist who was backed by former President Donald Trump and had repeated some of his falsehoods about the 2020 election.  

The win by Kelly, who was elected in 2020 to fill the term of the late GOP Sen. John McCain, is a critical victory that edges Democrats one step closer to their goal of maintaining control of the US Senate – which would be a stunning feat given the low approval ratings of President Joe Biden and the unfavorable economic climate that seemed to be driving momentum toward the GOP.  

With Kelly’s win in Arizona, Democrats will hold 49 seats and Republicans will hold 49. With the Arizona seat in their column, Democrats would need to notch just one more seat to hold the majority in the upper chamber, following their pickup in Pennsylvania where Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a Democrat, defeated Trump-backed Mehmet Oz in the contest to replace retiring Republican Sen. Pat Toomey. (The Senate is currently divided 50-50, but Vice President Kamala Harris casts the tie breaking vote).  

Both parties are still eyeing an incredibly close race in Nevada where Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto is trying to fend off a challenge from Republican Adam Laxalt, the state’s former attorney general. Democrats are also defending a seat in Georgia, where Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker are headed to a December 6 runoff, CNN projects.  

Control of the US House still hangs in the balance, but it is clear that even if Republicans win a majority, it will be a far more slender advantage than GOP leaders had hoped.  

Kelly entered the 2022 cycle well positioned to withstand the headwinds facing Democrats – even in a purple state like Arizona that Joe Biden narrowly won – because of his formidable fundraising and unique personal brand as a retired astronaut, a Navy veteran and the husband of former Rep. Gabby Giffords.   

As the votes were counted in Arizona, Masters’ campaign team had hoped that an unusually large tranche of mail-in ballots that were dropped off at polling locations on Election Day would favor Republicans. Those ballots in Maricopa County, the state’s most populous, took longer to count than those cast in person on Tuesday because officials had to verify signatures on the ballot envelopes.  

In a call with reporters on Friday afternoon, Masters campaign advisers argued that Masters had a path to victory. “We always knew it was going to be a close race,” one campaign officials said. “Smart observers looking at this race know it is entirely too close to call. It’s probably going to come down to 10,000 votes either way. And we feel good, we have a path.”  

But ultimately as the tallies continued, Kelly opened a lead that Masters could not overcome.  

Earlier in the race, Masters, a first-time candidate, was able to navigate the GOP primary gauntlet with significant financial backing from conservative tech billionaire Peter Thiel, his former boss. He appealed to Republicans by promising to prioritize immigration issues, but also by echoing Trump’s lies about the 2020 election. In one campaign video released last year, he said he believed Trump won.  

Masters then appeared to modulate his tone about the 2020 election results as well as the conservative stances he had sought out during the primary on abortion – in what initially seemed like an effort to appeal to broader swath of the Arizona electorate. (Though Republicans comprise a plurality in Arizona, independents make up about a third of the electorate and often sway close elections).   

After his primary victory in August, Masters scrubbed his website of language that included the false claim that the election was stolen. Under questioning from the moderator during a debate with Kelly, Masters conceded that he had not seen evidence of fraud in the 2020 vote counting or election results in a way that would have changed the outcome. In that debate and on the trail, Kelly had argued that the “wheels” could “come off our democracy” if election deniers like Masters were elected.   

But Masters seemed to reverse course after receiving a phone call from Trump urging him to “go stronger” on election denialism, a conversation that was captured in a Fox documentary. In the final week of the campaign, Masters told CNN’s Kyung Lah he didn’t believe moderates were bothered by his comments about the 2020 election, insisting that voters were far more focused on their concerns about inflation, crime and the border.   

Throughout the campaign, Kelly portrayed Masters as an extremist, who would jeopardize abortion rights, as well as Social Security and Medicare. In a state where lawmakers passed a new ban on abortion at 15 weeks earlier this year – and where there are legal efforts underway to ban abortion in almost all cases – Kelly’s campaign kept a relentless focus on Masters’ anti-abortion stances.   

Masters had said he would support a national ban on abortion after 15 weeks, a proposal that was advanced by South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham. That bill includes exceptions for rape, incest and to protect the life of the mother. 

CNN analysts break down the latest numbers:

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Democratic Rep. Ami Bera will win California’s 6th Congressional District while fellow Democratic Rep. Julia Brownley will win the 26th district, CNN projects.

The victories are a hold for the Democratic Party.

CNN now projects Democrats have 202 of the 218 seats needed to control the House.

CNN projects Republicans have 211 seats.

Republican Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo will defeat Democratic Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak, CNN projects.

Sisolak issued a statement conceding the race.

“While votes are still coming in – and we need every ballot tallied and every voice heard – it appears we will fall a percentage point or so short of winning,” Sisolak said. “Obviously that is not the outcome I want, but I believe in our election system, in democracy and honoring the will of Nevada voters.”

In his concession statement, Sisolak also voiced his support for fellow Democrat Catherine Cortez-Masto, who is locked in a tight race against Republican candidate Adam Laxalt.

Nevada has been a battleground state since the early 1990s, but Joe Biden narrowly clinched victory in the Silver State in 2020 despite a significant effort by Donald Trump, particularly in Nevada’s rural areas. Democrats have made gains in competitive races in recent years by relying, in part, on turning out working-class voters and Latinos, two key constituencies in a state that is heavily reliant on tourism as well as the hospitality and service industries.  

But those two voter blocs were among the hardest hit by the economic downturn during the pandemic, which sent unemployment in Nevada soaring to 30% in April of 2020 – the highest in the nation and more than twice the US unemployment rate at that time. The state’s workers then faced a double hit as inflation rose and gas prices topped $5 a gallon in a state where many people must drive long distances to work.  

That created an especially sour mood among voters as Sisolak embarked on his reelection campaign. Though the Democratic governor touted the recovery in the state’s labor market, Lombardo argued that Sisolak was painting a distorted picture of Nevadans’ economic struggles, because many Nevadans are still underemployed, he said. Lombardo also accused Sisolak of crushing businesses in the state with Covid-19 restrictions and onerous regulations. He said Sisolak was too slow to reopen schools and businesses, slowing the state’s recovery. But the Democratic governor pushed back by stating his primary focus was to “save lives.”  

Lombardo was one of the rare GOP candidates backed by both Trump and the Republican establishment. During the general election, he, at times, sought to keep his distance from Trump as he tried to win over moderate and independent voters. During a debate with Sisolak, Lombardo said he wouldn’t describe Trump as a “great” president and said he did not agree with Trump’s false assertions that the 2020 presidential election was rigged.  

But Sisolak suggested that Lombardo was giving different answers to different audiences. He also relentlessly attacked Lombardo’s shifts on abortion, which is protected in Nevada up to 24 weeks by a 1990 voter referendum. Lombardo argued that Nevada’s current law should stay in place, but Sisolak noted that he had changed his position several times during the course of the campaign. In May, for example, Lombardo told a columnist he would support sending voters a referendum moving the 24-week limit to 13 weeks. But he later said he had thought more about that potential change and no longer supported it. Still, Sisolak portrayed his Republican opponent as a threat to women’s reproductive rights.  

Sisolak did not invite Biden to campaign with him in the final stretch, but he also argued the president was being unfairly blamed for inflation, as well as problems that he inherited from Trump.  

The campaign of Blake Masters, the Republican Senate candidate in Arizona, says there is a possible path to victory within the batch of ballots that will be released at 10 p.m. ET by Maricopa County.

The campaign, trailing Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, believes if there is to be a tide shift, it will be in the mail-in ballots dropped off on Election Day.

“We have a path,” the campaign said in a background call with reporters ahead of tonight’s election results. 

The Kelly campaign, for its part, told CNN it feels increasingly confident with each passing election result from Maricopa County, believing Masters’ path is becoming more challenging.

Some background: Maricopa County, Arizona’s largest and home to Phoenix, is expecting to release approximately 80,000 votes around 10 p.m. ET, chairman of the Maricopa County Board Supervisors, Bill Gates, told reporters earlier on Friday. 

More than half of the votes released tonight will be absentee ballots that voters dropped off at polling places on Election Day – and this is the first report to include ballots from this large batch. 

The total will also include a decent portion of Election Day ballots that were not able to be read by tabulator machines due to technical issues that day, and the remainder of early votes the county received before Election Day. 

The majority of the ballots the county releases moving forward will be absentee ballots dropped off on Election Day. 

After tonight’s release, there will be less than 300,000 total ballots left to tabulate in the county.

CNN’s Annie Grayer contributed to this report.

In the hotly contested Senate race in Nevada, Republican candidate Adam Laxalt’s lead over incumbent Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto has shrunk to about 800 votes – after new tallies were released from Clark County, the largest in the state that includes Las Vegas.

Of those newly reported ballots, about 66% of them were for Cortez Masto, according to analysis from CNN’s John King. He added that most of the ballots yet to be counted are in Clark County.

“This is where the largest number of outstanding votes are still,” King said of the Nevada county. “She needs to do this. This is what she needs to do to catch up,” he said referring to how Cortez Masto is winning the majority of the votes in Clark County.

CNN is yet to project which party will win the House and the Senate as several key races are too early to call — including this one in Nevada. Right now, Democrats have won 48 states and Republicans hold 49.

There are still about 68,000 votes left to be tabulated in Nevada, according to CNN’s David Chalian.

Of these remaining votes, Cortez Masto needs between 50-51% of them to win, while Laxalt needs to get between 49-50% to hold onto his slight lead, Chalian predicted.

Full breakdown: Click below for the full analysis of the Nevada data from CNN’s John King.

Despite the push by some conservatives to delay next week’s Senate GOP leadership elections, they are going on as scheduled.

Sen. John Barrasso, who oversees the leadership vote, shared the news in a message to the conference that was obtained by CNN.

“I welcome the questions and points made in the letter circulated by Senators Rick Scott, Lee and Johnson,” Barrasso wrote, referencing a message from the three senators that called for “serious discussions” about the party’s lackluster midterms showing before a vote.

“I too support a robust Conference discussion about our agenda, federal budgeting and spending, floor procedures, and the other important priorities outlined prior to elections and the beginning of the 118th Congress,” Barrasso wrote.

“To help accomplish that, I propose we continue that effort immediately,” he continued.

The conference will hold a policy lunch Tuesday and then on Wednesday meet for the scheduled elections, the senator said. Barrasso argued both meetings would provide ample opportunity for debate.

Democratic Rep. Susie Lee will win her bid for a third term in Nevada’s 3rd Congressional District, fending off a fierce challenge from Republican April Becker, CNN projects, in a race that drew millions of dollars from the super PACs tied to the House leadership.

This win would be a hold for the Democratic Party.

CNN now projects Democrats have 200 seats of the 218 seats needed to control the House.

CNN projects Republicans have 211 seats.

Democrat Tina Kotek will win an unexpectedly difficult race for governor in Oregon, CNN projects, where the independent candidacy of former state Sen. Betsy Johnson had created a rare pathway for a competitive race in a deep-blue state.

Kotek will be one of the first out lesbian governors in the nation along with Democrat Maura Healey, who clinched the Massachusetts governorship Tuesday.

Her Republican opponent Christine Drazan conceded the race, saying she’d spoken with Kotek and “hope for the best for our state as she steps into this role.”

“Though the campaign for Governor of Oregon has come to an end, I am immensely grateful for all the Oregonians who joined our movement to take our state in a new direction,” Drazan said in the statement.

Johnson, a former state senator who cast herself as the candidate who would govern from the center, received more than 8% of the vote, according to the most recent tally.

Listen to the CNN Political Briefing podcast to learn where the vote counts stand in key states.

Several Metro Atlanta school districts will transition to remote learning for the Dec. 6 Senate run-off between Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker. 

“A majority of Fulton County schools serve as polling sites, and this decision will keep students and staff safer. Since the run-off election is expected to draw high voter turnout, there will be a large number of outside visitors to our campuses. The additional traffic can also create campus congestion with packed parking lots, which can affect buses and car rider lanes,” Fulton County Schools said in a statement.

Additionally, Atlanta Public Schools said that 29 facilities are active polling stations with three additional locations serving as ballot drop-off sites.

“December 6 will be a virtual, asynchronous learning day for all schools and all departments, to support quality teaching and learning while balancing the safety and security of scholars and staff,” APS said in their statement.

Cobb County Schools will also have a virtual learning day on Dec. 6, the district announced saying many of their buildings will be directly impacted by the run-off election.

Political organizations, especially Democratic-leaning unions, but also Republican organizations, that spent months urging people to vote in Nevada’s key Senate race are now turning their focus toward “curing” flawed mail-in ballots in the still-uncalled contest.

“Curing” is a process where voters correct problems with their mail ballot, ensuring that it gets counted. This can mean validating that a ballot is truly from them, by adding a missing signature, or by addressing signature-match issues. The deadline for voters to “cure” their ballots in Nevada is Nov. 14, according to state law. 

With the razor-thin margin in the contest between Democratic incumbent Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto and Republican challenger Adam Laxalt, the relatively small universe of ballots that need to be “cured” could make a difference. Laxalt currently leads Cortez Masto by about 9,000 votes, according to the latest tally.

The Clark County Registrar announced earlier on Friday that 9,659 ballots were eligible to be cured in the pivotal county, which includes Las Vegas. Officials from Washoe County, which is home to Reno, said they have 1,440 ballots that need to be cured.

The Culinary Union Local 226, which represent roughly 60,000 workers in populous Clark and Washoe County and is central in Democratic efforts in the state, tells CNN they have the “largest cure team in the state,” with union spokesperson Bethany Khan saying the group has “200 canvassers doing phone bank, door knocking, and employee dining room cures.” 

Other Democratic groups are also engaged in the curing effort. Somos Votantes, a political organization founded in 2019 that targeted boosting Latino turnout in Nevada, is reaching out to voters in both Spanish and English and offering to provide transportation to voters who need it.

Republicans are also engaged in the effort. Republican National Committee spokeswoman Hallie Balch said in a statement that the group had “a duty to inform voters that their ballot needs curing in order to be counted.” 

According to Clark County’s Election website, curing happens “if a question arises about your signature on the outside of your mail ballot return envelope or if you did not put your signature on the outside of that envelope, the Election Department will notify you using the contact information in your voter registration.”

Former President Donald Trump is calling up his allies in the Senate, GOP sources tell CNN, and making a suggestion on the heels of a lackluster midterms performance: Take aim at Mitch McConnell.

Trump, who is facing a round of sharp criticism from inside his own party for hurting Republican candidates in the midterms, has instead sought to gin up opposition to McConnell before leadership elections next week.

The GOP leader has already locked down enough support to win another two years, which would make him the longest-serving Senate party leader in US history. But he is facing new dissension within the ranks as a faction of Senate Republicans are grumbling internally about the timing of the leadership elections next week and are now calling for a delay —  something that several GOP sources signal is unlikely to happen.

Privately, Trump is trying to turn GOP anger toward McConnell. 

In phone calls with allies, elected officials and incoming members of Congress, the former president has accused McConnell of spending recklessly in states where Republicans faced significant headwinds at the expense of candidates in more competitive contests.

He and aides have specifically alluded to the Alaska Senate race, where the McConnell-aligned Senate Leadership Fund spent more than $5 million attacking a Trump-backed Republican challenger to incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski. That candidate, Kelly Tshibaka, appears poised to advance to a ranked-choice runoff against Murkowski on Nov. 23.

Trump has been extremely critical of McConnell’s decision to slash support for Arizona Senate hopeful Blake Masters over the summer, one aide noted. Masters currently trails incumbent Sen. Mark Kelly by more than 100,000 votes with 80% of votes counted, according to the latest CNN data.  

Sources said Trump has conveyed these frustrations to nearly everyone he has spoken to since Tuesday, hoping it will translate into an onslaught of public criticism of McConnell.  

Listen to the CNN Political Briefing podcast to learn where the vote counts stand in key states.

CNN’s Alex Rogers contributed to this report.

Several prominent Republican senators are calling for a delay in next week’s Senate GOP leadership elections.

While Mitch McConnell is widely expected to easily win the top spot again, making him the longest Senate party leader in history, he is facing some dissension in the ranks.

Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley says he plans to oppose McConnell and called for a delay, citing the upcoming Dec. 6 Georgia runoff. 

“I don’t know why Senate GOP would hold a leadership vote for the next Congress before this election is finished. We have a runoff in #GASenate — are they saying that doesn’t matter? Don’t disenfranchise @HerschelWalker,” Hawley tweeted.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio tweeted: “The Senate GOP leadership vote next week should be postponed. First we need to make sure that those who want to lead us are genuinely committed to fighting for the priorities & values of the working Americans (of every background) who gave us big wins in states like #Florida.”

Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Rick Scott of Florida and Mike Lee of Utah also joined the calls for a delay in a letter that’s circulating in Washington, according to sources familiar with the matter.

“We are all disappointed that a Red Wave failed to materialize, and there are multiple reasons it did not,” says the letter. “We need to have serious discussions within our conference as to why and what we can do to improve our chances in 2024.”

The comments come as Politico reported that Scott was considering a long-shot bid against McConnell but ultimately dropped the effort amid the lackluster GOP showing on Tuesday. Scott had little chance of defeating McConnell, who has been working for months to lock down the votes and told CNN last month that he has the votes.

CNN has reached out to McConnell’s office about the Hawley and Rubio comments.

Arizona’s Maricopa County will release tonight its first batch of results from the 290,000 mail-in ballots that voters dropped off on Election Day, a top county official told CNN. 

Officials expect to release the results from about 60,000 to 70,000 votes, Maricopa County Board of Supervisors chair Bill Gates estimated in an interview with CNN’s Bianna Golodryga and Boris Sanchez.

A majority of those will be mail-in ballots dropped off on Election Day, as well as mail-in ballots received before Election Day and “Box 3” votes (ballots from Election Day that were not able to be read due to technical issues).

Maricopa County officials have estimated there are about 17,000 of those Box 3 ballots.

The number of people who dropped off their mail ballots on Election Day far surpassed previous records, and that is part of the reason why counting has taken as long as it has, Gates said.

He added that he expects workers to finish counting ballots by “very early next week.”

Why it matters: A big batch of results from Maricopa County, which is Arizona’s most populous, could bring more clarity to the state of a key race for control of the Senate. Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly currently leads his Republican opponent Blake Masters.

Democrats need to win in two out of three states — Arizona, Nevada and Georgia — to maintain a narrow majority in the Senate. CNN has already projected that Georgia will head to a December runoff.

Unfounded claims: Responding to Arizona’s Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, who said without evidence that election officials in the state are trying to delay the results, Gates said it’s “particularly hard to digest” her statements.

“Today is a holiday in Maricopa County and we have many people here today working 14 and 18 hours keeping this count going forward,” Gates said. “To have those sorts of comments accusing these good people of slow-rolling or dragging their feet, that’s hard for me to swallow.”

The top election official in Nevada’s largest county said workers will tabulate results from about 15,900 mail-in votes by 9 p.m. ET Friday, as the state’s close Senate race hangs in the balance.

Joe Gloria, Clark County Election Department registrar, said he expected to be largely finished with the remaining 34,130 mail-in votes by Saturday. Those ballots are being inspected at the county’s counting board, Gloria said, and some could also be reported Friday night. 

More than 15,000 additional ballots could also eventually be counted if they meet eligibility requirements. Monday is the deadline for voters who need to contact the Clark County elections department to cure their ballots by providing additional details to verify their ballot. Gloria said 9,659 are eligible to be cured. Another 5,555 in-person provisional ballots could be added as well once they are validated.

Across the state, mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day are eligible if they arrive by Saturday.  

Gloria noted that the number of ballots still coming in through the mail has dropped significantly, with his department picking up just a little over 100 of those ballots on Friday.   

Responding to voters who might be wondering why vote counting is going into the weekend, Gloria said he had to follow state laws.  

“I can’t finish all the mail until it all comes in; I can’t finish until Saturday,” he said. “I don’t want voters to be discouraged. We’re doing everything we possibly can to move this process forward.”

Steve Hobbs will win the special election for Washington secretary of state, CNN projects, becoming the first Democrat to win an election for the office since 1960.

He will defeat independent Julie Anderson, the Pierce County auditor, to fill the remaining two years of former Secretary of State Kim Wyman’s term.

Hobbs has been serving in the position since last year, when Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee appointed him to succeed Wyman, who left to join the Biden administration. She now leads the Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to protect elections from domestic and foreign interference.

Hobbs, the son of a Japanese immigrant, is the first Asian American to serve as Washington secretary of state. He served in the state Senate for more than 14 years prior to his appointment by Inslee.

In Washoe County, Nevada, livestream cameras at the registrar of voters’ office went down Wednesday night through early Thursday morning — but officials said footage captured by separate security cameras showed no one entered the ballot room or the registrar’s office. 

The cameras that went down can “intermittently lose connection” with the computer application that allows them to livestream events, county officials said in a statement. On Wednesday night, the livestream cameras lost connection a little before 11:30 p.m., roughly an hour after all the staff had left for the night. Connection was restored shortly before 8 a.m. on Thursday morning, according to the statement

The county’s security administrator confirmed that security camera footage showed no one entered the ballot or registrar’s office during that time. Staff badge reports also showed no one entered the area, officials said. 

The Washoe officials spoke out after baseless speculation on social media that the outage was part of a Democratic scheme to rig the election.

The internal Democratic maneuvering to succeed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is quietly playing out behind the scenes even as lawmakers are completely in the dark about her ambitions and future plans. 

Members of Pelosi’s leadership team and those who have ambitions to succeed her have been reaching out to their colleagues and mounting a shadow campaign of sorts that will be ready to launch once Pelosi makes her decision and in time for the Nov. 30 leadership elections. 

“I’m getting tons of calls,” said one Democratic member, who like others, asked for anonymity to discuss the sensitive situation candidly. “The top three are mostly just checking in and saying, ‘Hi.’” 

Others are preparing letters to announce their bids for the top three spots, planning meetings with new Democratic members next week and are preparing to mount a formal operation to lock down the votes once Pelosi’s future plans become clear, according to multiple Democratic sources. 

Pelosi’s decision is not the only one that will set off a leadership scramble: Her top two deputies, Steny Hoyer of Maryland and Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, have not yet signaled their intentions. And if they decide to attempt to succeed her in the top spot, or try to keep a position in leadership, it could lead to a messy internal battle in the aftermath of surprising Democratic wins in Tuesday’s midterms. 

Like Pelosi, Hoyer and Clyburn, are in their 80s, and are facing calls for generational change even as they command loyalty and respect from various wings of their caucus. If Pelosi were to step aside, the widespread belief internally is that Hakeem Jeffries, the 52-year-old Brooklyn Democrat and current caucus chair, would be the frontrunner. And he and two other Democrats from his generation and who have been at the leadership table — 59-year-old Katherine Clark of Massachusetts and 43-year-old Pete Aguilar of California — are seen as a team that would round out the top three leadership positions. 

But those plans could be upset rather quickly since others have signaled interest in leadership spots. Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, chair of the House Intelligence Committee member, has been quietly meeting with members for months as he sounds out a possible run for Democratic leader, while the head of the Congressional Progressive, Pramila Jayapal, is also seen as a potential candidate for a spot within the leadership team. 

Democrat Rep. David Trone will defeat Republican Neil Parrott in the highly competitive 6th Congressional District in Maryland, CNN projects.

In interviews following the midterm elections, some former and current Republican members of Congress wouldn’t commit to a Donald Trump bid for the presidency in 2024.

With the results still being counted in some states, numerous sitting members and former lawmakers took aim at the former president for the party’s subpar results:

Rep. Troy Nehls: “There’s just a lot of negative attitudes about Trump,” Nehls said on Houston Morning News. The Texas conservative once called Trump one of America’s greatest presidents after winning his endorsement in spring 2022.

Former Sen. Rick Santorum: On the Dom Giordano program, a conservative talk radio station in Pennsylvania, Santorum compared Trump to Moses in the Bible — but said it was time to move on.

“He changed, he transformed the Republican party, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s the right guy to actually lead the party going forward into an era of governance and prosperity,” Santorum said.

“Just be happy you’re Moses, and it’s time to turn the page,” said Santorum, who endorsed Trump in 2016.

Former Rep. Mark Walker: On North Carolina talk radio on Thursday, Walker, the former vice chair of the Republican Conference, blasted Trump for backing Mehmet Oz and others, saying Trump picked the “wrong horse” in many races. Trump backed Walker’s opponent in the Republican primary for North Carolina’s Senate seat, Ted Budd – who went on to win the race this week.

“You’re looking long-term and taking a look, (Florida Gov.) Ron DeSantis may be the guy,” said Walker, citing DeSantis’ lopsided win.

Rep. Tim Walberg: On the Steve Gruber Show, Michigan’s Walberg said the former president might need to change his message when he was asked about Trump-endorsed candidates losing around the country.

“I hope that President Trump, as he moves forward, really does a postmortem and thinks what this means to his message,” said Walberg, who Trump endorsed this cycle.

Read more here.

In Maryland’s highly competitive race for the 6th Congressional District, 92% of the vote is already counted — and incumbent Democratic Rep. David Trone trails Republican nominee Neil Parrott by only 1,277 votes.

In 2018, Trone earned 59% of the district-wide vote. But the recently redrawn district has become more competitive. On Tuesday, Parrot told a local reporter that he expects to beat Trone by a margin as narrow as 100 votes. 

 Here’s a look at where voting stands as of Friday afternoon:

Montgomery County

Election officials in Montgomery County say they have 37,864 mail-in ballots that are being prepared for counting. 

Montgomery County will release another batch of results on Friday by 11 p.m. ET. Officials wouldn’t estimate how many of the 37,864 mail ballots will be included in the results on Friday. 

Looking ahead, Election Board officials are scheduled to continue “canvassing” or processing ballots on Saturday, including signature verification. Officials will dedicate Sunday to scanning, sorting, and other administrative tasks. Ballot processing will resume Monday. 

Frederick County

Frederick County is in possession of 13,420 mail-in ballots that will be processed soon. They also have 2,602 outstanding provisional ballots. County officials say they’ll release more results sometime after 8 p.m. ET on Friday.

“Late-arriving ballots”

Both Frederick and Montgomery County expect to receive more mail-in ballots throughout the next week. In Maryland, mail ballots can be accepted until Nov. 18, as long as they were postmarked by Election Day. These are often referred to as “late-arriving ballots,” because they arrive at election offices after Election Day. 

Montgomery County officials said there were 25,097 mail-in ballots that were requested that haven’t been returned yet. Some of these, likely a small chunk, can continue to trickle in until the Nov. 18 deadline. 

Colorado is still counting ballots — a process that could take into next week to be fully complete, according to Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold. The main reason why it takes so long is because of the state’s election model, she said.

“The Colorado election model is extremely accessible,” she told CNN Friday, saying that in addition to voting in-person on Election Day, voters also have the option to vote early or vote by mail. Colorado sends all registered voters ballots ahead of the election.

“If voters really turn out in the days leading up to Election Day and on Election Day, that just means it takes time for the county clerks to process the ballots,” Griswold said.

Additionally, while votes are being processed, each county will hold some ballots until next Wednesday, she said. This is because that is the deadline for military and oversees ballots to be received by clerks, Griswold explained, adding that it is also the deadline for voters to fix any signature issues on mail ballots.

“The reason that they do that is because as voters fix their signatures and as overseas, the military ballots are continuing to come in, the vote of how a Coloradan casts the ballot has to stay anonymous,” she said, noting that the only way to ensure that the vote stays anonymous is to hold “a certain number of ballots in every county” so the way they vote “is actually disclosed in reporting.”

“So the process is ongoing and what is the most important thing is that every vote counts,” Griswold added.

New batches of votes were reported late Thursday evening in Arizona and Nevada – states with key races that will determine control of the Senate – but it’s still not clear when enough of the outstanding hundreds of thousands of ballots will be counted to call the Senate and gubernatorial contests in those states.

Arizona’s most populous county, Maricopa, is expected to begin reporting votes from the critical batch of roughly 290,000 early ballots turned in on Election Day – and the partisan composition of those votes could determine who wins the state’s Senate and governor’s races.

More votes are expected to be reported on Friday as counting continues. If you’re just joining us, here’s what to know about where things stand:

Arizona:

Nevada:

What is causing the delay? The biggest reason the vote counting is taking so long is the way that each state handles the ballots outside of those cast at polling places on Election Day, including both early votes and mail-in ballots.

When races are within a percentage point or two, those outstanding ballots are enough to keep the election from being projected. Of course, the lag was anticipated – it took news organizations until the Saturday after Election Day in 2020 to declare Joe Biden the winner in the presidential race, following a massive increase in mail-in voting amid the pandemic.

These are all the races that are yet to be called that will determine the balance of power.

Former President Donald Trump has never stopped posting false claims about the 2020 election. Now he is also posting false claims about the 2022 election.

Even as he proclaims the midterms a “Big Victory,” Trump is making a variety of baseless declarations that various 2022 races were rigged or stolen. 

On his social media platform on Thursday and Friday morning, Trump:

CNN has yet to make projections in several races as control of the House and Senate hangs in the balance and votes continue to be counted in key states.

Here is where things stand in both chambers — and which races are yet to be called:

SENATE: CNN has not made a projection in two seats – Arizona and Nevada. Georgia’s Senate race is headed to a runoff, CNN projected earlier this week.

We expect vote reports tonight from the largest counties in both states.

HOUSE: CNN is yet to make a projection in 26 races.

Nearly all of the House races yet to be projected are in states with a significant number of votes left to count, such as California, Arizona, and Oregon, which could mean it will be some time before control of the House is determined.

Members of the pro-Trump House Freedom Caucus are withholding their support for House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy’s speakership bid and have begun to lay out their list of demands, putting the California Republican’s path to securing 218 votes in peril if the party ultimately takes the House with a slim majority.

McCarthy and his team are confident he will ultimately get the votes to be speaker. But the conservative hardliners are emboldened by the likelihood of a narrow House GOP majority and are threatening to withhold their support – something that could imperil his bid or force him to make deals to weaken the speakership, something he has long resisted.

Rep. Chip Roy of Texas told reporters that “no one currently has 218” votes for speaker, which is the magic number McCarthy would need to secure the speaker’s gavel on the House floor in January, and said he wants McCarthy to list in greater detail his plans for a wide array of investigations into the Biden administration. And Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona complained that McCarthy seemed to backpedal on whether he’d be willing to launch impeachment proceedings into President Joe Biden or members of his Cabinet.

“I’ve heard from multiple of my constituents who question the wisdom of proceeding forward with that leadership,” Biggs said, adding that there needs to be a “frank conversation” about who they elect for the top job.

Members of the group are also pushing to make it easier for lawmakers to call for floor votes on ousting a sitting speaker. That is something that McCarthy is adamantly against and was wielded over former Speaker John Boehner before he eventually resigned.

Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado said it was a “red line” for her, but not everyone in the Freedom Caucus is united on whether to make that a hard line.

The Freedom Caucus, a group that includes dozens of hardline members, have been meeting in Washington, DC, this week for their new member orientation, where they have begun to plot out their strategy for the speaker’s race. With a slimmer-than-expected majority, they see an opportunity, and are planning to use their leverage to get more power in a GOP-led House.

Ballots are still being counted in Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert’s Colorado district, where she is in a tight race against Democrat Adam Frisch.

CNN has not made a projection in the race yet, but Boebert was ahead of Frisch by 1,122 votes as of 9 a.m. ET Friday.

The boundaries of the 3rd Congressional District shifted after Colorado added a new district because the 2020 Census showed population growth, with the state’s independent redistricting commission creating a map that added an eighth seat in the northern suburbs of Denver.

Encompassing the western and southern portions of the state that includes Grand Junction, the majority of residents living in Boebert’s district are White and many residents have traditionally registered as Republican.

As of Sept. 1, nearly 31% of registered voters were Republican, nearly 24% were Democrat and 44% were unaffiliated with a political party, according to the state’s independent redistricting commissions.

Boebert won the county in the 2020 election with 51.4% of the vote, defeating Democrat Diane Mitsch Bush who had 45.2%. Under the new redrawn district, former President Donald Trump would’ve won the district by nearly 8 percentage points but would’ve won by about 5.5 percentage points under the older map.

Boebert suggested to CNN on Thursday that a lack of voter enthusiasm for her party’s candidates for governor and Senate caused her race to be much closer than anticipated.

She noted that Gov. Jared Polis and Sen. Michael Bennet, who are both Democrats, skated to reelection. “I think Polis and Bennet definitely carried the ticket for the Democrat Party,” she told CNN.

She added, “I don’t know if there wasn’t enough enthusiasm for our top ticket candidates for governor and Senate or what happened there. But there was a lot of shifting of the votes there.”

Boebert still expressed confidence she would eke out a victory. “Of course, I expect to win.”

After a disappointing election they blame partly on the influence of Donald Trump, Republicans across the country are looking to Georgia’s newly reelected governor for inspiration.

Those eyeing a potential 2024 confrontation with the former president may find wisdom in the Brian Kemp playbook, starting with page one: The best defense against Trump’s attacks is often to simply ignore them.

“It lays out this blueprint,” said Stephen Lawson, a Georgia-based Republican operative. “I think there’s going to be lessons here for other people the president has recently lashed out against. If you don’t take the bait, you’ve got a pretty good chance of winning.”

When Kemp refused to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 win in Georgia, Trump made the governor his No. 1 enemy, publicly railing against him throughout 2021 and recruiting a credible primary challenger. Throughout it all, Trump failed to draw Kemp into a fight, and the first-term governor overwhelmingly won his May primary and handily defeated his Democratic opponent, Stacey Abrams, on Tuesday.

Republicans say Kemp’s strategy against the former president gave him an independent profile for the general election without sacrificing support from pro-Trump voters.

“Kemp didn’t need Trump, but he took care to make sure Trump partisans felt like they could be a part of the Kemp coalition,” said David Kochel, a Republican strategist and presidential campaign veteran. “It’s totally safe to ignore Trump. You don’t have to heap praise on him if you’re running that kind of campaign. Praise the policies, the results of the administration, just don’t personalize it, which is what Trump wants.”

Kemp’s approach has the attention of plenty of the party’s bigwigs, impressed by both his principled stand on the 2020 election result and his ability to survive as a target of Trump’s fury.

“I think it also accrued to his benefit financially. He was able to get a lot more resources from across the country,” said Marc Short, who served as chief of staff to former Vice President Mike Pence and also advised Kemp’s campaign this year.

Kemp told CNN he recognizes that he’s helped contribute to a model for Republicans to win the White House again.

Read the full story here.

Washoe County, the second-most populous county in Nevada, said it still has 22,000 ballots left to count and hopes to get through most of them on Friday. 

“I think we should be able to get the vast majority of them done. There might be a small amount that will trickle into Saturday,” Jamie Rodriguez, interim registrar of voters for Washoe County, told CNN. 

The county includes the city of Reno.

Rodriguez said of the 22,000 remaining votes, about 20,000 are mail-in ballots. Another 1,914 are provisional ballots.

Rodriguez said the county disqualified 400 mail-in ballots on Thursday — about two-thirds of the mail-in ballots the county received Thursday — because they were postmarked after Election Day. “The bulk of the mail we received (Thursday) was postmarked on the 9th,” Rodriguez said, referring to the day after Election Day.

Rodriguez said that in the past, some voters have mailed their ballots on Election Day — but after the last mail pickup of the day, causing the ballots to be postmarked for the next day, which disqualifies them from being counted. 

The 22,000 ballots that remain to be counted have already had the postmark verified, she said. 

On Friday and Saturday, it is still possible the county, like all counties in Nevada, could receive more ballots that were postmarked on Election Day. Saturday is the last day ballots are allowed to arrive. 

Washoe expects to update its vote totals at 11 p.m. ET Friday night.

What’s at stake in Nevada: A crucial Senate race between Republican nominee Adam Laxalt and Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto has not been called. The contest could help determine which party controls the Senate.

Democratic losses in key House races in New York have given way to a blame game between two of the party’s most prominent members, progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and defeated Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney. 

After Ocasio-Cortez placed blame on the state Democratic Party and what she said were “pure moderate” approaches, Maloney, who was tasked with defending the House Democratic majority, told The New York Times, “The last time I ran into A.O.C., we were beating her endorsed candidate two to one in a primary, and I didn’t see her one minute of these midterms helping our House majority. So, I’m not sure what kind of advice she has, but I’m sure she’ll be generous with it.” 

He continued, “But let’s be clear, she had almost nothing to do with what turned out to be an historic defense of our majority. Didn’t pay a dollar of dues. Didn’t do anything for our frontline candidates except give them money when they didn’t want it from her.”

“She’s an important voice in our politics. But when it comes to passing our agenda through the Congress, or standing our ground on the political battlefield, she was nowhere to be found,” he added.

Ocasio-Cortez responded on Twitter, writing, “Let’s make something crystal clear: - SPM courted me for donations to swing races & it was the 1st thing I did this term. Over a quarter million for Dems this cycle, DCCC facilitated some & now he denies it. - If he isn’t aware of my visit to CA & efforts we put in, that’s on him.”

This dust-up follows Ocasio-Cortez’s decision in June to endorse Maloney’s primary challenger, state Sen. Alessandra Biaggi.

“We’re gonna find out how much that means,” Maloney said of the endorsement, dismissively, shortly before the primary, which he won by a wide margin,.

“I have enormous respect for AOC. And she gives a voice to the passions of so many people in our party. But where I disagree with her are on this view that America should become some socialist paradise,” Maloney said at the time. “I think that’s never gonna happen. And it’s a bad idea.”

Despite Democrats performing better than expected across the country, Republicans were able to gain control of four House races in New York, raising alarm bells for Democrats in the state.

What’s taking so long to determine which party has control of the US House and Senate? Blame California, Arizona, Nevada, Washington and the whole vote-by-mail West Coast, really.

Actually, don’t blame them. This is just how elections work in 2022.

Blame an evenly divided electorate: If elections weren’t so close, it wouldn’t take so long to figure out who won.

CNN has still not projected who will control either the House or the Senate in large part because of close races on the West Coast.

Read this more detailed report on the Friday’s state of play from CNN’s Jeremy Herb and Paul LeBlanc.

Probably worth the wait: The benefit of knowing who won on Election Day is arguably outweighed by allowing more people access to the vote and the cost savings of not having to staff so many polling places.

Bill Gates, the chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, told CNN’s Sara Sidner on Thursday why it takes longer to count mail-in ballots and those placed in ballot drop boxes in the days immediately prior to and on Election Day. Maricopa is Arizona’s most populous county that includes Phoenix.

“This is how we run elections in Arizona,” Gates told Sidner. “If people don’t like that, they can go to the legislature and have them pass new laws.”

It’s a process that’s been in place in Maricopa County since the 1990s, he said. It’s also overseen by both Republican and Democratic Party officials.

Verifying signatures: With election officials visible, busily working behind him at the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center, Gates said those mail-in ballots that were dropped off right before and on Tuesday don’t even start the important process of signature verification until the Wednesday after Election Day.

“We have experts here who go through, compare the signature on the outside of the ballot envelope with the signature that we have in our voter registration file,” Gates said. “That takes a while because we got to get that right.”

Most states have some sort of signature verification system for their absentee and mail-in ballots, according to a tally from the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Keep reading here.

As key House and Senate races that will determine the balance of power remain to be called, President Joe Biden arrives Friday to the climate summit underway in an Egyptian Red Sea resort eager to highlight major new US investments toward limiting climate change — a sharp difference from the last time he showed up at a climate conference empty handed.

Yet fears of a world distracted by conflict and economic turmoil, paired with anger among poor nations over stalled progress on providing climate reparations, loom over Biden’s short visit.

In a speech to the United Nations COP27 summit, Biden will proclaim the US is back as a global leader on climate change following passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, which included around $370 billion in clean energy incentives meant to slash the use of harmful greenhouse gases.

He’ll highlight a new proposed rule requiring large federal contractors to develop carbon reduction targets and disclose their greenhouse gas emissions, leveraging the federal government’s purchasing power to combat climate change in the private sector and bolster vulnerable supply chains.

And he will argue that other nations must “really keep their eyes on the ball when it comes to accelerating ambitious action to reduce emissions,” according to a senior administration official. “We need to remain focused.”

Yet many nations who have sent representatives to this week’s conference in Egypt are focused on another matter: demanding climate reparations be paid by wealthy and high-emitting countries like the United States to smaller, poorer nations who have felt the outsized effects of climate change.

It’s a proposal some European countries have latched onto, and have goaded Biden into supporting. But political constraints both in the United States and elsewhere make significant progress unlikely, at least in the near-term.

Biden has already struggled to gain backing in Congress for global climate resilience funding, which would help low-income nations prepare for the adverse effects of a warming planet, like floods and other extreme events. If Republicans seize control of one or both chambers, the prospects of any new climate legislation over the next two years appears dim.

Speaking at the climate conference Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi acknowledged that after the midterm contests, Democrats will need to partner with Republicans on taking steps to fight climate change, even as she cast doubt on the opposing party’s willingness to take action.

Read more about Biden’s trip here.

It still may be hours – or days – before enough ballots are counted in Arizona and Nevada  to determine who won the Senate and gubernatorial races in both states. There are also still many key congressional races uncalled in California and Colorado that will determine what the House looks like when the new Congress is seated in January.

The unofficial results – and lingering uncertainty about who will control Congress next year – hasn’t prevented Republican apprehension about the election results, where an expected GOP wave never materialized. The results have raised new questions about House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy’s path to the speakership and added a new layer to a potentially looming 2024 feud between former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Here’s what you should know as the counting continues:

What is taking so long to count ballots in key states? The biggest reason it’s taking so long is the way that each state handles the ballots outside of those cast at polling places on Election Day, including both early votes and mail-in ballots.

In Arizona, for instance, CNN estimates there are roughly 540,000 ballots to be counted. The majority of those, about 350,000 ballots, are in Maricopa County, the state’s most populous county that includes Phoenix.

Of those ballots, about 290,000 were dropped off at vote centers on Election Day. A top official told CNN late Thursday that the county expects to start releasing the first results from those outstanding ballots Friday evening.

“We should start to see those tomorrow, I believe – we’ll start seeing those come in,” said Bill Gates, chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors.

Those ballots have to be processed before they can be counted, leading to a lag time in tabulating. The mail-in ballots dropped off were “a record” for the county, Gates said.

In addition, Maricopa County has about 17,000 ballots that were not read by the tabulator on Election Day because of a printer error, and those ballots still need to be counted, too.

The county had not yet started counting the 290,000 ballots dropped off on Election Day, Gates said Thursday.

Nevada mail-in ballots still arriving: In Nevada, the state law allows mail-in ballots to be received through Saturday, as long as they were postmarked by Election Day, meaning counties are still receiving ballots to be counted.

As of Thursday evening, CNN’s Decision Desk estimates approximately 95,000 votes remain outstanding.

In Clark County, the state’s largest that includes Las Vegas, there are more than 50,000 ballots still to be counted, Clark County registrar Joe Gloria said Thursday.

Trump vs. DeSantis: The lackluster performance of several Trump-endorsed candidates in battleground states has cast new doubts on Trump’s potential 2024 campaign launch that’s expected at an event scheduled for Tuesday.

At the same time, DeSantis’ resounding reelection victory in Florida is fueling calls for him to capitalize on his momentum and challenge Trump for the 2024 nomination.

After “red wave” washes out, McCarthy faces tougher path: McCarthy is moving swiftly to lock down votes needed to claim the speaker’s gavel in the next Congress, as Republicans still appear to be closing in on a majority in the House even after Democrats had a better-than-expected night on Tuesday. CNN has not yet projected a Republican takeover of the chamber.

McCarthy privately spoke to his closest advisers and confidantes in a Wednesday morning phone call. The California Republican tapped a group of members to be on his whip team that will help him secure the votes to win the speakership in January, with GOP lawmakers on the call promising to “work hard to get him elected,” according to a source familiar with the matter.

If Georgia voters were hoping to avoid talking politics at Thanksgiving, the state’s tightly contested Senate race has other plans.

Neither Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock nor Republican challenger Herschel Walker surpassed the 50% threshold needed to win the race outright Tuesday evening, CNN projected, forcing a runoff election set for Dec. 6.

But what exactly does that mean? And how will the runoff election work? Here’s what you need to know:

What is a runoff and how does it work? A runoff is an additional election used to determine the winner of a certain race when neither candidate earns the required threshold for victory – in this case, 50%.

In Georgia, runoffs are more straightforward than general elections in that the candidate with the most votes wins.

Georgia’s top elections official, Brad Raffensperger, said counties are already preparing for the Dec. 6 election, and voters can request absentee ballots starting Wednesday through Nov. 28 via the state’s online portal.

Early voting must begin by Nov. 28 in all counties, but Raffensperger said his office anticipates some counties could have early voting on Saturday, November 26 or Sunday, Nov. 27. “We are working with the counties to find out what their plans are on this front,” he said.

Notably, the logistics of the 2022 runoff will be different than in years passed. The 2021 Georgia law that cut the length of runoffs from nine weeks to four means that the deadline for a new voter to register for the runoff election has already passed.

What is at stake? Put simply, a lot.

Depending on the outcome of Senate races in Arizona and Nevada, voters in Georgia could then – for the second consecutive election cycle – have the Senate majority in their hands.

Top officials from the Democratic and Republican parties told CNN they intend to double down on their significant investments in Georgia, with an increasing assumption that control of the Senate could hinge on the outcome of the runoff.

Election officials are urging patience and trying to tamp down on conspiracy theories about why the vote count in western states isn’t yet done as control of the House and Senate hangs in the balance.

About 540,000 votes in Arizona and 95,000 in Nevada remained to be counted as of Thursday evening, CNN estimated. The counting in California – where there are more than a dozen key House races – could continue for weeks. But the fact that these uncalled races are impacting control of Congress underscores just how far short Republicans have fallen of their goal of building a red wave.

The GOP was expecting to benefit from President Joe Biden’s low approval ratings, the rough economic climate and the fact the president’s party usually faces steep losses in the first midterm of a new administration. But with the nation still in suspense over the final outcome three days after Election Day, the Republican blame game was in full swing by Thursday.

Retiring Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey – a Republican who will be replaced by Democrat John Fetterman – bluntly pointed to the role that former President Donald Trump played in the midterms. His backing of weak, election-denying candidates who prioritized loyalty to him over the general electorate created a drag on other Republican candidates, Toomey said.

“At the top of the ticket in the gubernatorial race, we had an ultra-MAGA candidate who never appeared to even attempt to expand beyond a hardcore base that was very, very committed to him,” Toomey told CNN’s Erin Burnett, alluding to Pennsylvania GOP gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano, who lost by double digits.

Toomey argued that the GOP had lost three House seats in the commonwealth that he believed they should have had a good chance of picking up, because of “a real problem at the top of the ticket” in Mastriano, but “also President Trump inserting himself into the race” by coming to Pennsylvania in the final days of the election.

Where things stand in the Senate: After Democrats flipped Pennsylvania’s Senate seat, Republicans need to pick up two Democratic-held seats to win the majority. The balance of power has come down to races in three states: Arizona and Nevada – where Democrats are defending seats in races too early to call – and Georgia, where Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker are headed to a Dec. 6 runoff, CNN projects.

Keep reading here.

House Democrats are eagerly awaiting word from Speaker Nancy Pelosi about whether she will continue to run the caucus she has dominated for the past two decades as they decide whether to run for the top job.

Pelosi is widely expected to announce her decision once it is clear which party will have the majority in the House and after she returns from her trip to a climate conference in Egypt.

That could come as soon as next week when the House returns to session, with members meeting Monday evening for the first time since the election and the full caucus on Tuesday. The leadership elections are scheduled for Nov. 30.

If she steps aside, as most members believe she will, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries is seen as the front-runner for the top position, though he could face a challenge from Rep. Adam Schiff and others.

But all eyes are also on the two Democrats currently below Pelosi: Steny Hoyer and Jim Clyburn. Hoyer has long coveted the top position, but with many in the caucus calling for generational change and diversity in the ranks, the 83-year-old Hoyer could have a difficult time winning the votes.

“I’ve told all the younger members, I’ll be out of here by 2036,” Hoyer told reporters when asked about his next moves. He indicated he would wait for the House to be called before announcing his next steps.

Clyburn has recently signaled he wouldn’t block Jeffries’ ascension to the top spot, but he might want to stay in leadership, which could prevent other Democrats from ascending. Rep. Katherine Clark is seen as the frontrunner for the No. 2 job, depending on what Hoyer and Clyburn do.

Mitch McConnell’s high-spending super PAC has a suggestion for its party’s campaign committee: Consider picking candidates in primaries who won’t collapse in the general election.

Others see a much bigger issue: Former President Donald Trump and his polarizing presence on the campaign trail – especially as he teased a 2024 campaign in the final days of the midterms.

“That certainly didn’t help,” one Republican lawmaker said.

Then there’s abortion, and Republican hand-wringing over the party’s failure to effectively respond to an onslaught of Democratic attacks. All the while, some are taking out their frustration on party leaders like McConnell and Kevin McCarthy.

“Washington Republicanism lost big Tuesday night,” said Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican.

The blame game taking shape in GOP circles comes after bullish predictions of a red wave that failed to materialize. Republicans are now at risk of serving in the Senate minority for the second straight Congress and are struggling to take even a narrow House majority.

To read more, click here

House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy is taking initial steps to show House Republicans he won’t lead as a top-down speaker dictating his demands to the rank-and-file, a hallmark of speakers’ past but one that would lead to a revolt internally.

CNN is yet to project which party will win the House as several key races are too early to call, but Republicans appear to be moving toward a slim majority, and McCarthy has already started jockeying for support.

Thursday, he set up working groups to help develop a GOP agenda and investigative priorities. His allies say the moves are intended to show he will listen to his colleagues. And in his private pitches to members, he is trying to convince them that his way of leading was successful in bringing the GOP back to the majority over two election cycles.

Yet members of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus spent the day behind closed doors strategizing about how to empower their faction in what is expected to be a narrow GOP majority. They are asking for McCarthy to commit to a series of rule changes, including making it easier to call for a vote to oust a sitting speaker — an idea that McCarthy has flatly rejected. But Lauren Boebert and other members of the Freedom Caucus call that a “red line.”

McCarthy reached out to another Freedom Caucus member, Ralph Norman, who on Thursday wouldn’t commit to supporting him. Norman indicated McCarthy seemed open to meeting with them as a group.

Some members of the Freedom Caucus are threatening to put up a challenge against McCarthy in next week’s leadership elections — even if it’s a long-shot bid. Next week, the House GOP will vote on nominating McCarthy as speaker. He only needs a majority of his conference’s support to win that nomination. But he will need 218 votes of the full House to become speaker in January, and GOP defections in a narrow majority could complicate that effort.

White House communications director Kate Bedingfield told CNN that President Biden will do “whatever is helpful” to assist Georgia Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock as his midterm race is projected to head to a runoff against Republican Hershel Walker this December.  

“The president will do whatever is helpful to Sen. Warnock, whether that’s campaigning with him, whether that’s raising money, whatever Sen. Warnock would like the president to do,” Bedingfield told CNN’s Kate Bolduan on “At This Hour.”

Following Biden’s Wednesday evening call with Kevin McCarthy — the House minority leader running to be the next House Speaker should Republicans take the majority — Bedingfield reiterated the president’s efforts to work across the aisle. 

Bedingfield said that “the intent of speaking with Kevin McCarthy … (was) to continue to build a relationship should we need to work together which, you know as the President has said, he is certainly open to.” 

“He’s shown he’s been able to do it. The purpose of the conversation was to continue that open line of communication but in terms of sharing details of their private discussion, and I’ll leave their private discussion private,” she added. 

Foreign operatives could use the days and week between Election Day and when votes are certified — including the lead-up to a contentious Senate runoff in Georgia — to further amplify disinformation about voting and sow discord among Americans, a top US cybersecurity official said Thursday. 

“I’m worried a lot about foreign adversaries taking advantage of the murkiness between actual Election Day and final certification to sow chaos,” Jen Easterly, the head of US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), told reporters at conference in Virginia.  

The Georgia runoff between Republican Herschel Walker and Democrat Raphael Warnock will occur Dec. 6 after neither reached a 50% threshold needed for victory. 

There were only handful of documented cyberattacks aimed at election-related infrastructure on Election Day, but nothing that kept people from casting their vote, according to US officials. But foreign influence activity — the use of social media or other means to sway voters — is harder to measure.

US officials are particularly concerned about any foreign efforts to amplify disinformation and any violent online rhetoric in Georgia and Arizona, where vote tallies are still coming in.

Asked about foreign influence operations on Election Day, Easterly said “there was nothing that came in that caught my attention in a significant way.” 

Russian state media made an eleventh-hour push to cast baseless doubts on the integrity of US elections with multiple misleading or false articles about the midterms in the last 24 hours, according to independent research and a CNN review of Russian media. 

The propaganda blitz came after Kremlin-linked oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin said that Russia has interfered, is interfering and will continue to interfere in the US democratic process. 

This post has been updated to correct inaccurate information about the winner of a race previously projected by CNN.

Republican Dale Strong is the projected winner in Alabama’s 5th Congressional District.