Democrats keep Senate as control of House remains undecided

The battle for control of the House is now the biggest unanswered question of this year’s midterm elections after Democrats kept their narrow Senate majority.

Which party reaches the 218 seats necessary for a House majority will hinge on races in states with a large share of mail-in ballots — including California, where identifying winners in some races could take weeks, Oregon and Arizona.

Another high-profile contest remains too close to call: The Arizona governor’s race. Republican Kari Lake, the Donald Trump-supported election denier, is facing Democratic secretary of state Katie Hobbs, a defender of the state’s election process.

Democratic upset keeps narrow House majority hopes alive

Republicans appear to be slowly inching toward a slim majority, but Democrats’ hopes have not yet fully faded.

Republicans have won 211 of the 218 seats they’d need to take the majority, according to CNN projections, while Democrats have won 204, with 20 undecided as of Saturday evening.

Democrats scored a major victory in Washington’s Republican-leaning 3rd District, where on Saturday CNN projected that Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez would defeat Republican Joe Kent, who had aligned himself closely with former President Donald Trump.

Many of the other undecided races are in California, where counting mail-in ballots can take weeks and significant shifts can occur late in that process. Other states with large quantities of mail-in ballots, including Arizona and Oregon, also have undecided races.

Arizona governor's race still undecided

The Arizona governor’s race between Lake, one of the most prominent election deniers on the ballot this year, and Hobbs, remains tight, with Hobbs clinging to a 34,000 vote lead as of late Saturday with an estimated 290,000 votes to be counted.

If she wins, Lake would be a rare Trump-supported election denier to win a competitive statewide race this year.

In an interview with CNN Saturday afternoon, Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates said that about 190,000 votes remain to be counted in Maricopa County.

He said he was confident that about 95% to 99% of those votes will be recorded by Tuesday. He said the county will continue to report about 85,000 votes per night until they are done.

Other races to keep an eye on:

In Alaska, the state’s at-large House seat and one of its Senate seats will hinge on ranked-choice results.

Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola, who won a special election this summer, is in a strong position to eclipse the 50% mark. But Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski faces a stiffer challenge from Republican Kelly Tshibaka, who is backed by Trump as part of his bid for retribution against Murkowski and others who for his impeachment after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

And in Los Angeles, Rep. Karen Bass on Saturday widened her lead over developer Rick Caruso in the mayoral race.

If elected, Bass would become the first woman and the first Black woman to lead America’s second-largest city.

Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock appealed to Georgians Sunday afternoon to vote in the upcoming runoff election, making an appearance during rapper Lil Baby's Fall Festival and Charity Drive in Atlanta. 

Following his brief remarks on stage, Warnock spoke to media during a gaggle.

A reporter asked if his campaign message will change following the projected results in Nevada, which mean that his race will not determine whether Democrats control the Senate.

"Well, congratulations to my colleagues, but our message is the same," Warnock said. "This election is about who's ready, and who's fit to serve the people of Georgia in the United States Senate. It's a race about competence and about character. And on both of those scores, there is a world of difference between me and Herschel Walker."

Remember: Neither Warnock nor his Republican challenger Walker surpassed the 50% threshold needed to win the race outright Tuesday evening, CNN projected, forcing a runoff election in December.

The Georgia runoff election is still really important to Democrats:

Although Democrats are already projected to win control of the Senate, CNN chief political Gloria Borger said the upcoming Dec. 6 Georgia runoff is still really important to the party.

GOP Sen. Rick Scott, who is the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, called for a delay in the Senate leadership election scheduled for Wednesday, saying it "doesn't make any sense" to have them this week.

He added: "They want to rush through an election because they don't want to do any assessment of what we've done wrong. Insanity is doing the exact same thing and thinking you're gonna get different results. We won't."

Scott also said "a lot of people" have asked him to run for minority leader. 

"A lot of people have called me to see if I'll run," Scott said. "Here's my focus, is: We still got to win Georgia. I'm not going to take anything off the table."

Some background: Several Republican senators in addition to Scott are calling for a delay in next week’s Senate GOP leadership elections, arguing the party needs to regroup after lackluster midterm results and with a Georgia runoff still underway.

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. That includes a campaign against his candidacy by former President Donald Trump.

Several candidates made historic runs this midterm cycle and CNN projects that many will win their respective races.

In New York and Arkansas, Democrat Kathy Hochul and Republican Sarah Huckabee Sanders will be the first elected female governors in their respective states.

In Alabama, Republican Katie Britt will be the first woman elected to serve as a senator.

In Maryland, Democrat Wes Moore will be the first elected Black governor in the state.

In Oklahoma, Republican Markwayne Mullin will be the first Native American senator from the state in 100 years.

In Ohio, Rep. Marcy Katpur will become the longest-serving woman in congressional history, once she's sworn in next year.

View more history-making candidates here:

Correction: An earlier version of this post included the wrong political office for Katie Britt. She is the projected winner of Alabama's Senate race.

Trump adviser Jason Miller said in a podcast appearance that the former president will announce his 2024 presidential campaign at an event Tuesday.

Speaking on Steve Bannon’s podcast Friday, Miller added that the announcement would be “very professional, very buttoned up,” and that Trump’s team ran through the logistics on Friday of last week.

Some advisers continue to try and persuade the former president to hold off on any sort of announcement, but most acknowledge their pleas aren’t likely to have an impact on Trump’s decision. 

Amid backlash over lackluster midterm results and poor performances by many Trump-endorsed candidates, Trump has recently reminded those around him that Republicans and some conservative media turned their backs on him in 2016 and he still won.

However, many are concerned he doesn’t have the same magnetism that swept him into the White House six years ago, particularly as he continues to focus on promoting conspiracies around elections, a strategy that largely fizzled last Tuesday. 

It remains unclear who will be in attendance at Tuesday's event. Some of Trump’s biggest supporters like Reps. Elise Stefanik, Matt Gaetz and Jim Banks will be wrapped up in their own House leadership elections in Washington that day.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, dodged a question Sunday on whether the caucus would support House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for a leadership position in the new Congress, as well as a question about her own political future.

Asked about her political future, Jayapal side-stepped the question.

"I am so basking in the power of the progressive caucus," she said with a laugh.

She was later asked whether she planned to stay chair of the caucus.

"I'm basking in what the progressive movement has done and what we can do," she said.

On priorities for the caucus during the lame duck session, Jayapal said the group will hold an executive board meeting Monday to decide primary goals, but she cited the debt limit, child tax credit and the DREAM Act among top issues.

The latest midterm results show that voters in crucial battleground states rejected secretary of state candidates who have denied the 2020 election results and had pledged to overhaul voting procedures in their states ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

Here are the results from several of those races:

One secretary of state candidate in the America First coalition did succeed. CNN projected that Republican Diego Morales won the race for secretary of state in Indiana. During the GOP primary, he disputed the legitimacy of the 2020 election.

The full breakdown from CNN’s Daniel Dale on how election deniers fared can be found here.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Sunday she is waiting to decide about her next steps in the new Congress, adding that while she's not "asking anybody — people are campaigning" for her.

"What we want to do is go forward in a very unified way, as we go forward to prepare for the Congress at hand," the California Democrat told CNN's Dana Bash on "State of the Union."

"Nonetheless, a great deal is at stake because we'll be in a presidential election... But none of it will be very much considered until we see what the outcome of all of this is. And there are all kinds of ways to exert influence," she said.

When asked if she believes House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy has what it takes to be House speaker if Republicans win the chamber, Pelosi said she wants to see the results of the election first.

"Let's just get through the election, OK? They haven't won yet. They've been measuring the draperies, they've been putting forth an agenda. They haven't won it yet. After the election is concluded, depending on who was in the majority, there'll be judgments made within their own party, in our own parties, as to how we go forward," Pelosi said. 

Pressed again on whether McCarthy "has it," Pelosi said no.

"Why would I make a judgment about something that may or may not ever happen? No, I don't think he has it," she said. "But that's up to his own people to make a decision as to how they want to be led or otherwise."

Where the election stands: The battle for control of the House is now the biggest unanswered question of this year's midterm elections after Democrats kept their narrow Senate majority. Republicans have won 211 of the 218 seats they'd need to take the majority, according to CNN projections, while Democrats have won 204, with 20 undecided as of Sunday morning. 

Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren raised warnings about the looming debt ceiling with a potentially split Congress in an interview Sunday with NBC’s "Meet the Press."

“Many new Republicans coming in are coming in with exactly one goal — get Donald Trump elected in 2024," Warren continued. "They see if they can create chaos in the economy, then they think that may move Donald Trump one more inch toward election. So we’ve got to take that away from them, take care during the lame duck, take care of raising the debt limit or getting rid of it altogether."

Warren previously addressed this issue in a Saturday op-ed with the New York Times, writing that “Democrats should fight back by making this lame-duck session of Congress the most productive in decades. We can start by lifting the debt ceiling now to block Republicans from taking our economy hostage next year.”

President Joe Biden said earlier this month that he does not support efforts to abolish the limit.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called on his Republican counterparts, on Sunday, to work with Democrats to "get things done for the American people" in the new Congress, listing the debt ceiling among key tasks to address in the coming weeks.

Remember: The debt ceiling is exactly what it sounds like — the maximum that the federal government is allowed to borrow.

Congress set one more than a century ago to curtail government borrowing. But instead of sticking to it, Congress has raised the limit every time it’s been hit, leading to sometimes-tense negotiations that can threaten the US economy.

Where things stand: CNN projects Democrats will hold on to a slim majority in the Senate, while Republicans appear to be inching toward a majority in the House.

Too many races remain outstanding to say for certain which party will control the lower chamber. Read more here.