2022 midterm election results

Republican Rep. Ted Budd will be the next senator from North Carolina, CNN projects, defeating former state Supreme Court Justice Cheri Beasley in a race that had tilted toward the GOP for months.

Budd’s win keeps the seat in Republican hands after Sen. Richard Burr announced he would not seek reelection and -- with an evenly divided Senate -- helps Republicans on their mission to take back the legislative chamber in January. 

Democrats long viewed the North Carolina Senate race as a reach for the party. They would have liked to have won it of course, but the race attracted far less outside spending than contests in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – the states widely seen as the top two chances for Democrats to flip a Senate seat in 2022. 

Budd, aided by an endorsement from former President Donald Trump, won the GOP nomination in May. Unlike Beasley, the three-term congressman trod a familiar political path -- going from owning a family business to winning a seat in the US House of Representatives to seeking statewide office. 

Headed into Election Day, Republican and Democratic operatives saw the race as tight, with increased polarization leading to an ever-shrinking sliver of persuadable voters across the state. 

In the end, however, North Carolina’s recent political tilt aided Budd. Trump won the state twice and Democrats haven’t won a Senate seat in the state since 2008. 

Budd, like Republicans across the country, hammered Beasley on inflation, crime and ties to President Joe Biden’s administration. 

“We talked a lot about tonight about Joe Biden,” Budd said in his closing statement of a debate in October. “Why am I doing that? Because Joe Biden is on the ballot on November 8, and he goes by the name this year of Cheri Beasley.” 

Republican J.D. Vance will win the Ohio Senate race, CNN projects, outlasting a stronger-than-expected challenge from Democrat Tim Ryan and keeping the seat under GOP control. 

Vance’s win is a boon for Republicans and a victory for former President Donald Trump, whose endorsement in the Republican primary helped Vance emerge from the contentious intraparty fight. 

Vance continues a long line of Republican victories in a state that has tilted towards the party in recent years. Other than Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, no Democrat has won nonjudicial statewide office in the state since 2008 and former President Barack Obama was the last Democratic presidential nominee to win the state in 2012. 

The race between Vance and Ryan was a contentious and, at times, personal affair, with both candidates holding a clear animosity towards the other.  

Ryan’s stout challenge to Vance worried Republicans in Ohio and Washington, D.C. That contributed to the acrimony, a feeling that played out on the campaign trail and during their two debates, both of which devolved into Vance and Ryan trading personal barbs. 

“These leaders in DC will eat you up like a chew toy,” Ryan said of Vance’s support for Trump, even after the former president publicly accused him of “kissing my ass” to get him to campaign for him. “I am just telling you, like, I have been in this business, it is tough business. If you think you are going to help Ohio, you are not. If you can’t even stand up for yourself, how are you going to stand up for the people of this state?” 

And Vance repeatedly questioned Ryan’s character. “Tim Ryan has put on a costume where he pretends to be reasonable moderate,” the Republican said during their first debate. 

Money loomed large in the race, with Ryan consistently enjoying a significant fundraising advantage over Vance. 

In the third quarter of 2022, Ryan raised a sizable $17.2 million, compared to Vance’s $6.9 million. In the second quarter, the gap was even more dramatic: Ryan raised $9.1 million to Vance’s roughly $1 million. 

Still, because of Democratic skepticism about their chances in Ohio, Ryan had to largely go it alone in the state, pouring all the money he raised into a slate of television ads. Vance, by contrast, received considerable outside help – including from the Mitch McConnell-aligned Senate Leadership Fund, which announced in August it planned to spend at least $28 million in the state. 

Election results are still coming in, and many races won’t be called for days, if not weeks. But for now, here’s a look at the candidates who CNN projects will make history in the 2022 midterms.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott pledged to do more to secure the border and congratulated other Republicans who are projected to win Tuesday.

“I ran for the farmers and ranchers down here on the border who pleaded for a more secure border in the state of Texas,” he said, adding that he will also continue to fight crime and “keep Texas number 1 in oil and gas” production in the US.

Abbott, who CNN projects will win reelection, said he will urge lawmakers to reinstate the Remain in Mexico policy and re-start building the border wall.

He thanked Texans who voted for him, assuring the crowd, "we will go to work every single day to earn that trust."

“All of you inspired me and all of your propelled me” to reelection, the governor added, saying he heard from voters that they just want to “keep Texas, Texas.”

He touted other successes, including the quality of education, and funding law enforcement. The governor also congratulated “the next generation of Republicans” who were elected tonight.

Harriet Hageman, a Donald Trump ally who ousted Rep. Liz Cheney in August’s Republican primary, will win Wyoming’s at-large House seat, CNN projects.

Hageman defeated Democrat Lynnette Grey Bull, as well as contenders from the Libertarian and Constitution parties.

Her victory in the deep red state — Trump won Wyoming by 43 percentage points in 2020 — was all but guaranteed after she defeated Cheney in one of the nation’s most closely watched primaries.

Democratic state Attorney General Josh Shapiro will be the next governor of Pennsylvania, CNN projects, defeating far-right Republican state lawmaker Doug Mastriano. 

Shapiro’s ascent means Democrats will keep control of the state’s top job, providing a powerful check on its GOP-held state legislature, as Gov. Tom Wolf leaves office due to term limits. Shapiro is also now poised to become a leading national Democratic figure short-listed for the party’s next open presidential primary. 

Most polling of the race before Election Day showed Shapiro with a comfortable lead over Mastriano, who was endorsed by former President Donald Trump shortly before the primary and chartered buses to Washington ahead of the former President’s “Stop the Steal” rally on January 6, 2021. (Mastriano says he never entered the US Capitol and has not been charged with any crimes.) 

But the Republican nominee’s support for expanded gun rights, strict anti-abortion laws and outspoken opposition to Covid-19 safety measures appeared to alienate voters in Pennsylvania’s decisive swing counties.  

Mastriano, a retired army colonel, was outpaced by Republican Senate candidate Mehmet Oz in polling throughout the general election season and Oz often made pains to distance himself from his fellow GOP nominee. 

Entering this campaign, Shapiro, who also outraised Mastriano by tens of millions of dollars, held the record for most votes won by a candidate in state history. In 2020, his 3.46 million ballots outpaced even Joe Biden, who ended up with roughly 3,000 fewer votes. 

Republican Gov. Brian Kemp will be reelected in Georgia, CNN projects, defeating Democrat Stacey Abrams for a second time. 

Abrams has called Kemp to concede, according to a Kemp campaign source.

Kemp had been seen as the favorite in the race for months, with Abrams unable to capture the momentum she experienced in 2018 and hampered by broader voter discontent with Democratic control of Washington. 

The victory reasserts Republican control of the executive office in Georgia just two years removed from Democrats winning both of the state’s US Senate seats and President Joe Biden becoming the first Democrat to win the state since Bill Clinton in 1992. 

Abrams’ defeat is a tough blow for Democrats who have long sought to elevate her in a state that, until recently, had been dominated by Republicans. After losing to Kemp by less than two percentage points in 2018, Abrams was among the women considered to run alongside Biden. She is often touted as one of the most influential Democrats in the country, despite currently holding no public office.  

Kemp’s victory is a clear sign that economic arguments made by Republicans were more powerful in 2022 than Democrats’ focus on abortion. Abrams centered her campaign on the issue after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade over the summer. She told CNN in September that the issue was going to be “front and center in the conversation” -- specifically Kemp’s signing of a bill that bans most abortions when early cardiac activity is detected, when many women don’t yet know they’re pregnant. 

Kemp said on the campaign trail that he stood by that law, noting that it provided some exceptions. He instead spent much of his time focused on inflation, crime, and antipathy for Biden’s administration. 

“Georgians should know that my desire is to continue to help them fight through 40-year high inflation and high gas prices and other things that our Georgia families are facing right now, quite honestly, because of bad policies in Washington, DC, from President Biden and the Democrats that have complete control,” Kemp said at his first debate against Abrams. 

Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan will win her bid for reelection, CNN projects, defeating Republican Don Bolduc and delivering her party a key win in its bid to keep the Senate in Democratic control.

Hassan was widely seen as one of the most vulnerable Senate Democrats in the country at the start of the year, saddled with lagging economic indicators and President Joe Biden’s sluggish approval rating.  

But the Democratic senator -- aided by Bolduc being viewed by top Republicans in Washington and New Hampshire as out of step with the Granite State -- was successful in her bid for six more years in office after winning her first term by roughly a thousand votes out of more than 700,000 cast. 

Bolduc was widely written off by local and national Republicans, many of whom viewed him with skepticism as he rose during the primary and had grave concerns about his inability to raise money. After staking far-right positions on a range of topics to defeat a series of better funded Republican candidates, Bolduc attempted to walk back those positions almost as soon as he won the primary, including repeatedly pushing falsehoods around the validity of the 2020 election.  

Even with their doubts, though, Republicans spent more than $34 million on ads between Labor Day and Election Day pushing Bolduc, a sign of how vulnerable the party saw Hassan. 

Hassan’s successful attacks on Bolduc -- and the Republican’s less than clear pushback -- did little to assuage Republican concerns, leading the National Republican Senatorial Committee and Senate Leadership Fund to cut their planned spending in the state weeks before Election Day. The National Republican Senatorial Committee returned two weeks out with a small $1 million buy. 

Like many Democrats across the country, Hassan was powered by energy around the abortion debate and used former President Donald Trump and the unfounded denial rhetoric around the 2020 election to cast Bolduc as an extremist. 

“Let’s be very clear here: Don Bolduc is an election denier,” she said at a debate. “His refusal to accept election results means he doesn’t listen to you. This allows him to support an agenda that will raise your costs and eviscerate your rights, because at the end of the day, he doesn’t think he needs to listen, or isn’t accountable to you.” 

Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar wins reelection bid in Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District race, CNN projects.