2022 midterm election results

Democrat Maxwell Frost, a 25-year-old community organizer, will win Florida’s 10th Congressional District, CNN projects, becoming the first member of Generation Z elected to Congress. 

Frost will defeat Republican Calvin Wimbish in the race for the Orlando-area seat to succeed Democratic Rep. Val Demings, who vacated the seat for a Senate run. 

Members of Generation Z — those born after 1996 — are eligible to be elected to the US House of Representatives for the first time in this election. (House members must be at least 25 years old.) 

Frost has leaned into his youth throughout his campaign and has generated buzz through social media and public interviews. 

Frost had the endorsements of notable progressives such as Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, as well as the Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC, on his way to winning a crowded primary in August that included a state senator and two former members of Congress. He was the heavy favorite in the general election in a deep-blue seat that now-President Joe Biden would have carried by 32 points in 2020. 

Multiple states have reported attempted cyberattacks on their websites on Election Day, but none of the hacks have prevented anyone from voting, federal officials told reporters Tuesday night.

Mississippi is the only state that has reported a “sustained outage” of a website from the hacks, said a senior official from the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. 

Officials did not name the other states that had reported the low-level hacking activity. 

The clerk of Champaign County, Illinois, told CNN earlier Tuesday that his office had been fending off a suspected cyberattack. 

The website of Mississippi’s secretary of state has been down for multiple hours Tuesday after a Russian-speaking hacking group listed it as a target. CNN has reached out to the Mississippi secretary of state’s office for comment.

How this impacts voters: Such websites are not involved in the casting or counting of votes, but they often provide voters with information on how and where to vote. Hackers try to take them down to sow panic or make exaggerated claims about their impact.

The CISA official also sought to tamp down conspiracy theories that seize on the fact that it takes time to tabulate and certify election results. 

“This may take days to weeks depending on state law — and that is completely normal,” the official said. 

Republican Rudy Yakym will win the election for Indiana’s 2nd Congressional District, CNN projects, succeeding the late GOP Rep. Jackie Walorski, who died in a car accident this year with two of her staffers.

Yakym, a former Walorski campaign finance director, will defeat Democrat Paul Steury, a high school science teacher, in the reliably red South Bend-based district.

He is also projected to win the special election on serving out the remainder of 2022.

Yakym won his party’s nomination in October after earning the endorsement of Dean Swihart, the husband of the late congresswoman, who introduced the candidate before the state GOP voting caucus in August as a "pro-Trump, pro-life and Christian family man,” according to the South Bend Tribune.

Yakym, a married father of three, has worked at a logistics company and is the head usher at his Baptist church, according to his biography on the National Republican Congressional Committee website.

There is no sense of alarm among Georgia Republicans tonight — despite Democrats jumping to an early advantage as the first batch of votes is counted in the first hour after polls close.

Why? The ballots counted so far come largely from the record-setting early ballots cast in Georgia — more than 2 million in all.

A strategist inside the GOP war room — pouring over data for Gov. Brian Kemp and GOP Senate candidate Herschel Walker — say the votes from Election Day will overwhelmingly benefit Republicans. CNN has not yet made projections on these races.

Yet one question looms large: Will there be a significant fall-off from Kemp to Walker? And did those voters back Warnock or not vote in the Senate race at all?

Ben Wikler, the chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, tells CNN “we are getting ready for a big red mirage and blue shift,” citing an “explosion in early voting and absentee voting” in locations with large central count facilities like Milwaukee, Green Bay and Kenosha. 

The effect “could be magnified compared to 2018,” Wikler added. 

According to the Wisconsin Elections Commission, historically jurisdictions that count ballots at central count facilities “have been some of the last to complete unofficial results reporting.”

Wikler said, “Kenosha’s really the biggest question mark on the map.”

Chad Doran, director of communications for the Republican Party of Wisconsin, tells CNN they’re “watching” for any red mirage-type scenarios.

“Day-of voting appears to be beating expectations, which is generally a good sign for Republicans," Doran said.

Polls in Wisconsin close at 9 p.m. ET.

A Georgia state election official says America needs candidates to be “gracious” in both defeat and victory.

Acting Georgia Deputy Secretary of State Gabriel Sterling stressed that the US needs political candidates to be “gracious” and publicly trust election results regardless of whether they win or lose.        

“We have reached a point in our nation’s history where we need leaders and candidates for both parties to step up and say, ‘I accept the results of this election’ regardless of the outcome,” Sterling said during a news conference Tuesday night in Atlanta.    

“It sucks to lose, but here’s the math – there is always going to be somebody who wins and somebody who comes up short. For the stability of the nation as a whole, and for the defense for the institutions as they stand, candidates should gracefully accept defeat when the voters have said that to them and they should gracefully accept victory and not rub it in and spike the football,” he said.   

Sterling said that both Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, himself, and other state election officials have been “stewing” on this in the aftermath of the 2020 election when former President Donald Trump falsely claimed the election was rigged and tried to overturn the results. But Sterling said that he is bringing this up tonight due to the fact that “we already have candidates out there saying if I lose it’s because it’s rigged. That’s a pile of crap. They know it is when they say it,” an emotional Sterling said.

“The system cannot take another two or four years of election denial, be it by voter suppression or voter fraud. Both of them are false claims, that have been proven false again and again and again,” Sterling pleaded.    

“We have to stop weaponizing election administration, we have to stop weaponizing the end results of this election.” 

Republican Sen. Rand Paul will win the Kentucky Senate race, CNN projects, and defeat progressive Democrat Charles Booker.  

Republican Katie Britt will win Alabama’s Senate race, CNN projects, and defeat Democrat Will Boyd, the pastor of the St. Mark Missionary Baptist Church.

It's the first time the state has elected a woman to the office. 

Britt is the former chief of staff for retired Sen. Richard Shelby. The drama in this race came in the Republican primary when Britt took on Rep. Mo Brooks. Trump initially endorsed Brooks, but he rescinded the endorsement as Brooks’ campaign struggled.

Democrats last won a Senate seat in Alabama in 2017 when Doug Jones won a special election against Republican Roy Moore.

Britt’s chances in crimson red Alabama were never in doubt -- the competitive race was for the Republican nomination to succeed the retiring Republican Sen. Richard Shelby. 

Britt jumped into the primary race even though Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks had already earned former President Donald Trump’s endorsement.  

But Brooks – who led the charge in Congress to overturn the 2020 election results – was viewed as an unreliable ally to the business community, especially compared to Shelby, who delivered federal funding for the state for decades. And Britt, Shelby’s former chief of staff and the Business Council of Alabama’s former CEO, had deep ties to that wing of the party.  

Meanwhile, a self-funded Republican candidate, Lynda Blanchard, the former Trump ambassador to Slovenia, never took off and dropped out of the race. Army veteran pilot Mike Durant -- of “Black Hawk Down” fame -- was weighed down by his sister’s public claims that he was in denial about her allegations of sexual abuse involving their father, which Durant strongly denied.  

And Britt was able to flip Trump. At a Super Bowl party, New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick praised Britt—and her husband Wesley, a former Patriot—to Trump. That sparked an invitation to Trump’s Palm Beach estate.  

Britt had already cast herself as a Trump-aligned conservative, arguing that Brooks was a career politician, who had heavily criticized Trump during the 2016 GOP presidential primary. In March, after Brooks publicly accused Trump of asking him to break the law by exploring ways to reinstall him as commander in chief, Trump dropped the congressman.  

In the May primary, Britt received 45% of the vote, but since no candidate received over 50%, the race turned to a June runoff election. Trump then endorsed Britt, who beat Brooks with 63% of the vote. 

Republican Rep. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma will win a special election for US Senate, CNN projects, making him the first Native American to represent Oklahoma in the chamber in nearly a century.  

Mullin, who currently represents the deeply conservative 2nd Congressional District, will defeat Democratic nominee Kendra Horn, a former congresswoman, in the race for the seat of GOP Sen. Jim Inhofe, who is resigning in January.  

A citizen of the Cherokee Nation, Mullin was first elected to his House seat in eastern Oklahoma in 2012 and went on to closely align himself with former President Donald Trump. 

He voted in 2021 to object to the congressional certification of now-President Joe Biden’s Electoral College wins in Pennsylvania and Arizona. Mullin tweeted at the time that he was objecting “due to all the fraud and uncertainty,” though there has been no evidence of fraud even close to widespread enough to have changed the outcome. Two days prior to the vote, he told constituents that he “absolutely” did not think the election was honest. 

But Mullin sought to anchor his Senate campaign in more broad Republican positions, listing “RESTORE Law and Order” and “FIGHT the Liberal Biden Agenda” as priorities on his campaign website.  

“I’m running to keep this seat RED, fight for our conservative values in the Senate, and Save America from Biden’s far left insanity,” his website reads.  

Less prominent in Mullin’s campaign messaging was that fact he was running to be the first Native American senator from Oklahoma since Robert Owen left Congress in 1925, though he did acknowledge the historic nature of his Senate bid during a speech in September.  

“I’m going to be the only true Native American in the Senate when I get elected,” Mullin told the National Tribal Health Conference in Washington, DC. “That’s crazy.” 

“How crazy that we’re true Native Americans, the first Americans,” he added, “and we’re so underrepresented in the halls of Congress.”