2022 midterm election results

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.  

Sen. Tammy Duckworth will win reelection in Illinois, CNN projects, and defeat Republican Kathy Salvi.

When she was elected in 2016, Duckworth became the first disabled female senator. She was flying a helicopter in Iraq in 2004 when it was attacked and she lost both of her legs, and in 2018 she became the first senator to give birth while in office.

Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker will win reelection in Illinois, CNN projects.  

Republican Gov. Brad Little will win reelection in Idaho, CNN projects, and defeat Democrat Stephen Heidt. 

Democratic incumbent Gavin Newsom will win another term as California's governor, CNN projects, a year after he faced a recall election. He defeated Republican state Sen. Brian Dahle. 

The recall effort against Newsom gained momentum over the governor’s strict Covid-19 restrictions, especially when he was seen as not following them himself. In California, Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly two to one, giving Democratic candidates a huge advantage in statewide races. 

The last Republican governor of the Golden State was Arnold Schwarzenegger, who served from 2003 to 2011. 

Longtime GOP Sen. Mike Crapo will win reelection in Idaho, CNN projects, and defeat Democrat David Roth.

Democratic Gov. Janet Mills won a second term in office, CNN projected, defeating her predecessor, former Gov. Paul LePage, a right-wing Republican seeking to win back his old job after being forced out in 2019 due to state term limits. 

Mills became the state’s first female governor when she defeated Republican Shawn Moody in 2018, setting a record for the most votes received by any gubernatorial candidate in state history.  

Her defeat of LePage, an outspoken conservative who has described himself as “Trump before there was Trump,” is a rebuke to the former President’s political movement and a boon for Democrats, who entered the night defending 20 of the 36 contested governor’s offices nationwide. 

LePage not only made false claims about voter fraud in 2020, but has a history of alleging stolen elections, something he denied in a debate despite publicly available evidence to the contrary. The Republican’s campaign also attacked Mills over Covid-19 restrictions and the struggles of the state’s seafood industry, but Mills pushed back, touting her efforts to backstop it by, among other measures, sending federal relief cash to reimburse licensing fees paid up and down the supply chain.