Nov. 4, 2022 US election coverage

Valerie Sample-Hayden.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, resident Valerie Sample-Hayden doesn’t just think Democratic Senate nominee John Fetterman is the best choice for Senate — she also is confident he’s going to win. 

“I think he’s the best choice. I think he’s able to help us, he’s been in politics for a good awhile and Dr. Oz has not. I think he’s just here for show and to grab up all the money he can get, and I think Fetterman is the best man for the job,” Sample-Hayden told CNN Friday.

It didn’t take Oprah’s endorsement of Fetterman for Sample-Hayden to put her support behind the Democratic candidate, but she certainly loved to see it. 

The Philadelphia resident has had a long relationship with politics, starting with knocking on doors with her mother. On her vest, Sample-Hayden pinned Barack Obama, Black Lives Matter, John Lewis and Josh Shapiro and Fetterman buttons. 

“My relationship with politics started long before me. Me and my mother used to go out, and she was politically inclined, and she died 20 years ago. I love politics. Every year I get out here,” Sample-Hayden said. 

Pressing her hand over the Obama pin on her chest, Sample-Hayden said, “Obama was really my light. He is, he is… I’m just going to say he is the breath of politics.”

Moving her hand over to the John Lewis button, Sample-Hayden spoke of her love for the late Congressman and civil rights leader. 

“John Lewis, a great man, I get filled up when I talk about him,” Sample-Hayden said, choking up. “He was someone who would be out here now on these grounds like, ‘Vote!’ you know, getting in people’s face, ‘You know what to do.’”

Mandela Barnes and Ron Johnson debate on October 13 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Wisconsin Democratic Senate nominee Mandela Barnes on Friday referred to US Sen. Ron Johnson’s refusal to commit to accepting the 2022 midterm election results as “petulant.”

Speaking to the media after an event in Madison, Barnes described Johnson’s attitude as arrogant.

“This what he’ll continue to be. They tried to overturn a free and fair election by sending fraudulent electors to the Vice President. It wasn’t successful. They weren’t successful in 2021. And we won’t let them be successful this year,” Barnes said.  

Johnson on Thursday declined to commit to accepting the midterm election results, saying, “Let’s see how this plays out” and adding, “I sure hope I can, but I can’t predict what the Democrats might have planned.”

Barnes campaigned Friday with actor LeVar Burton, who said he sees a lot of himself in the Senate Democratic candidate.

Herschel Walker rallies with supporters at a campaign stop in Newnan, Georgia, on Friday.

Making his closing argument in a closely contested race, Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker told supporters Friday he’s in a “spiritual battle” – but that he’s prepared as Election Day approaches.

At a rally on a sunny morning in Newnan, Georgia, Walker largely stuck to his campaign staples during his speech, beginning with his personal biography of growing up in Wrightsville, detailing a speech impediment as a child and discussing his faith.

Walker again worked to link his opponent, Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, to President Joe Biden.

Cyndi Flanagan, a resident of Senoia, said she was attending the rally to support Walker.

“Everybody has an ex in their life, and that’s his past and we are looking for a future, and Warnock does not support our future. Herschel Walker does,” Flanagan said of the allegations that Walker paid for abortions of past partners, despite his own hardline position on the issue. 

Voter Joe Stancil added, “Sure, he’s done a lot of things in the past that may have been questionable; we all have a past.”

Dot Moody of Newnan said she is motivated to vote for Walker “because I want normalcy back again.”

Silbia Tubbs said she’s voting for Walker out of concern about crime and inflation.

“I got to the supermarket, [spend] $100, and I say, ‘What did I buy?’” said Tubbs, who described herself as an independent voter principally concerned with God, family and country.

“The Biden agenda has taken this country down,” she said, pointing to the ground. “Our children, I’m very concerned about what they are going to learn in the school. My little grandson is going to be told, ‘Maybe you are a boy, maybe you are a girl,’” she said. “For me, that’s absolutely atrocious.”

Small business owner Nina Blackwelder said she was excited to support Walker because of his position on economic policy. Blackwelder owns Triple Barreled Outfitters, a gun store in Peachtree City.

“We have been experiencing some downturns in the current economy, so we are excited to see what opportunities lie in Republican leadership and see if there is an opportunity to turn some things around for us as well as others,” said Blackwelder, who ran for local office in 2019. 

A super PAC aligned with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee spent millions of dollars this spring trying to defeat progressive Pennsylvania state Rep. Summer Lee in her Democratic House primary against moderate Steve Irwin.

In their ads and assorted expenditures, AIPAC’S United Democracy Project (UDP) argued that Lee was outside the mainstream of the Democratic Party and highlighted past comments in which she had been critical of some of its leaders. Ultimately, their efforts failed. Lee narrowly won the primary, an open seat contest, to replace retiring Democratic Rep. Mike Doyle.

That might have been the end of the story. Pennsylvania’s 12th Congressional District, based in Pittsburgh, is considered a safe blue seat and Democrats expect Lee will win it going away. But AIPAC’s recent decision to jump back into the race, this time ahead of the general election, to support Republican nominee Mike Doyle has reignited the pro-Israel group’s ongoing fight with liberal Democrats. (And yes, the GOP’s Doyle has the same name as the Democratic congressman leaving the seat, which has been another headache for Lee. So much so that Lee’s campaign launched a TV ad that sought to clear up any potential confusion.)

UDP spent a little more than $2 million against Lee ahead of the May primary. Now, in the final week or so ahead of Election Day, they have shelled out another roughly million dollars to oppose her in a new TV ad and mailers. Lee and other critics have called AIPAC and UDP hypocrites – pointing to primary ads that questioned Lee’s Democratic bona fides cast against a new spot supporting the Republican nominee.

“With 1 week left until Election Day, AIPAC has upped their spending to over $1 million to help elect my extreme Republican opponent,” Lee tweeted this week. “This is the same Super PAC that attacked me during the primary for not being ‘sufficiently Democrat.’ Now they’re trying to elect the Republican.”

In response to the new controversy, Patrick Dorton, a UDP spokesperson, told CNN that it is spending against Lee now for the same reasons they did in the primary.

“We opposed Summer Lee because she supports conditioning aid to Israel, questioned Israel’s right to defend itself during the Gaza rocket attack, and aligns herself with some of the most fervent Israel critics in Congress,” Dorton said. “There’s no doubt that she is a potential, anti-Israel squad member.” 

Lee has pushed back against similar claims in the past and, in a conversation with a local Jewish group in April, said she supported Israel’s right to exist and accused some opponents of stripping important context from her past criticism of the state. 

“What’s more is that I also understand and really truly believe the need that we have for Jewish folks globally to have a safe haven,” Lee said. “I think that our role has to be in how we are ensuring the safety of all folks over there right now.”

Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks during a rally at Freedom Park in the Solivita retirement community in Poinciana, Florida, on Thursday.

A new video released by Gov. Ron DeSantis’ campaign Friday suggests God created the Republican leader to be a “fighter” for Florida. 

The two-minute production is filled with black and white images of Floridians and DeSantis as a booming voiceover delivers a Biblical fictional narrative of God’s post-Genesis creation of the universe. 

“And on the eighth day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, I need a protector. So God made a fighter.” 

The ad is a riff on the “So God made a farmer” speech delivered by hall of fame radio broadcaster Paul Harvey to the Future Farmers of America in 1978. It was more recently repurposed in a 2013 Super Bowl commercial created by Ram. 

Each stanza of that speech ended with “So God made farmer.” The DeSantis video inserts “fighter” in its place. But instead of a humbling ode to American farm life, the DeSantis ad ascribes a pious purpose to his many political battles. God created DeSantis, the video infers, to “take the arrows” and “advocate for truth in the midst of hysteria.”

“God said I needed somebody willing to get up before dawn, kiss his family goodbye, travel 1000s of miles for no other reason than to serve the people, to save their jobs, their livelihoods, their liberty, their happiness,” the narrator says. “So God made a fighter.”

The video was first posted to Twitter by first lady Casey DeSantis.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul, center, hold hands with Vice President Kamala Harris, left, and former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during a "Get Out The Vote" rally in New York, November 3, 2022, ahead of the U.S. midterm elections on Tuesday.

One of New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s Democratic allies, Rep. Adriano Espaillat, predicts she will win the governor’s race, despite the handwringing going on among state and national Democrats.

He said he thinks voters in New York City and women, driven by their support for abortion rights, will put Hochul over the top in her closer-than-expected race against GOP challenger Rep. Lee Zeldin, a Long Island conservative endorsed by former President Donald Trump.

Espaillat, the first Dominican American to serve in the US House of Representatives, represents New York’s 13th Congressional District, which includes upper Manhattan and part of the Bronx.      

Espaillat, who is holding a rally tonight with Hochul and New York Attorney General Letitia James, said he believes concerns about a lack of enthusiasm among Democratic voters are overblown.

The three-term congressman also took issue with the idea that Hochul may have been too late to shift her focus to concerns about crime and public safety and echoed Hochul’s criticism of Zeldin as soft on guns.

“She knows that communities are concerned with crime, but there’s double talk going on. The ones pushing the public safety issue, like Zeldin, have been absent in terms of gun control. The common denominator in these crimes is a gun. That’s what leads to murders and robberies. You can’t have it both ways and say ‘I’m going to be tough on crime’ and then allow everybody to carry a weapon, in some cases a semiautomatic,” he said.

Early voting takes place in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, New York City, on Tuesday.

What happens immediately after Election Day is as important to the democratic process as the campaigns that come just before. Here’s what you should know:

The most important thing to remember: The day after Election Day, it’s likely that we may not know which party will control the House and Senate for days or weeks. CNN did not project that Joe Biden would win the 2020 presidential election until four days after Election Day. It was not clear Democrats would control the Senate until two months later, on Jan. 6, 2021, when Jon Ossoff was projected to win the second of two runoff elections in Georgia.

A potential Senate runoff in Georgia: If neither Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock nor his GOP challenger Herschel Walker gets more than 50% of the vote, there will be another runoff on Dec. 6.

There could be another “red mirage”: The reason these things take time is partially because a large portion of US voters are again casting their votes early and by mail – more than 34 million Americans have already voted, according to CNN’s tabulations of data from election officials, Edison Research and Catalist. It takes time to count those, and it means that early results that pop up shortly after the polls close might look very different from the final outcome.

After the voting, there’s the canvass: Election results are not actually official for some time after Election Day as the canvassing takes place. Canvassing is the tabulation of votes, and it usually starts at the local level, when votes are canvassed in the days following Election Day. A separate canvass occurs at the state level in the days and weeks following those local tabulations. The rules for local officials to canvass results and report them to state governments vary by state.

There will be recounts and lawsuits: In this time when Republicans in particular are questioning the integrity of US elections and many still refuse to accept the results of the last election, look for more scrutiny.

Rules for recounts also vary, including who pays for them. Some states have automatic recounts in the event of a close result (often 0.5%), and in some states candidates have the option to request a recount. Recounts almost never result in a different winner. If there are lawsuits about a given race or the returns in a specific county that gain traction after Election Day, some of these canvass dates can slip.

Fetterman at a campaign event in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, on Thursday.

In an interview with “The View” on Friday morning, Pennsylvania Democrat John Fetterman said he was “incredibly honored” to earn Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement Thursday in the Senate race against Republican Mehmet Oz.

“I mean, she’s an icon. It’s unbelievable. It’s an honor and I’m so grateful and, you know, she understands what’s at stake here in this race,” Fetterman said.

Winfrey helped launch Oz’s TV career with appearances on “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” eventually leading to him getting his own talk show.

When asked if he thinks he has been transparent enough with voters about his health and medical records after having a stroke in May, Fetterman stood by the two doctors’ notes that were released in June and October.  

Referencing his debate performance on Oct. 25, Fetterman said, “I think it’s very critical that I showed up, and that’s exactly what I did.”

The Democrat dropped words during answers and occasionally appeared to lose his train of thought during the debate as the two candidates sparred over energy policy, abortion and the economy.

Fetterman was also asked to explain why his position on fracking changed. 

“Any of the issues that I ever had with fracking is really grounded in environmental regulations and once those were passed, and they were addressed, yeah, I support fracking. I absolutely support energy independence as well too and making sure that we can never be held by a country like Russia and making sure that we produce as much American energy as possible, and I fully support fracking,” Fetterman said.

Asked whether or not he was “good on green energy,” Fetterman said, “It’s important to kind of … walk that line between, you know, making sure we produce as much energy from traditional sources here, but we also … make sure that we make the transition to more and more green energy.”

A poll worker directs voters at an early voting site in Miami on Monday, October 31, 2022.

More than 34.6 million pre-election ballots have been cast in 47 states, according to data from Elections officials, Edison Research and Catalist.

Pre-election voting has been ahead of the 2018 pace across the states where data is available for the last three cycles. However, it’s still too early to know if overall turnout will reach 2018 levels, as voting patterns may have changed in the last few years. 

Today is the last day of in-person early voting in Texas, and the state continues to have the largest number of pre-election votes cast, with more than 4.6 million. 

There have been more than 3.8 million votes in Florida. In California, where every voter receives a ballot in the mail, more than 3.4 million pre-election ballots have been cast.  

Among some of the key battleground states, there have been more than 2.2 million ballots cast in Georgia, more than 1.2 million in Michigan and Arizona, and pre-election voting in Pennsylvania has crossed 1 million. 

In Wisconsin, 590,000 people have voted, while more than 460,000 votes have been cast in the smaller battleground state of Nevada.  

Some voter data comes from Catalist, a company that provides data, analytics and other services to Democrats, academics and nonprofit issue-advocacy organizations and is giving insights into who is voting before November.

Listen to the CNN Political Briefing podcast for analysis of the political landscape heading into the 2022 midterms.

The youngest voters – those aged 18-21 years – are showing up in higher numbers in all six key states compared to this point during the 2018 general election.

The number of these youngest voters in Michigan has risen from fewer than 500 in 2018 — before absentee voting was available to all in the state — to more than 21,000 so far this year. In every state except Wisconsin, 18-21-year-old voters are roughly the same or a larger share of the electorate than even this time during the 2020 election.

One major contributing factor to higher early turnout among young voters, especially in Michigan and Pennsylvania, is that no-excuse voting by mail was introduced there in 2020.

“It’s often the case that when you make voting easier, young people turn out more,” said Charlotte Hill, the director of the Democracy Policy Initiative at UC-Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy. “That’s because many steps of the voting process are disproportionately difficult for young people. When you make those steps easier, everyone benefits, but especially those people who had a harder time in the first place.”

However, 18-21-year-old voters are still no more than 2% of the early vote in these key states.

Traditionally, voters 65 and older make up a disproportionate share of a state’s voters, Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory University, told CNN. This year is no exception. More than half of the early voters in every state so far — except Georgia and Nevada — are senior citizens.

While there are fewer older voters who have voted early in each state than at this point in the last two elections, seniors are still a larger share of the early voting electorate than in 2020.