Many seats in United States elections always go to the same party. So control of the Senate and House of Representatives depends on a relatively small number of competitive seats, or “battlegrounds”. Election experts rank the competitive seats as more or less likely to return a Republican or Democrat. This gives a clue to how the election is evolving overall; if Democrats are winning seats that were thought likely to go Republican, it may be an indication they will do well overall. Simplistically, blue shapes on the right of the following charts signal a good night for Biden and the Democrats, and red shapes on the left signal the opposite.
Two crucial Senate seats are Georgia, with a maverick Republican challenger, and Pennsylvania, a tight race that the Democrats hope to win.
Likely Democrat
Lean Democrat
Toss-up
Lean Republican
Likely Republican
With more seats and more of them competitive, the House is also on a knife-edge. Key seats include Iowa’s 3rd district and Colorado’s 8th.
Likely Democrat
Lean Democrat
Toss-up
Lean Republican
Likely Republican
How do the elections work?
All 435 seats in the lower chamber of the federal congress, the House of Representatives, are re-elected every two years. (There are no term limits, and incumbents are often returned, so there is substantial continuity in the membership). House seats are broadly proportional to population, so California has lots of seats but Montana only a few.
The upper chamber, the Senate, has 100 seats; two for each state, however populous. In every even-numbered year, roughly one-third of senators are elected for a six-year term. Legislation has to pass both chambers to become law. Senators have some additional responsibilities compared with their colleagues in the House; chiefly these have to do with confirming (or not) presidential appointments.
Governors are not part of Congress. Their impact is mostly local to their own state, but because they can affect electoral law or practice, they can affect future federal elections.
Going into the election the Democratic party of the president, Joe Biden, controlled both chambers of Congress, but by very narrow margins. In the Senate, a 50-50 split would mean a casting vote went to the vice-president, Kamala Harris. (In practice the casting vote more often went to Joe Manchin, a Democratic senator representing a largely Republican state).
These elections are called midterms because they happen in the middle of a four-year presidential term. They are difficult for sitting presidents because the presidential party often does badly in them, and because losing control of Congress makes it more difficult for the president to pursue his or her agenda.
About these results
The results are provided by the Associated Press, or AP, who have rigorous criteria for “calling” election races; that is, for reporting a winner. Redrawing of House districts this year following the 2020 census mean AP is not reporting “flips”, or seats where the sitting party changes. The redistricting also means that in a few seats there are two incumbent representatives competing for a new district. It is also possible that some seats will count 100% of votes without a winner becoming apparent because of laws that trigger an automatic recount in races that are very close.
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