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The Democratic party’s hopes of regaining control of the United States Senate were dashed after two Republican senators, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Joni Ernst of Iowa, won their re-election battles.
Democrats ousted the incumbents in Arizona and Colorado, but a Republican candidate regained a seat in Alabama, giving Joe Biden’s party a net gain of one seat with several key races still undecided.
Republicans currently control 53 seats in the 100-member Senate. Democrats had set their sights on swapping several of the most contested seats, including Iowa and South Carolina, making their losses there a significant blow.
Joe Biden’s party won its goals in Colorado, where former Gov. John Hickenlooper defeated Republican incumbent Cory Gardner, and Arizona, where astronaut Mark Kelly defeated incumbent Martha McSally.
Results in the battlefield states of North Carolina, Georgia and Maine had yet to be called early Wednesday morning.
Democrats need a net gain of three seats to take the Senate if Joe Biden is elected president and a gain of four if Trump is reelected because the vice president of the United States can cast a tiebreaker vote in the chamber.
In South Carolina, Graham, a longtime Trump critic who became a staunch ally of the US president, defeated Democratic challenger Jaime Harrison in the most expensive Senate race in US history.
Harrison, a 44-year-old former state party chairman, raised a record $ 109 million in his bid to oust 65-year-old Graham, who called Donald Trump a “religious and xenophobic fanatic” in the run-up to the 2016 election. later changing tune.
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Ernst in Iowa turned down a challenge from Democrat Theresa Greenfield. In Alabama, incumbent Democrat Doug Jones lost his career to Republican challenger Tommy Tuberville, a former college football coach.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell easily won reelection in Kentucky, defeating his Democratic rival Amy McGrath, a former Navy fighter pilot. McGrath’s campaign raised $ 88 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, compared to $ 55 million contributed by McConnell’s campaign.
Many states can take days or even weeks to finalize their vote counts starting Tuesday, and at least one Senate race won’t be decided until January.
In Georgia, a special election to determine whether Republican Kelly Loeffler will keep the seat for which she was appointed last December will advance to a second round to be held on January 5.
Loeffler, a former Intercontinental Exchange executive, will face Democrat Raphael Warnock, pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, in the second round.
Warnock and Loeffler finished first and second, respectively, in a “jungle primary” on Tuesday that had 20 candidates on the ballot.
Georgia is the only state in the US where both Senate seats are up for grabs this cycle. The results are still being counted in the other race, where Jon Ossoff, a 33-year-old Democrat, challenges 70-year-old Republican incumbent David Perdue. If neither of them gets more than half of the votes, a candidate from the Libertarian party is also in the running, that contest will also go into a runoff on January 5.
Democrats are expected to maintain control of the 435-seat House of Representatives.
