Update (2:21 a.m.) Fox analyst Brit Hume opened the possibility that an early declaration of House Democrats holding the majority and picking up seats might have been premature as several seats proved to be GOP upsets.
Update (2:12 a.m.) Incumbent GOP Sen. Thom Tillis declared victory in North Carolina and Steve Daines staved off a challenge from former Gov. Steve Bullock, putting Republicans closer to holding the Senate.
Meanwhile, Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and David Perdue of Georgia both needed to retain leads over 50 percent in order to avoid technicalities under state law from kicking in.
For Collins, that would be the possibility of a tabulation involving Maine’s newly passed ranking law. For Perdue, it would be a runoff with Democrat Jon Ossoff. A runoff election will occur in Georgia between incumbent GOP challenger Kelly Loeffler and her Democrat challenger for a separate special-election seat.
Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan was projected to win, although more than 70 percent of votes had yet to be tabulated.
Update (12:52 a.m.) Trump said he will make a statement about “big win” and denounced Democrats’ attempts to “steal” the election, eliciting a Twitter disclaimer.
I will be making a statement tonight. A big WIN!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 4, 2020
Update (12:52 a.m.) Incumbent GOP Sen. Martha McSally refused to concede despite preliminary declarations—by Fox News in particular—that Arizona would be one of the few flips for Democrats in a race that otherwise appeared to break largely along the same lines as the 2016 race.
Nonetheless, it appeared that it would come down to key battleground states where mail-in votes appeared unlikely to be tallied for several days.
McSally said that with roughly three quarters of the Arizona vote tallied, every vote should be counted before declaring a victor.
Update (12:17 a.m.) GOP incumbent Joni Ernst of Iowa held her seat and President Donald Trump held Iowa in one of the closely watched races that threatened to upend the Senate majority in particular.
An unexpectedly strong GOP showing in Michigan, where Trump campaigned heavily, raised the possibility that challenger John James could unseat incumbent Democrat Gary Peters, resulting in a net zero change in the Senate.
Trump’s campaign also boosted criticism over the premature calling of Arizona with only 74 percent of the vote in. Although the president was trailing in the state, an estimated million votes remained, many of them day-of votes.
Gov. Doug Ducey chimed in as well saying it was far too early to call the vote.
Update (12:02 a.m.) Rep. Doug Collins’ concession in Georgia to incumbent Sen. Kelly Loeffler assured that the tossup seat would result in a runoff election.
Loeffler was appointed by GOP Gov. Brian Kemp to replace the retiring Johnny Isakson. Collins, a loyal Trump ally and ranking minority member of the House Judiciary Committee, felt snubbed by the appointment, denouncing Loeffler as a centrist.
Loeffler will take on Democrat Raphael Warnock, the pastor of the church once led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
With the backing of Collins’s supporters, she will enter into the runoff as the favored candidate.
Update (11:54) Despite a tightening electorate, President Donald Trump and Sen. John Cornyn both won in Texas, keeping the Lonestar State in the red column for now.
Texas, a former red bastion with the largest number of reliable Republican votes, has been eyed by Democrats as many former blue-staters flee for a more favorable economy in growing cities like Austin and Houston.
Update (11:34) Mark Kelly unseated Martha McSally in Arizona, once again giving Democrats a net seat-gain in the Senate with several tossup seats yet to be called.
McSally, a former Air Force pilot, was appointed by Gov. Doug Ducey to fill the seat of the late John McCain after losing the 2018 Senate race to Kyrsten Sinema.
But Kelly, a former astronaut and husband of former Rep. Gabby Giffords, appealed to voter in the long centrist but increasingly blue state where growing numbers of Democrats fleeing California and immigrants from Mexico have shifted the dynamic.
Update (11:16) Republican candidate Tommy Tuberville, a former Auburn football coach, unseated incumbent Democrat Doug Jones in Alabama’s Senate race, a widely anticipated flip in the GOP’s favor to fill the seat vacated when Jeff Sessions became President Donald Trump’s first attorney general.
The win brings the Senate back to a net zero gain following John Hickenlooper’s defeat of Cory Gardner in Colorado. However, several other pathways remained for Democrats eyeing the Senate majority. Both Martha McSally in Arizona and Joni Ernst in Iowa appeared to be trailing.
But Republicans were cautiously optimistic about holding the seats of Maine Sen. Susan Collins and North Carolina’s Thom Tillis.
A two-seat gain would not give Democrats the majority, leaving Republicans with 51 Senate seats.
Update (10:57) Although many unanswered questions remained, President Donald Trump appeared poised to hold nearly all of the states he won in 2016 with the exception of Arizona, Iowa and Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania looked to be a closely watched holdout, possibly for days to come, due to court decisions to allow it to continue collecting ballots for three days after the election.
If those three states flipped to Biden and Trump were to win at-large seats in Maine and Nebraska, there could potentially be a tie 269-269.
That would send the election to the House of Representatives. However, with each state receiving one vote per delegation, Republicans would appear to have the edge. Nonetheless, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has been plotting for that eventuality.
While there appeared to be several notable GOP House upsets, Fox News projected based on its own research that the Democrats would hold the House majority and likely gain a few seats.
Update (10:20) In a night notably devoid of any major upsets, noted mainly for defying left-wing media’s projections of major windfalls for Democrat Joe Biden, recent demographic patterns appeared to be taking a toll on battleground Arizona.
The state, bordered by Mexico to the south and California to the west, is growing increasingly blue, although notably a bastion for RINO centrists like Jeff Flake and John McCain in the past.
With roughly 70 percent of precincts reporting, Biden had an edge of about 200,000 votes, or roughly 9 percent. GOP incumbent Sen. Martha McSally, appointed to replace McCain after his death, also appeared to be in danger of losing her seat to former astronaut Mark Kelly, the husband of former Rep. Gabby Giffords.
Update (10:12) According to Politico, Philadelphia declared that it would stop counting mail-in ballots for the night with only 75,000 tallied.
The Pennsylvania race has been under severe scrutiny due to instances of potential vote fraud by the Democrat state leaders.
Trump appeared to have a small lead with 28 percent of the vote in the state. That included a lead in several of the battleground western counties dominated by blue-collar voters, including Scranton, where Democrat Joe Biden spent his early childhood.
Update (9:57) Sen. Lindsey Graham handily won his race despite a race in which his challenger, Jaime Harrison, spent tens of millions of dollars in outside campaign cash.
Meanwhile, Virginia remained an enigma for some, with 53 percent of precincts reporting which showed Donald Trump with an 8 percent lead.
However, many of the populous Northern Virginia areas that swing blue were the late-reporting precincts.
Update (9:19 p.m.) Fox News projected House Democrats would hold the majority and expand their lead by at least five seats.
With polls on the West Coast still open, several hotly contested California seats flipped by Democrats in 2018 remained indeterminate.
Among the noteworthy story-lines was the victory by North Carolina Republican Madison Cawthorne, who held the seat vacated by current White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.
The 25-year-old Cawthorne, who appeared at the Republican National Convention, will become the youngest member of Congress. Cawthorne was paralyzed from the waist down in a car accident.
Update (9 p.m.) After weathering an early ethics scandal, former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, became the first Senate seat flip.
Cory Gardner was long considered to be one of the most vulnerable senators in the increasingly blue state, alongside Maine centrist GOP Sen. Susan Collins.
Democrats would need to pick up three seats and the presidency or four without it to flip majority control. However, Alabama is expected to be a flipped seat for Republicans.
Update (8:53 p.m.) With roughly 70 percent of precincts reporting, incumbent Democrat Gov. Roy Cooper looked poised to defeat challenger Dan Forest in North Carolina, one of several key battleground states in the presidential race.
While the race between President Donald Trump and Joe Biden in the Tarheel state remained too close to call, Biden led by roughly 200,000 votes, or 5 percent.
Update (8:27 p.m.) Tennessee GOP candidate Bill Hagerty became the first non-incumbent projected to win in the Senate, retaining the seat held by retiring Lamar Alexander.
Hagerty appeared poised to win handily against Democrat Marquita Bradshaw. Although the race was not one of the closely watched seats as Democrats invested in other areas, it follows a 2018 race in which Sen. Marsha Blackburn’s race became prominent due to celebrities like Taylor Swift trying to defeate her.
Update (8 p.m.) Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell coasted to victory in Kentucky, according to Fox News projections despite considerable dark-money investments on trying to unseat him.
“Mitch McConnell brings home the bacon in a big way in the state of Kentucky,” said Fox News Democrat commentator Juan Williams.
Fox analyst Brit Hume called him one of the “most effective majority” leaders in memory after a recent success in confirming Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
West Virginia GOP Sen. Shelley Moore Capito also was projected to win her seat.
Presidential projections
Biden: Vermont, Virginia, Delaware, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, Maine (3/4), Washington DC, New York, Colorado, New Hampshire, California, Washington, Oregon, Minnesota
Trump: Kentucky, Indiana, West Virginia, Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska (4/5), Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, South Carolina, Utah, Idaho, Texas, Iowa
Senate projections
Republicans: Mitch McConnell (Ky. incumbent), Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va. incumbent), Jim Inhofe (Okla. incumbent), Bill Hagerty (Tennessee, open seat from retiring GOP Sen. Lamar Alexander), Tom Cotton (Arkansas incumbent), Mike Rounds (SD incumbent), Cynthia Lummis (Wyo. incumbent), Lindsey Graham (SC incumbent), Tommy Tuberville (Ala. seat flip), Jim Risch (Idaho incumbent), Roger Marshall (Kansas open seat from retiring GOP Sen. Pat Roberts), Cindy Hyde-Smith (Mississippi incumbent), John Cornyn (Texas incumbent)
Democrats: Chris Coons (Delaware incumbent), Dick Durbin (Illinois projections), Ed Markey (Massachusetts incumbent), Jeanne Shaheen (NH incumbent), Cory Booker (NJ incumbent), John Reed (RI incumbent), Mark Warner (Va. incumbent), Mark Kelly (Ariz. seat flip), Jeff Merkley (Oregon incumbent)
Gubernatorial projections
Republicans: Eric Holcomb (Indiana incumbent), Chris Sununu (New Hampshire incumbent), Jim Justice (West Virginia incumbent), Doug Burgum (ND incumbent), Phil Scott (Vermont incumbent), Mike Parson (Missouri incumbent)
Democrats: John Carney (Delaware incumbent), Roy Cooper (NC incumbent)
