Editor’s Note: This article was written Monday, Nov. 14.
The 2022 midterm elections helped shape the future political landscape as the country will soon enter the 2024 election season.
As of Nov. 14, the senate elections in Nevada and Arizona have solidified Democrats will retain control of the Senate. House races across the nation are still waiting for votes to be counted in some areas, but the house currently stands at 212 Republican seats and 203 Democratic seats, according to minute-by-minute data provided by Politico. This leaves 20 seats still too close to call. A majority in the house of representatives requires 218 seats, according to CNN.
The Georgia senate race remained too close to call and no candidate won the 50 percent of the vote required to win. Now Incumbent Senator Raphael Warnock and his opponent, the former University of Georgia running back Herschel Walker, enter a runoff election that will be decided by popular vote on Dec. 6, 2022. The difference this time is that Libertarian candidate Oliver Chase, who amassed 2 percent of the vote, will not be on this ticket. This runoff will no longer determine who has the majority in the senate but will instead determine whether the Democrats will depend on Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote as much this term.
Election night in Georgia began with some quickly projected winners for house seats, with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene from Georgia’s 14th district projected to win, ending the night with 66.4 percent of the vote. Greene’s win was surprising to many as she is perceived as controversial for espousing conspiracy theories. Her win comes as she seeks a nomination to house committees according to a report from Axios. She was previously stripped of all committee assignments due to her extremely controversial views, as previously reported by NBC News.
Rep. Lucy McBath currently represents Georgia’s 6th district but decided to run in the nearby 7th district due to the district lines being redrawn causing a possible Republican advantage as reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. McBath won her new district with 62.5% of the vote. Rich McCormick won the 6th district with 63.1% of the vote. Sanford Bishop won the 2nd district with 54.9% of the vote, the lowest margin win of all House seats. All of these wins provided data on partisan support in these newly redrawn districts and which way residents politically lean.
These results mean that out of Georgia’s 14 representatives, 9 are Republican. This narrow margin solidifies Georgia’s representation in the house of representatives as a Republican majority. This election is also the first after Georgia’s controversial redistricted maps had been created and ratified in 2021. Detractors of the newly drawn maps had claimed that they had been gerrymandered to give Republicans the advantage after Democrats managed to flip Georgia in the 2020 election. Officials in charge of redrawing election maps rebutted that notion, claiming that every 10 years the state is required to assess current voting maps and redraw them using census data.
The implications the Georgia races have on the national political landscape are straightforward: Republicans need five seats to win control of the house of representatives. The Republican win in Georgia’s 6th district turned an existing Democrat house seat into a Republican seat. That win was negated, however, as Lucy McBath would defeat Republican Mark Gonsalvez and turn Georgia’s 7th district seat Democratic. Republican leadership was hoping to win the house but acknowledged that a senate win would be a welcome accomplishment to avoid a divided congress, according to Sen. Lindsey Graham.
Republicans flipped three seats nationally, which would indicate political momentum that many believed would lead to Republican control of the house of representatives. That now stands at seven seats flipped by Republicans and eight seats lost by Democrats. The majority in the house is still being decided as results continue to pour in.
