Democrats Keep Senate Majority, US House Majority Remains Up in the Air

By Yehudit Garmaise

Democrats kept control of the US Senate yesterday after Nevada and Arizona both went blue.

Control of the US House of Representatives, however, remains up in the air as votes are still being counted five days after Election Day, but the process could take weeks.

If Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock (D) defeats Republican challenger Herschel Walker in a runoff next month, the Democratic senators will win the majority by filling more than 50 seats in the US Senate, which has 100 seats.

Sen. Chuck Schumer characterized the Senate’s majority as a “sound rejection of the anti-democratic, authoritarian, nasty, and divisive direction the MAGA Republicans wanted to take our country.”

While each state gets two seats in the US Senate, in the House of Representatives distributes its maximum 435 seats to accurately represent each state’s population. 

Although not the “red wave” that many experts predicted, the “red trickle” of Republican Congressional victories could help Republicans to reach the 218 seats necessary for a House majority.

Which party wins a House majority now depends on races in states, such as California, in which an outsize number of mail-in ballots are still left to count.

So far, Republicans have won 211 of the 218 seats they need to take control of the House, according to CNN’s projections.

Democrats have so far won 204, with 20 races still undecided as of last night.

One of the four Republicans to flip a previously Democratic House seat was US Rep. Elect Mike Lawler, who will now represent Rockland County’s District 17.

Lawler was not just one of the few Republicans to win in a district so close to NYC, but he was the was first Republican in 40 years to defeat a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) chairman, which is a powerful and well-connected position. 

In an interview with the New York Times on Friday, ousted District 17 US Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney acknowledged that he “struggled to overcome fears about crime.” 

“Whether you’re talking about inflation, whether you’re talking about crime, whether you’re talking about education, those are what folks are concerned about,” Mike Lawler told the National Review.

 (Photo by Todd Plitt/PictureGroup)