Live midterm election results: Key U.S. Senate races
As Democrats and Republicans battle for control of Congress, every seat in the U.S. Senate matters. Following the 2020 election, each party has held 50 seats, but the Democrats have enjoyed a slight edge because the vice president – in this case, Kamala Harris – casts any tie-breaking vote.
In 2022, a total of 35 Senate seats are up for election – 12 of those held by Democrats, and 23 held by Republicans.
As of Saturday night, after a slow ballot count in Nevada, Catherine Cortez Masto's victory sealed a continued majority control for the Democats. One seat, though, is still in play as Georgia's Senate race is headed to a runoff election. But even if Georgia's seat flips red, Vice President Kamala Harris will continue to hold the tiebreaking vote.
Live U.S. Senate race results
Here’s a look at how some key races are turning out. Tap or click on a state for a detailed race breakdown:
- Alaska Senate race results
- Arizona Senate race results
- Colorado Senate race results
- Florida Senate race results
- Georgia Senate race results
- Nevada Senate race results
- New Hampshire Senate race results
- North Carolina Senate race results
- Ohio Senate race results
- Pennsylvania Senate race results
- Washington Senate race results
- Wisconsin Senate race results
Alaska: Republican wins, but still unclear who
Exactly who’ll win Alaska’s U.S. Senate contest isn’t clear, but it will be a Republican. Trump-backed Kelly Tshibaka and Republican incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski are in a tight race with neither on track to win more than 50% of the vote. And in Alaska, that means the race will proceed to ranked-choice voting later this month.
In Alaska, the top four finishers in the primary advance to the general election, where ballots are counted in rounds. A candidate can win outright with more than 50% of the vote in the first round. But if no candidate hits that threshold, the race moves on to ranked-choice voting.
In that process, the candidate with the fewest votes in the initial count of votes is eliminated, and voters who chose that candidate as their top pick have their vote replaced with their second-choice pick. These elimination rounds continue until two candidates remain, and whoever has the most votes at the end wins.
Those ranked-choice tabulation rounds are expected to take place on Nov. 23.
The race also included Democrat Pat Chesbro and Republican Buzz Kelley, who ended his campaign in September and supported Tshibaka.
It’s clear from the vote count they will be eliminated in the ranked-choice process, leaving Tshibaka and Murkowski as the two finalists. And as both Tshibaka and Murkowski are Republicans, that means it’s also clear the GOP will hold that seat in the next Congress.
The Associated Press has not declared either Tshibaka and Murkowski the winner. But AP has also concluded that one or the other will end up as the winner.
Murkowski has held the seat since late 2002 and is the most senior member of Alaska’s congressional delegation. She voted to impeach Trump and opposed the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court. Murkowski said the race is about "who can best deliver for Alaska."
Trump endorsed Tshibaka and traveled to Alaska to rally for her in July. Tsibaka is a former commissioner of the Alaska Department of Administration.
Arizona: Sen. Mark Kelly (D) wins
Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly won his bid for reelection Friday in the crucial swing state of Arizona, defeating Republican venture capitalist Blake Masters to put his party one victory away from clinching control of the chamber for the next two years of Joe Biden’s presidency.
With Vice President Kamala Harris’ tiebreaking vote, Democrats can retain control of the Senate by winning either the Nevada race, which remains too early to call, or next month’s runoff in Georgia.Republicans now must win both those races to take the majority.
The Arizona race is one of a handful of contests that Republicans targeted in their bid to take control of the 50-50 Senate. It was a test of the inroads that Kelly and other Democrats have made in a state once reliably dominated by the GOP. Kelly’s victory suggests Democratic success in Arizona was not an aberration during Donald Trump’s presidency.
Kelly, a former NASA astronaut who’s flown in space four times, is married to former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords, who inspired the nation with her recovery from a gunshot wound to the head during an assassination attempt in 2011 that killed six people and injured 13. Kelly and Giffords went on to co-found a gun safety advocacy group.
Kelly and Giffords were at an Elton John concert in Phoenix on Friday night when The Associated Press called the race, campaign spokesperson Sarah Guggenheimer said. Maricopa County reported a large batch of results that increased Kelly’s lead and made clear Masters could not make up the difference with the remaining ballots.
"It’s been one of the great honors of my life to serve as Arizona’s Senator," Kelly said in a statement. "I’m humbled by the trust our state has placed in me to continue this work."
Kelly’s victory in a 2020 special election spurred by the death of Republican Sen. John McCain gave Democrats both of Arizona’s Senate seats for the first time in 70 years. The shift was propelled by the state’s fast-changing demographics and the unpopularity of Trump.
Colorado: Michael Bennet (D) wins
Democrat Michael Bennet won reelection to the U.S. Senate on Tuesday, besting Republican businessman and first-time challenger Joe O’Dea.
Bennet won his third race on his pledge to protect abortion rights, an indication of how important the issue is to the blue-leaning state of Colorado. O’Dea was the rare Republican to support Roe v. Wade, the landmark abortion rights ruling that conservative justices on the U.S. Supreme Court overturned this summer. But that didn’t help him.
Bennet’s campaign hammered O’Dea on his opposition to abortions late in pregnancy and on his support for the very GOP-appointed justices who overturned Roe.
Bennet and his backers dramatically outspent the novice candidate on the airwaves, while O’Dea only got rhetorical support from Senate Republicans in Washington, who never sent significant financial resources his way.
Florida: Marco Rubio (R) wins
Republican U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio has won a third term, defeating U.S. Rep. Val Demings and holding a key seat as the GOP tried to regain control of a closely divided Senate.
Rubio, 51, faced perhaps his toughest battle since he was first elected in 2010 after serving as the Florida House speaker. Once a presidential hopeful in 2016, Rubio’s name is less often mentioned as a potential 2024 candidate.
Rubio ran a campaign pulled from the Republican playbook, tying Demings to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Joe Biden and hammering her on issues like spending, rising inflation and a crisis at the southern border.
The Republican was helped by shifting voter registration numbers in Florida. The last time Rubio ran for reelection, Democrats had about 327,000 more registered voters than Republicans. That has since flipped, with the GOP now having a nearly 300,000 advantage over Democrats.
Demings, 65, outraised Rubio and built a national profile by playing a prominent role in then-President Donald Trump’s first impeachment and being on then-candidate Biden’s list of potential running mates. But it wasn’t enough.
Much of her criticism of Rubio centered on a poor attendance record, his backing of a national abortion ban and questioning his honesty. She accused him of lying about her record and using GOP buzzwords like "socialist" and "radical" to condemn her.
Demings is finishing her third term in the U.S. House, but focused most of her campaign on her career in law enforcement, which included serving as Orlando’s first female police chief.
Rubio had relatively easy paths to his first two Senate victories, winning a three-way race in 2010 when sitting Republican Gov. Charlie Crist ran as an independent and peeled away votes from Democratic U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek. Rubio then defeated U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy in 2016 by nearly 8 percentage points.
RELATED: Florida senate candidates make final push for Bay Area votes
Georgia: Warnock (D), Walker (R) headed to runoff
The U.S. Senate race in Georgia between Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker is headed to a Dec. 6 runoff.
As of noon Wednesday with 100% of precincts reporting, Warnock received 49.42% of the vote and Walker received 48.52% of the vote. Georgia requires a majority to win statewide office.
Walker, a celebrity athlete turned politician, offered his supporters an optimistic view at his campaign’s election night party in suburban Atlanta.
"I don’t come to lose," Walker said during his brief remarks.
Warnock, a Baptist pastor, spoke to supporters later in the night before all precincts had reported election results. He ended his address by saying, "keep the faith and keep looking up."
"I understand that at this late hour you may be a little tired," the senator continued, "but whether it’s later tonight or tomorrow or four weeks from now, we will hear from the people of Georgia."
A runoff campaign would be a four-week blitz that, depending on the outcomes in other Senate contests, could reprise the 2020 election cycle, when two Senate runoffs in Georgia doubled as a national winner-take-all battle for Senate control. Victories from Warnock and Ossoff left the chamber divided 50-50 between the two major parties, with Harris giving Democrats the tie-breaking vote.
Nevada: Catherine Cortez Masto (D) wins
The nail-biting race between Democratic U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto and Republican challenger Adam Laxalt was finally called late Saturday night – sealing the majority for the Dems in the Senate.
Her win reflected the surprising strength of Democrats across the U.S. this election year. Seeking reelection in an economically challenged state that has some of the highest gas prices in the nation, Cortez Masto was considered the Senate's most vulnerable member, adding to the frustration of Republicans who were confident she could be defeated.
New Hampshire: Maggie Hassan (D) wins
Democratic U.S. Sen. Maggie Hassan won a second term representing New Hampshire on Tuesday, defeating Republican challenger Don Bolduc to keep a seat once viewed as ripe for a GOP pickup.
Hassan, a former governor, had been considered vulnerable given her narrow win in 2016. But her odds improved after popular Gov. Chris Sununu took a pass at challenging her, and Republicans nominated Bolduc, a retired Army general who has espoused conspiracy theories about vaccines and the 2020 presidential election.
"I promise you, Democrats, independents and Republicans, the people who voted for me and those who did not, that I will keep working every day to serve you faithfully, to listen to you and to work with you to address the challenges facing your families, our state and our country," Hassan told cheering supporters in Manchester.
Hassan spent much of the campaign casting Bolduc as "the most extreme nominee for U.S. Senate that New Hampshire has seen in modern history," and pouncing on his past statements on abortion, Social Security and the 2020 presidential election.
"He keeps trying to conceal that from Granite Staters," she said in a debate. "He’s spent over a year in New Hampshire stoking the big lie... and former President Trump just confirmed that he’s an election denier this week."
Bolduc initially promoted Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election but after winning the Republican primary said it wasn’t stolen and then, more recently, said that he wasn’t sure. Trump endorsed Bolduc late in the campaign, calling him a "strong and proud ‘Election Denier."
"Had he stayed strong and true, he would have won easily," Trump wrote of Bolduc on his social media platform Tuesday night.
Nearly two years after Trump’s defeat, there has been no evidence of widespread fraud. Numerous reviews in the battleground states where Trump disputed his loss have affirmed the results, courts have rejected dozens of lawsuits filed by Trump and his allies, and even Trump’s own Department of Justice concluded the results were accurate.
Bolduc, who insisted voters weren’t interested in rehashing 2020, sought to both harness dissatisfaction over the economy and draw upon the connections he forged from the nearly constant grassroots campaigning he did after he unsuccessfully sought the nomination for the state’s other senate seat two years ago. And he spent much of the campaign trying to link Hassan to Biden administration policies he said were hurting Americans.
In his concession speech, Bolduc urged his supporters to hold elected officials accountable.
"We have created a rumble. We have created an idea that government should not tread on its people and that career politicians must change," he said in Manchester. "We didn’t win today, but imagine if we continue to come together, if we join hands, if we decide that they work for us and we don’t work for them."
"If we can do this even in losing we will win," he said.
Hassan defeated Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte in 2016 to become the second woman in American history to be elected both governor and U.S. senator, following fellow New Hampshire Democrat Jeanne Shaheen.
North Carolina: Ted Budd (R) wins
Republican U.S. Rep. Ted Budd won North Carolina’s open Senate seat on Tuesday, defeating Cheri Beasley while extending a losing streak for state Democrats seeking a spot in that chamber.
Budd, a three-term congressman, will succeed retiring GOP Sen. Richard Burr, who entered the Senate in 2005.
As a candidate endorsed by Donald Trump and ready to embrace the former president’s support, Budd will provide a stronger hardline, conservative voice in the Senate than Burr, who voted in 2021 to convict Trump at his impeachment trial related to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
Beasley, a former chief justice of the state Supreme Court attempting to be the state’s first Black senator, fell short despite having a significant fundraising advantage over Budd’s campaign. But national Republicans came to Budd’s defense with a large wave of spending attacking her judicial record and support for President Joe Biden’s policies.
Beasley’s defeat means Democrats have now lost eight of the state’s nine Senate elections this century; their only victory coming in 2008. While North Carolina statewide elections are usually closely divided affairs, Democrats have won all but one gubernatorial election since 1992.
Ohio: JD Vance (R) wins
"Hillbilly Elegy" author JD Vance has defeated Democratic U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan for an open U.S. Senate seat in Ohio.
The 38-year-old Vance, a newcomer to politics, benefited from a last-minute push by former Republican President Donald Trump, who had endorsed him.
Tuesday's victory was a blow to Democrats, who viewed Ryan’s well-executed, well-funded campaign as one of their best chances nationally for a Senate pick-up.
The seat is currently held by moderate Republican Rob Portman, who said he’s retiring due to Washington's dysfunction. Vance successfully linked Ryan to the national economic climate he blamed on President Joe Biden.
Pennsylvania: John Fetterman (D) wins
Pennsylvania Democrat John Fetterman has defeated Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz to flip a highly competitive Senate seat and sustain Democratic hopes of maintaining control of the upper chamber.
The win gives the party breathing room as it seeks to keep hold of its narrow Senate majority. It also serves as a major rebuke to former President Donald Trump, who endorsed Oz in his competitive GOP primary despite concerns over the celebrity heart surgeon’s limited ties to the state.
In his winning campaign, Fetterman overcame questions about his fitness for office after suffering a stroke just days before the state’s primary and struggling through his debate with Oz. He still has issues with auditory processing and uses closed-captioning technology to understand spoken words.
"I’m so humbled," Fetterman, wearing his signature hoodie, told his supporters early Wednesday morning. "This campaign has always been about fighting for everyone whose ever been knocked down that ever got back up."
Washington: Patty Murray (D) wins
Sen. Patty Murray won reelection as the Democratic stalwart prevailed in a campaign in which she repeatedly said her Republican challenger was too extreme for Washington state. Murray bested defeated Tiffany Smiley on Tuesday in her quest for a sixth term.
Murray’s 30 years in the Senate place her behind only Democratic Sens. Warren Magnuson and Henry "Scoop" Jackson for longest service in the Senate from the Evergreen State.
The powerhouse duo served 36 years and 30 years, respectively, and were among the most powerful senators of the mid-20th century. Murray is now a member of the Democratic leadership.
Wisconsin: Ron Johnson (R) wins
Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson defeated Democrat Mandela Barnes in the midterm elections, keeping a seat in GOP hands while turning back Barnes’ attempt to make history as Wisconsin’s first Black senator.
The win for Johnson, one of Trump’s biggest backers, came after Trump narrowly lost the state to Biden two years ago.
"The votes are in," Johnson said in an email statement. "There is no path mathematically for Lt. Gov. Barnes to overcome his 27,374 vote deficit. This race is over."
Barnes did not concede defeat early Wednesday. He planned a noon news conference in his hometown of Milwaukee.
"No matter what anyone says, we are committed to making sure every vote is counted," Barnes’ campaign spokesperson Maddy McDaniel said earlier Wednesday morning. "We will wait and see what the Wisconsin voters have decided after all their voices are heard."
Johnson, in an interview on WISN-AM, accused Barnes of refusing to accept the outcome of the race after he had promised earlier in the campaign he would.
"It’s just crystal clear he has no path to victory here," Johnson said.
Johnson said he expected Republicans to do better in the midterm election, saying Democratic policies are "not good for America."
"I’m surprised in Wisconsin my race was this close, I am," Johnson said.
Johnson ran the campaign trying to paint Barnes as being weak on crime with a thin resume who would be a rubber stamp for the national Democratic agenda.
Barnes, like many Democrats nationally, tried to make the race about abortion, highlighting Johnson’s long support for overturning Roe v. Wade, and arguing that the millionaire Johnson was out of touch with the concerns of the middle class.
Information from FOX News and the Associated Press was used in this report.