Mark Kelly won re-election to the Arizona State Senate, leaving the Democratic Party one victory away from retaining control of the upper house of the US Parliament.
According to projections by the Associated Press agency, with 83% of the votes counted, Kelly achieved a sufficient advantage over his Republican rival, Blake Masters, head of a venture capital fund.
Mark Kelly, a former astronaut who has been to space four times, focused during the campaign on abortion rights, Social Security protections and lower drug prices.
Kelly is married to former congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who was shot in the head during a 2011 assassination attempt that killed six people and injured 13.
Blake Masters, backed by tech investor Peter Thiel, has taken a tough stance against abortion and promoted a racist theory, popular with white nationalists, that Democrats are trying to use immigration to replace whites in the United States.
Masters was endorsed by Donald Trump, after claiming that the former president won the 2020 election. However, during a debate in October, Masters acknowledged that he had not seen any evidence of fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
With Mark Kelly’s victory, the Democrats get 49 seats in the Senate, the same number as the Republicans, out of a total of 100 contested seats.
It is enough for the Democrats to win one of the two seats yet to be determined, since, in the event of a tie at 50 seats in the Senate, Vice President Kamala Harris will have the tiebreaking vote.
The Republicans, on the other hand, need to win the two ‘available’ seats, which are being contested in Nevada and Georgia, despite the fact that the latter is responsible for extending the electoral process until December, when the state will go to the polls again. to nominate a senator for Congress, after neither candidate reached the 50% mark.
As for the House of Representatives, the lower house of the US parliament, Democrat Susie Lee secured a third term by defeating Republican April Becker in a southern Nevada district.
With 435 seats up for grabs and the vote count still ongoing, Associated Press projections put Republicans ahead, giving them 211 seats and Democrats 201, with 218 needed to form a majority in the House of Representatives.
Vote counting took several days, in part due to the vote-by-mail system created by the Nevada state legislature in 2020, which requires counties to accept ballots submitted on Election Day (Tuesday) if they arrive within four later days.
On the fourth day of vote counting, the Republicans continue to lead the race for a majority in the House of Representatives, but have lost ‘speed’ against the Democrats.
As the vote count continues, particularly in states that have embraced mass mail-in voting, Democrats have won most of the closest races.
Midterm elections in the United States, to be held on Tuesday, will determine which party will control Congress for the last two years of President Joe Biden’s (Democrat) term.
Source: TSF
