The opposition Republican Party looks set to regain control of the US House of Representatives following midterm elections on Tuesday, complicating the final two years of Joe Biden’s current presidential term.
However, the party’s majority is likely to be slim after the Republican landslide that had been predicted by many polls and pundits failed to materialise.
Mr Biden’s Democratic Party picked up a seat in the 100-member Senate, but control of the chamber remained in the balance while counts continued in Arizona, Nevada and Georgia.
Even a small Republican majority in the House of Representatives could stymie much of Mr Biden’s agenda in the two years running up to the next presidential election.
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Final results in the elections may not be known for days or even weeks.
In Georgia, Democratic incumbent senator Raphael Warnock was neck-and-neck with his Republican rival Herschel Walker. State law decrees that if neither candidate secures 50 per cent of the vote – as seems likely – there will be a run-off election in early December.
US midterms: Martin Wall reports from Washington
In one of the most significant results of the elections across the US, Democratic candidate John Fetterman won a Pennsylvania Senate seat previously held by a Republican by beating his opponent Mehmet Oz, a celebrity TV doctor who was backed by Donald Trump. Mr Fetterman suffered a near-fatal stroke earlier this year and his Republican opponents tried to make his health an issue in the campaign.
The Republicans secured a narrow in the Senate race in Wisconsin, however, when the incumbent Ron Johnson retained his seat after a tough contest with Democrat Mandela Barnes.
If Democrats hold on to their existing senate seats in Nevada and Arizona the party will continue to control the Senate, irrespective of what happens in Georgia, as vice-president Kamala Harris has a casting vote to break a tie.
[ US midterms: Five key takeaways ]
Elsewhere Democrats held on to several key governor posts including in New York, Michigan and Wisconsin.
A number of Republican candidates who questioned of denied the validity of Mr Biden’s victory in 2020 lost out in the elections. But contests in which a number of other election deniers were taking part in states such as Arizona and Nevada remained too close to call on Wednesday night.
Candidates who denied Mr Biden’s win in 2020 who were running for governor were defeated in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Some election deniers, however, were elected to the House of Representatives.
One significant Democrat casualty in the election was Sean Patrick Maloney, the chairman of the party’s campaign committee for the House of Representatives, who lost to his Republican opponent Michael Lawlor in New York.
[ US midterms: DeSantis steals limelight from Trump ]
In Colorado right wing Republican member of Congress Lauren Boebert was trailing her Democrat opponent, but the final outcome remained too close to call.
The big winner of the elections was Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who crushed his Democrat opponent in the state and saw his Republican colleagues win a number of seats in the House of Representatives.
In other results Maura Healey, the newly elected Democratic governor of Massachusetts, is the first openly lesbian woman to be elected governor in the United States. Wes More was elected as the first black governor of Maryland.
In Georgia, Stacey Abrams, once a rising star in the Democratic Party, conceded in her attempt to unseat serving Republican governor Brian Kemp, In Arkansas, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a former press secretary in the Trump White House, was elected as governor, the state’s first woman to hold the position.
In Texas, serving Republican governor Greg Abbott defeated Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke.
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