Live congressional results: Republicans fighting to maintain House control

Democrat Sara Jacobs won election to a U.S. House seat representing California on Wednesday. Jacobs defeated Republican Bill Wells in the heavily Democratic 51st District in San Diego County. She serves on the House Armed Services Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Jacobs came to Congress in 2021. She calls climate change one of the biggest threats facing humanity. She is the granddaughter of Qualcomm founder Irwin M. Jacobs. The Associated Press declared Jacobs the winner at 12:55 p.m. EST.

But McConnell, who’s stepping aside from his role as the long serving GOP Senate leader, declined during a news conference at the Capitol to discuss his harsh criticisms of Trump as outlined in a new biography.

He also refused to answer questions about having Tesla CEO Elon Musk or Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime critic of vaccines and pesticides used in U.S. agriculture, play a role in a new administration.

Republican Julie Fedorchak will be the first woman to represent North Dakota in the U.S. House. Her election leaves Mississippi as the only state never represented by a woman in the House, according to the Center for American Women and Politics.

Fedorchak is a longtime public utilities regulator. She’ll succeed three-term Republican Rep. Kelly Armstrong, who was elected governor of North Dakota. The state has one House seat.

Republican Rep. John James won reelection to a U.S. House seat representing Michigan on Wednesday. James fended off a challenge from Carl Malinga, a Democrat he has faced before in the suburbs north of Detroit. James is an Army veteran who became president of his family’s supply chain management firm before running for Congress. Voters in Michigan’s 10th Congressional District chose James over Marlinga by just 1,600 votes in 2022. The thin margin caught the attention and pocketbooks of national Democratic spenders who promised a competitive second round. The Associated Press declared James the winner at 12:21 p.m. EST.

When AP declared Republican Tim Sheehy the winner, every county in Montana had reported at least some results — and the margins were large enough that Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Tester didn’t have a plausible path to make up the gap in the votes left to be counted. In every part of Montana, Tester simply didn’t perform as well with voters in 2024 as he did during his 2018 reelection campaign.

Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden won reelection to a U.S. House seat representing Wisconsin on Wednesday. Van Orden was on the Capitol grounds during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and is one of Donald Trump’s most vocal supporters. He defeated Democratic challenger Rebecca Cooke, a former Democratic fundraiser. Van Orden flipped the seat in 2022 after it had been held by Democrats since 1996. The Associated Press declared Van Orden the winner at 12:10 p.m. EST.

Outgoing Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell credited his party’s Senate election success to “candidate quality,” saying it was “absolutely essential.”

In past election cycles, Republican Senate candidates have emerged from the populist, right-wing of the party but many struggled to win statewide votes. This year, Senate Republican leaders made a concerted effort to recruit mainstream candidates who offered broad appeal.

There has been intense friction within the GOP between the camps largely headed by Donald Trump and McConnell. A recent biography revealed that the longtime Senate leader has privately excoriated Trump, especially for his efforts to overturn 2020 election results.

While McConnell credited Trump’s campaign operation for the victory, he also chalked up the election results to frustrations with the current Democratic administration.

“If you’re looking for a simple answer, I think it was a referendum on the current administration, in part. People were just not happy with this administration and the Democratic nominee was a part of it,” McConnell said.

For all of the heady talk of democracy and the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to the next, a presidential transition also involves things that are less conceptual — and more mundane.

That includes construction of all the temporary structures for the presidential inauguration, set to occur two months and two weeks from today. In front of the White House, workers had fenced a section of Pennsylvania Avenue and Lafayette Park as they constructed the Presidential Inaugural Parade Reviewing Stands. A longtime inauguration tradition, the temporary pavilion is where Trump and his family will take in the parade as it winds in front of the White House on Jan. 20.

On the National Mall, work had also begun on the inauguration platform, from where Trump will be sworn in to office and address the nation. Nearly four years ago, on Jan. 6, Trump supporters rushed the Capitol and used pieces of the half-built structure to attack police officers. Workers on the site had to flee.

This year, members of Congress from both sides of the aisle gathered in September to drive the first nails for the structures, symbolizing the unity they aspired to forge amidst a divisive presidential campaign.

It is, of course, a temporary structure. And it will come down as soon as Trump starts his term.

The nation’s top election security official says there’s “no evidence of any malicious activity” that affected the security or the integrity of election systems in the 2024 presidential election.

Jen Easterly is the director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Easterly, in a statement Wednesday, praised the work of state and local election officials and the hundreds of thousands who served as poll workers on Election Day.

“As we have said repeatedly, our election infrastructure has never been more secure and the election community never better prepared to deliver safe, secure, free, and fair elections for the American people,” Easterly said. “This is what we saw yesterday in the peaceful and secure exercise of democracy.”

Outgoing Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell called Wednesday a “happy day for the GOP” as he congratulated Donald Trump for his victory and credited it to “a sharper operation this time around.”

McConnell said he hopes Republicans’ majority in the Senate may still grow as races in battleground states are decided.

Senate Republicans will decide next week who the next majority leader will be.

He told a group of supporters gathered in Bozeman, Montana, early Wednesday that he’s been serving the country since he was 18 and was honored to continue that service in the Senate.

“We’ve got to make sure that the folks who go to work every day, work with their hands to pay for their own education and to put food on the table for their families, we’ve got to make sure the economy works for them again. That’s going to be our top priority,” Sheehy said.

Democratic Rep. Nikki Budzinski won reelection to a U.S. House seat representing Illinois on Wednesday.

The freshman congresswoman was once a former senior advisor to Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and worked as a labor union activist. She defeated Republican Joshua Loyd. The narrow Democrat-leaning district cuts through central Illinois from the St. Louis area to Champaign. The Associated Press declared Budzinski the winner at 11:23 a.m. EST.

Trump claims presidents have exclusive power to control federal spending even after Congress has appropriated money.

Trump argues that lawmakers’ budget actions “set a ceiling” on spending but not a floor — meaning the president’s constitutional duty to “faithfully execute the laws” includes discretion on whether to spend the money. This interpretation could set up a court battle with Congress.

Among other ideas, Trump would roll back the Biden administration’s policy of extending Title IX civil rights protections to transgender students and he would ask Congress to require that only two genders can be recognized at birth.

The Republican president-elect now has a 75-day transition period to build out his team before Inauguration Day arrives Jan. 20. One top item on the to-do list: filling around 4,000 government positions with political appointees, people who are specifically tapped for their jobs by Trump’s team.

That includes everyone from the secretary of state and other heads of Cabinet departments to those selected to serve part time on boards and commissions. Around 1,200 of those presidential appointments require Senate confirmation, which should be easier with the Senate now shifting to Republican control.

Republican Rep. Kevin Kiley won reelection to a U.S. House seat representing California on Wednesday, defeating Democrat Jessica Morse. Kiley, a first-term congressman, had captured the seat in 2022 by arguing that California was in turmoil under Democratic rule in Washington and Sacramento. The 3rd Congressional District stretches across much of the state’s eastern border and includes Sacramento’s northeastern suburbs. Former President Trump narrowly carried the district in the 2020 presidential election. The Associated Press declared Kiley the winner at 10:48 a.m. EST.

Tester also thanked his supporters and said he’d go back to working on his farm.

“Look, I’m very, very blessed,” he said. “I’ve had a great 18 years in the United States Senate. I’ve met some incredible people along the way and had the opportunity to do some great things to help move this state forward, move the country forward.”

Wisconsin’s hotly contested race for U.S. Senate between Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin and Republican Eric Hovde, who was backed by President-elect Donald Trump, remained close Wednesday morning.

Baldwin had a lead of 0.9% based on unofficial results, which is just within the 1% margin that would allow for Hovde to request a recount if he pays for it.

Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate race between three-term Democratic Sen. Bob Casey and Republican challenger David McCormick could help Republicans pad their newfound majority in the chamber in a battleground state contest that remained uncalled by The Associated Press on Wednesday.

McCormick led vote counting Wednesday morning by about 50,000 votes, or less than 1%, but a significant number of votes remained uncounted. In a statement Wednesday, Casey’s campaign said, “There are more votes that need to be counted in areas like Philadelphia and it’s important that every legal ballot will be counted. When that happens we are confident the senator will be reelected.”

It’s the first time Casey has shared the same ballot as Donald Trump, who won Pennsylvania for a second time in 2024 after winning it in 2016.

Casey, the son of a former two-term governor, is a stalwart of the state’s Democratic Party, having won six statewide elections going back to 1996.

McCormick is making his second run for the Senate after losing narrowly in 2022’s Republican primary. He left his job as CEO of the world’s largest hedge fund to run.

Early, partial returns spotlighted tight races in a handful of districts stretching from Southern California to the Central Valley farm belt, where Democrats and Republicans have invested tens of millions of dollars to sway voters.

The spotlight was on half a dozen races widely seen a toss-ups. Much of the vote remained to be counted, but Republicans were holding a slight edge in all of them early Wednesday — in some cases by just a sliver of votes.

Two years ago the state played a pivotal role in securing the gavel for Republicans. Now only a handful of votes separate the rival parties in the House, with 220 Republicans, 212 Democrats and three vacancies.

Vote-counting can take weeks in California, where most voters use mail-in ballots — and sometimes longer.

▶ Read more about California’s House races

Three-term Democratic Rep. Susan Wild has conceded in in her race against Republican Ryan Mackenzie in a hotly contested Pennsylvania congressional district, though The Associated Press still hasn’t called the race.

Republicans had targeted the seat as a possible flip that would boost their prospects for keeping the House majority.

“I congratulate my opponent on winning this seat, and I am going to do everything to ensure a smooth transition, because the people of this district deserve nothing less,” Wild said in her statement.

In South Dakota, voters rejected a measure that would have permitted abortion in the first three months of pregnancy.

In Nebraska, voters enshrined the state’s current 12-week ban in the constitution.

In Florida, voters cast their ballots in favor of a measure that would have overturned the state’s ban on abortions after six weeks and would have allowed them up until viability. However, the measure did not reach the 60% threshold and failed.

In Montana, where state courts have blocked lawmakers’ efforts to restrict abortion rights, voters wrote abortion protections into the state constitution, codifying the right to an abortion up to viability. Though there’s no defined time frame, doctors say viability is sometime after 21 weeks. The constitutional amendment is meant to safeguard against future efforts to restrict abortion rights.

Colorado, Nevada and Maryland already had laws on the books protecting abortion access, but voters there backed measures to enshrine the right in their state constitutions.

New York voters backed a reproductive rights measure that would bar unequal treatment based on “pregnancy outcomes” and “reproductive healthcare and autonomy,” along with sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin and disability.

Missouri voters overturned one of the nation’s strictest abortion bans, backing a constitutional amendment that protects abortion rights at all stages until the fetus is considered viable — usually considered after 21 weeks, although there’s no exact time frame.

Voters in Arizona, which had a ban on abortion after 15 weeks, backed a state constitutional amendment that will also protect the right to an abortion up to viability.

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Lawmakers can object to a state’s results during the congressional certification, as several Republicans did after the 2020 election. On Jan. 6, 2021, the House and Senate both voted to reject GOP objections to the Arizona and Pennsylvania results.

After Donald Trump tried to overturn his defeat to Democrat Joe Biden and Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, Congress updated the 1800s-era Electoral Count Act to make it harder to object and to more clearly lay out the vice president’s ceremonial role, among other changes. Trump had pressured then-Vice President Mike Pence to try and object to the results — something the vice president has no legal standing to do.

Once Congress certifies the vote, the new or returning president will be inaugurated Jan. 20 on the steps of the Capitol.

▶ Read more about the Electoral College

And they need to do that while holding all of their own, a tall task especially in congressional districts where Trump has won.

It could come down to just a handful of seats, or as little as one, to determine House control.

Brazil’s far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro says Trump’s presidential election victory was historic and will empower right-wing and conservative movements across the globe, and that he hoped it will inspire Brazil to “follow the same path.”

He said on X that Trump’s imminent return to the White House marked “the triumph of the people’s will over the arrogant designs of an elite who disdain our values, beliefs, and traditions.”

Bolsonaro lost his reelection bid in late 2022 and, a little over two months later, his supporters stormed the capital in a bid to restore him to power. It was widely seen as an echo of the U.S. Capitol insurrection two years earlier, and he’s now the target of several investigations.

It would be a coda to outgoing GOP Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who made a career charting a path to power, this time by recruiting high-wealth Republicans aligned with Trump.

But if Democrats wrest control of the House, it would provide an almost certain backstop, with veto power over the White House.

Trump, speaking early Wednesday at his election night party in Florida, said the results delivered an “unprecedented and powerful mandate” for Republicans.

He called the Senate rout “incredible.” And he praised House Speaker Mike Johnson, who dashed from his own party in Louisiana to join Trump. “He’s doing a terrific job,” Trump said.

Vote counting in some races could go on for days and control of the House is too early to call.

▶ Read more about the congressional races

Republicans are set to take control of the Senate. Votes are still being counted in some races, but the GOP has already secured 51 seats to take the majority in the Senate. Democrats lost seats in Ohio and Montana, where Republican challengers bested incumbents.

It’s still unclear which party will control the House. There are too many races that have yet to be called to determine which party will win a majority of seats.

Election Day was mostly smooth. Fears of violence or disruptions did not materialize in most places. But bomb threats — all of which turned out to be hoaxes — disrupted voting in at least five battleground states.

Voters in several states weighed in on abortion restrictions. Abortion measures were on the ballot in nine states. In three — Nebraska, Florida and South Dakota — efforts to write abortion rights in to state constitutions failed. Voters in Missouri, Arizona and Montana backed measures to expand abortion rights. In Nevada, New York and Colorado, voters reaffirmed abortion and reproductive health rights.

Futures markets in the U.S. surged early Wednesday, with the Dow climbing 2.85% and the S&P 500 rising nearly 2%.

Bitcoin, which many see as a winner under a Trump presidency, hit all-time highs above $75,000. Tesla, the company run by Trump surrogate Elon Musk, spiked 12% before the opening bell while other electric vehicle makers slumped.

Banking stocks also moved solidly higher, with expectations of a pullback by regulators overseeing markets under Trump.

With their victories, several candidates are set to be firsts.

New Jersey Rep. Andy Kim, a Democrat, won his race to become the first Korean American elected to the Senate.

Delaware State Rep. Sarah McBride, a Democrat, won her race to become the first openly transgender person elected to Congress. The former Obama administration official was elected to the Delaware General Assembly in 2021.

Democrat Angela Alsobrooks won her race and is set to become Maryland’s first Black senator. Alsobrooks is currently the county executive for Maryland’s Prince George’s County, one of the most prosperous Black-majority counties in the nation.

Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester, a Democrat from Delaware, broke barriers again, becoming the first woman and first Black person elected to the Senate from the state. Seven years ago, when she was elected to the House, she was the first woman and first Black person to represent Delaware in the House. It will be the first time that two Black women will serve simultaneously in the Senate.

North Dakota elected its first woman to Congress. Republican Julie Fedorchak, running for the House of Representatives, won her race handily in the deep red state. She’s currently a member of the state’s public service commission.

Bernie Moreno, a Republican from Ohio, defeated incumbent Sen. Sherrod Brown to be the first Latino from the state elected to the Senate.

What’s next in Arizona? That would be the reporting of what’s known as the “late earlies,” or mail ballots that arrived or were dropped off at a polling place on Election Day or the weekend prior. AP’s Decision Team will need to review those ballots before considering a call in this race.

When the AP declared Republican Tim Sheehy the winner, every county in Montana had reported at least some results – and the margins were large enough that three-term Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Tester didn’t have a plausible path to make up the gap in the votes left to be counted. In every part of Montana, Tester simply didn’t perform as well with voters in 2024 as he did during his 2018 reelection campaign.

Republican Rep. Ryan Zinke won reelection to a U.S. House seat representing Montana on Wednesday. Zinke will serve a second term in the western Montana district, which was drawn after the state received an additional congressional seat from the 2020 census. Zinke faced a rematch against Democrat Monica Tranel, who fell a few points short of winning the seat in 2022. Zinke was U.S. interior secretary in the Trump administration for nearly two years before resigning while facing several ethics investigations. Zinke served as Montana’s lone U.S. House member from 2015 through early 2017, when he resigned to become interior secretary. The Associated Press declared Zinke the winner at 6:28 a.m. EST.

Republican Tim Sheehy won the U.S. Senate seat in Montana on Wednesday, defeating three-term incumbent Jon Tester and flipping a closely watched Senate seat. Tester was the only Democrat holding statewide office in Montana, which has voted for the Republican candidate in every presidential contest since 1992. Sheehy, a former U.S. Navy SEAL, ran as a Trump-supporting conservative in a state where he is immensely popular. The Associated Press declared Sheehy the winner at 6:26 a.m. EST.

Nevada has stopped reporting votes for now. Check back as counties will resume reporting later Wednesday.

Democrat Kristen McDonald Rivet won election to a U.S. House seat representing Michigan on Wednesday. Her victory means Democrats will retain control of a competitive district after Rep. Dan Kildee, who has represented the Flint area for about a decade, decided to retire. McDonald Rivet currently represents a competitive state Senate district that covers Midland, Saginaw and Bay City. She defeated Republican Paul Junge, who unsuccessfully ran against Kildee in 2022 and had worked in U.S. Customs and Immigration Services during the Trump administration. The Associated Press declared McDonald Rivet the winner at 6:09 a.m. EST.

Long lines at Montana polling places due to voters registering late delayed the counting of ballots in some of the state’s larger cities.

Some people who lined up before polls closed waited hours in frigid, snowy weather to cast their votes. Roughly 200 people were still in line after midnight at the courthouse in one of the state’s largest counties, Gallatin, some four hours after polls closed.

By 3 a.m., about 20 people were still there. Election officials didn’t plan to begin releasing results until every voter had gone through.

“I’m tired,” Tatyana Deshields, 22, said after she’d waited in line for more than four hours with some friends. “They had to tap me to tell me to keep moving.”

Democratic incumbent Tammy Baldwin overtook Republican Eric Hovde with the latest results from Milwaukee County. She won more than 80% of the update, which was enough for her to take a nearly 16,000-vote lead with more than 3.3 million votes counted. As in previous years, the late update from Milwaukee included absentee ballots from the city of Milwaukee that broke in favor of Democratic candidates.

Republicans have taken the White House and Senate, but the House is still very much in play.

With nearly 60 House elections still undecided, either party could gain control of the chamber. For Democrats, a House majority is the last hope of gaining a toehold in Washington and putting a check on Donald Trump’s power. Yet if Republicans win a House majority, they’ll be able to implement Trump’s agenda with more ease, including extending tax cuts, funding hardline border measures and dismantling parts of the federal government.

Still, it might take some time before House control is decided. Neither party so far has a convincing advantage in the tally of key House races. There are tight races all over the country, including many in slow-counting California.

Republican Rep. Mike Lawler won reelection to a U.S. House seat representing New York on Wednesday. Lawler is one of several Republicans who flipped traditionally Democratic New York districts in 2022. The 17th District contains the northern part of wealthy Westchester County and extends north and west to include suburban Rockland County and the Hudson Valley’s Putnam County. He defeated former Democratic Rep. Mondaire Jones, who lost his seat after redistricting in 2022. The Associated Press declared Lawler the winner at 5:30 a.m. EST.

Wayne County has released the results of just over 230,000 votes in Michigan’s Senate race. Democratic U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin won more than two-thirds of those votes, which are most likely mailed ballots. That margin helped her cut into Republican former congressman Mike Rogers’ lead, which is currently just around 15,000 votes, or 0.3 percentage point.

Democratic Rep. Eric Sorensen won reelection to a U.S. House seat representing Illinois on Wednesday. Sorensen faced Republican Joe McGraw, a retired judge who focused his campaign messaging on economics. Sorensen, a first-term congressman, had taken over the seat from Democratic Rep. Cheri Bustos after she decided against running again. The sprawling district in northwest Illinois includes Moline and Rockford. The Associated Press declared Sorensen the winner at 4:53 a.m. EST.

Republicans have flipped a House seat that was previously held by Democrats, giving them a valuable pickup in a frenzied race for House control.

At this point, practically every seat matters when it comes to building a House majority. In Michigan’s 7th district, Republican Tom Barrett picked up a seat that Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin vacated to run for U.S. Senate. Barrett, a former state senator, defeated another former state lawmaker, Democrat Curtis Hertel.

On the campaign trail, Barrett didn’t back away from his record of supporting abortion restrictions in the statehouse, but he also described abortion access as a settled issue in Michigan.

Republican Tom Barrett won election to a U.S. House seat representing Michigan on Wednesday, flipping a Democratic-held district. Two years after losing to Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin in a high-profile House race, Barrett defeated Democrat Curtis Hertel to capture Slotkin’s seat. Slotkin this year chose to run for U.S. Senate. While the district includes Democratic strongholds in the Lansing area, it also includes Republican-leaning counties like Livingston and Shiawassee, making it a target for national Republicans looking to hold the U.S. House majority. The Associated Press declared Barrett the winner at 4:05 a.m. EST.

House Speaker Mike Johnson took the stage with Donald Trump as he delivered his election speech.

Johnson has tied himself closely to Trump as he seeks to help Republicans keep a House majority, as well as hold on to his job as speaker.

Johnson’s job, however, is far from secure. It is still not clear who will win a House majority and whether Republicans will keep him as their leader when they hold leadership elections on Nov. 13.

Democratic Rep. Hillary Scholten won reelection to a House seat representing Michigan on Wednesday. Scholten was an attorney for the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center before running for the 3rd Congressional District seat once held by Gerald Ford. When she flipped it in 2022, she became the first Democrat to represent Grand Rapids since the 1970s. Scholten defeated Republican Paul Hudson, an appellate attorney who previously ran for the Michigan Supreme Court. The Associated Press declared Scholten the winner at 3:01 a.m. EST.

Donald Trump made sure to recognize GOP wins in down ballot races in his speech in the early morning Wednesday.

“The number of victories in the senate was absolutely incredible,” Trump said.

Republicans have so far won 51 seats, giving them a majority. But Montana, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Nevada have not been called, and it’s possible Republicans could pick up more seats.

Trump also said he expected Republicans to hold the House and complimented House Speaker Mike Johnson. The House, however, is still up for grabs.

There are over 70 House races across the country that have not been called, and neither party has a convincing edge in the tally of House races.

Democratic Rep. Jahana Hayes won reelection to a U.S. House seat representing Connecticut on Wednesday. The third-term congresswoman faced a rematch against Republican George Logan, who fell short by about a percentage point in the 2022 midterm election. She was the first Black woman elected to Congress from Connecticut. Prior to her election, Hayes worked as a teacher, receiving National Teacher of the Year in 2016. The Associated Press declared Hayes the winner at 2:00 a.m. EST.