Democrats will retain control of the U.S. Senate after Senator Catherine Cortez Masto defeated Republican Adam Laxalt in Nevada, according to projections from CNN and NBC News.
Cortez Masto is leading Laxalt 48.7 percent to 48.2 percent with 97 percent of the vote counted. The incumbent is leading by nearly 5,000 votes.
Cortez Masto’s win brings Democrats to 50 seats in the upper chamber to Republicans’ 49 seats, with the Georgia Senate race headed to a runoff next month. If Republican Herschel Walker wins the race in Georgia next month, the Senate will continue to be tied as it has been and Vice President Kamala Harris will serve as the tie-breaking vote. If Democratic incumbent Senator Raphael Warnock wins, Democrats will have a slight majority.
The result is the conclusion of a disappointing midterm outing for Republicans. As of Saturday evening, control of the U.S. House remained up in the air, though Republicans are likely to take the chamber with a narrow majority.
Senator Rick Scott, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, on Friday called the 2022 midterm elections a “complete disappointment.”
“Here’s what happened to us: Election Day, our voters didn’t show up, we didn’t get enough voters. It was a complete disappointment,” Scott said during an appearance on Fox News’s Hannity.
“I think we’ve got to reflect now, what didn’t happen?” Scott said. “I think we didn’t have enough of a positive message, we said everything about how bad the Biden agenda was — it’s bad, the Democrats are radical, but we have to have a plan of what we stand for.”
The less-than-stellar showing for Republicans comes despite history being on their side; conventional wisdom says the president’s party typically loses seats in a midterm election.
Thirteen of the last 19 midterms saw losses in both chambers for the party in power, per Reuters. Of the other six elections, only the 2002 midterms saw gains in both the House and Senate for the president’s party, which was widely seen as a show of support for the Bush administration after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001.