Another Georgia Runoff With Senate in the Balance. Here Are the Latest Updates on Midterm Election Results

Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) gives a speech at his Election night party in Atlanta on Nov. 8, 2022. Credit - Michael M. Santiago—Getty Images

On Wednesday control of the House and the Senate were both still up for grabs.

While Republicans inch closer to taking control of the House, high profile gubernatorial and Senate races in Arizona are still too close to call. The Georgia Senate race is heading to a runoff on Dec. 6, the Associated Press said on Wednesday afternoon, when neither Republican Herschel Walker nor incumbent Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock reached 50% of the vote. Which party controls the Senate may come down to the vote count in Georgia—just as it did in 2020.

Two other Democratic Senators remain locked in tight races, as well—Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly and Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto. Losing one of those seats would make Georgia the deciding factor for the Senate. Losing both would put Republicans in control, regardless of Georgia’s result.

Republicans have so far failed to deliver an anticipated wave election at the midway point of President Joe Biden’s term. History has shown that the President’s party usually has a bad first midterm result. But as vote tallies are being finalized across the country, Republicans are leading in the race for the House by slimmer margins than expected.

At a time when inflation spiked, the stock market dipped and Biden’s approval ratings hover in the low 40s, Republicans were expected to have done better, and the results are demonstrating the limits of Donald Trump’s influence with voters. Perhaps the biggest blow to Trump’s clout at the ballot box so far was the victory in Pennsylvania of Democrat lieutenant governor John Fetterman over TV doctor Dr. Mehmet Oz.

Still, the GOP made big gains in Florida, with Gov. Ron DeSantis winning reelection by a huge margin, a sign that Florida’s electorate has swung to the Republicans, with major potential ramifications for the electoral map in the 2024 presidential elections. Beyond that, there are few signs of a massive blow-out across the country by Republicans. Democrat Rep. Abigail Spanberger held onto her seat in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., a district that was widely seen as an early predictor of a Republican wave.

Each election helps maintain the clockwork of a democracy, but this one, at this moment in the country, carries a lot of freight. At stake is not just the balance of power in Congress and in state capitols—nor only the consequences for the economy, the climate, women’s health, the wealth gap, and what we as a country think is important. Also on the line is the mechanics of elections themselves, and the basic mathematics of how the people communicate their will.

While the results remain unsettled, America’s election process seems to have held firm, even in the face of candidates that denied the results of the previous election. Despite lies and false theories about election fraud, voters went to the polls in large numbers, which, at this early hour, could be read as a vote of confidence in democracy itself.

Sen. Ron Johnson holds Senate seat, narrowly

Wisconsin’s Republican Sen. Ron Johnson won a third term, beating his progressive Democratic opponent, Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, by a narrow margin. With 99% of the votes counted, the AP reported that Johnson won 50.5% of the electorate and Barnes carried 49.5%.

Johnson, famous for promoting COVID-19 vaccine skepticism, participating in the plot to replace electoral college votes with “fake electors,” and other pro-Trump conspiracies, spent millions on ads attacking Barnes as soft on crime and anti-American. Barnes had trouble winning over moderates with his past criticizing law enforcement and supporting Black Lives Matter protests, especially once Johnson’s ad campaign took off. If elected, Barnes would have been the state’s first Black senator.

Just like during his victories in 2010 and 2016, Johnson polled behind his Democratic opponent at first. In the GOP’s fight to overturn blue seats, ultra-conservative, Trump-allied candidates around the country mostly failed, leaving Johnson’s victory as a consolation and a critical advantage for the Republican quest for control of the Senate.

How the Georgia Senate runoff works

By Wednesday afternoon, the AP determined that no candidate in Georgia’s blockbuster Senate race earned a majority of the votes, meaning there will be a runoff next month to determine the winner. With 3,928,640 votes counted, Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock led Republican college football star Herschel Walker by less than 35,100 votes, according to the Georgia Secretary of State. Libertarian candidate Chase Oliver kept both major party candidates under the 50% threshold by winning slightly more than 2% of the vote.

Voters will return the polls to cast their votes for either Warnock or Walker on Dec. 6, exactly four weeks after Election Day. The runoff period is shorter than it was after the 2020 election thanks to a change in Georgia law. There will also be an early voting period and an opportunity for voters to request absentee ballots.

–Mini Racker

Sen. Ron Johnson holds Senate seat, narrowly

Wisconsin’s Republican Sen. Ron Johnson won a third term, beating his progressive Democratic opponent, Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, by a narrow margin. With 99% of the votes counted, the AP reported that Johnson won 50.5% of the electorate and Barnes carried 49.5%.

Johnson, famous for promoting COVID-19 vaccine skepticism, participating in the plot to replace electoral college votes with “fake electors,” and other pro-Trump conspiracies, spent millions on ads attacking Barnes as soft on crime and anti-American. Barnes had trouble winning over moderates with his past criticizing law enforcement and supporting Black Lives Matter protests, especially once Johnson’s ad campaign took off. If elected, Barnes would have been the state’s first Black senator.

Just like during his victories in 2010 and 2016, Johnson polled behind his Democratic opponent at first. In the GOP’s fight to overturn blue seats, ultra-conservative, Trump-allied candidates around the country mostly failed, leaving Johnson’s victory as a consolation and a critical advantage for the Republican quest for control of the Senate.

–Anisha Kohli

Republicans flip key New York House seat

New York Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney—chair of the influential Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC)—has lost his re-election bid to GOP state assemblyman Mike Lawler.

Maloney’s loss flips a seat that could help give Republicans control of the U.S. House of Representatives. Maloney conceded with more than 95% of the vote counted and Lawler leading the race by 1.2%. AP called the race soon after.

The two candidates were bidding for the 17th district seat just north of New York City after Maloney’s current district was redrawn earlier this year as part of once-a-decade redistricting tied to the Census. Despite New York’s strong Democratic presence, there were a slew of other competitive races focused on crime and economic issues like inflation. Maloney’s defeat is a harsh blow for Democrats, who did surprisingly well in Senate and gubernatorial races across the country but are struggling to hold control of the House.

Lawler, a first-term assemblyman, ran as a moderate Republican, distancing himself from Donald Trump and the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, whilst criticizing Maloney for his wealth and detachedness from constituents. A party’s campaign chairman, responsible for boosting and protecting their majority through fundraising, hadn’t lost re-election in 30 years, until now.

Big wins for abortion rights in Kentucky and Michigan

Kentucky voters rejected a measure that would have excluded abortion rights from the state’s constitution, according to the AP. That decision—plus votes to protect abortion rights in Michigan, California, and Vermont—mark major wins for abortion rights supporters.

“The people of Kentucky have spoken and their answer is no–no to extremist politicians banning abortion and making private medical decisions on their behalf,” Amber Duke, interim executive director for the ACLU of Kentucky, told the Associated Press.

Voters in five states considered ballot measures aimed at either defending or restricting abortion access—an issue that took on increased urgency after the Supreme Court’s decision in June overturning Roe v. Wade sent abortion rights back to the states.

California, Vermont and Michigan all voted to protect the right to abortion by enshrining it in their state constitutions—which abortion-rights advocates hailed as a “a seismic win.”

In Michigan, voters supported a measure that will establish a “new individual right to reproductive freedom,” including the “right to make all decisions about pregnancy and abortion,” invalidating a 1931 abortion ban on the books there. Vermont will amend the state constitution to include “an individual’s right to personal reproductive autonomy” after more than 75% of voters supported the measure.

“Post the Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade, state constitutions are really the vehicle, the mechanism for protecting abortion rights in every individual state,” says Elisabeth Smith, director of state policy and advocacy at the Center for Reproductive Rights, who spent Monday door-knocking around Detroit, encouraging people to vote “yes” on Michigan’s ballot measure.

In California, the measure will change the state constitution to say that the “state shall not deny or interfere with an individual’s reproductive freedom,” including the right to an abortion and the right to contraception.

In Montana, results are pending for a referendum that would declare an embryo or fetus a legal person entitled to medical care if they are “born alive” at any stage of development, including after attempted abortions. Health care providers who violate the law would face a fine of up to $50,000 and 20 years in prison. Opponents of the measure, including the Montana Medical Association and other medical groups, argue it would criminalize doctors who provide palliative care to newborns with fatal health conditions.

“Voters are rejecting the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe and issuing a clarion call that they want their rights constitutionally protected,” Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a statement, calling the ballot measures “an example of what is possible for other states.”

–Katie Reilly

Rep. Lauren Boebert in unexpectedly tight reelection fight

Colorado Republican Lauren Boebert, a controversial, right-wing freshman lawmaker, is in a tight reelection fight with Democrat Alan Frisch.

Boebert, an outspoken Trump supporter, was expected to win reelection—redistricting in 2021 had actually made her district more Republican-leaning. But Frisch, a former Aspen city councilman, was ahead Wednesday by just a few thousand votes, with 90% of the vote counted. The race remains too close to call.

The seat that Boebert and Frisch vied for, Colorado’s third Congressional district, is a mostly rural one, in a swing state that’s been leaning blue since 2018. State data shows that the average age of voters has gotten younger, a demographic that tends to favor the Democratic party in Colorado.

Boebert, the former owner of a gun-themed restaurant called Shooters Grill, is an ardent Trump supporter who has backed the former president’s unfounded claims of election fraud.

Frisch, a conservative Democrat who supports abortion rights, brands himself a “patriotic mainstream businessman.” He hoped to draw voters who were tired of what he called Boebert’s brand of “angertainment,” and he promised to join the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus in Congress if elected..

–Amy Gunia

Fetterman flips Pennsylvania in a major victory for the Democrats

Democrat John Fetterman beat Trump-backed Republican celebrity television doctor Mehmet Oz in the Pennsylvania Senate race, flipping control of the seat currently held by Republican Pat Toomey, who is retiring. It’s a key pickup for Democrats, who are inching closer to retaining the Senate in what many originally expected to be a bruising midterm election for the party.

“We held the line. I never expected that we were gonna turn these counties blue, but we did what we needed to do,” Fetterman, who overcame doubts in the final weeks about the extent of his recovery after suffering a stroke in May, said to a crowd of cheering supporters in a victory speech in the early Wednesday hours.

It was one of the most closely watched races of the election. Fetterman, the state’s lieutenant governor since 2019, and Oz, who won a competitive Republican primary in May, ran one of the most contentious and expensive races in the country, in a competition seen as a proxy battle between Biden and Trump. Fetterman’s win is a blow for Trump, who endorsed Oz in the primary and campaigned for Oz in the run up to the general election on Tuesday. Biden, too, appeared on the campaign trail in Pennsylvania, three times in support of Fetterman in just the final three weeks, according to the AP.

Oz has sparked controversy for promoting problematic medical claims. Oprah Winfrey, who hosted Oz as a regular guest on her iconic talk show for several years, endorsed Fetterman. “I will tell you all this, if I lived in Pennsylvania, I would have already cast my vote for John Fetterman for many reasons,” Oprah said last week.

–Amy Gunia

Brian Kemp defeats Stacey Abrams for Georgia governor

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp has defeated former state house majority leader Stacey Abrams in the Georgia governor’s race. Abrams acknowledged the defeat in an appearance in Atlanta Tuesday night, saying she offered “congratulations” to Kemp.It was the second match-up between Kemp and Abrams and the second time Georgia did not elect what would have been the first Black woman governor in U.S. history; Kemp defeated Abrams for the governorship in 2018 as well.

Kemp shot to national prominence when he refused to help former President Donald Trump overturn the results of the 2020 election. His re-election this year makes him one of the only Republicans to cross Trump and keep his job.

–Mini Racker/Atlanta

Voters asked to ban slavery as punishment

Voters in five states faced an anachronistic question on their ballots this election day: whether to let slavery or involuntary servitude remain a legal form of punishment. In Louisiana, the electorate opted not to remove that punishment from the state constitution, keeping slavery an option, after a series of edits to the ballot measure led its original author to oppose it.

Alabama, Tennessee and Vermont all passed the ballot measures that would amend the state constitution to remove language making slavery permissible as a punishment. Votes were still being counted in Oregon as of early Wednesday morning.

In Louisiana, Democratic State Representative Edmond Jordan sponsored House Bill 298 with the intentions of banning slavery as punishment. But once the ballot itself was written, Jordan told local news outlets that the text was so ambiguous it could have the opposite effect, and he urged voters to reject the measure so legislators could clean up the language and try again.

The idea of legal slavery still existing in the U.S. in 2022, close to 160 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, may be hard to believe. But nearly 20 states have constitutions (along with the U.S. Constitution, within the Thirteenth Amendment) with “exception clauses.” These documents ban slavery or forced labor except when it’s used as criminal punishment.

With over 95% of ballots tallied early Wednesday morning, over 760,000 voters in Louisiana—60.9%—indicated they did not want to pass the ballot measure that would remove the language from the state constitution that allowed involuntary servitude as a punishment.

–Julia Zorthian

Sen. Maggie Hassan retains seat once viewed as vulnerable

Incumbent New Hampshire Senator Maggie Hassan clinched her seat for Democrats in an election the GOP had hoped would bring Republicans closer to Senate control.

Hassan defeated retired Army Gen. Donald Bolduc during a race in which both Democrat and Republican strategists viewed her seat as vulnerable. Republicans had long had their eye on the seat as the potential flip they needed to control the Senate chamber, but as Bolduc emerged as the frontrunner during the primary, his radical views sparked concerns among party officials.

Bolduc suggested, for example, eliminating the FBI and ending the direct elections of senators. He trumpeted former President Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 Election was stolen. New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu endorsed a different candidate during the Republican primary, calling Bolduc a “conspiracy-theorist extremist.” (Bolduc had his own fighting words; he had described Sununu as a “a Chinese Communist sympathizer.”)

Once he became the Republican nominee, Hassan hammered Bolduc on his extreme views and she held onto a consistent lead in the polls. She outraised Bolduc at an immense scale, spending over $31 million on her campaign compared to the $900,000 Bolduc spent as of Oct. 19.

Bolduc veered closer to center during the general race, walking back his 2020 election denials and eventually earning endorsements from both Sununu and Trump. In late October, the Republican Senate fundraising group injected more money into the race in a last-ditch attempt to flip the seat, which they had last controlled in 2017.

President Joe Biden reportedly called Hassan to congratulate her on the win Tuesday night.

–Julia Zorthian

J.D. Vance wins Ohio Senate seat

The tight race for an open Senate seat in Ohio ground to a narrow end, with Democratic nominee Tim Ryan coming up short against first-time candidate J.D. Vance, a Republican who captured the GOP nomination powered by an endorsement of ex-President Donald Trump. The Associated Press called the race, and a Democratic official tells TIME that Ryan has called Vance to concede.

Ryan, a 10-term member of the House who sought to defeat Nancy Pelosi as the Democratic leader and tried for his party’s presidential nomination in 2020, had counted on his blue-collar appeal to break a conservative slide in a state that twice voted for Trump. Ryan hails from the northeast corner of the state where the manufacturing core has been hollowed out over the last few decades. He campaigned as an everyman who drank Miller Lite, wore hoodie sweatshirts on the trail, and blasted Trump and his allies like Vance as extremism.

Vance, meanwhile, matured as a candidate as the campaign pivoted from a competitive primary to a general election with national implications. Vance, the author of Hillbilly Elegy and a venture capitalist, similarly tried to appeal to the working-class base of the Ohio electorate. Vance benefited from a raft of cash from billionaire Peter Thiel, and he certainly was not hurt by incumbent Gov. Mike DeWine’s easy victory for a second term.

The seat is currently held by Republican Sen. Rob Portman, meaning Vance’s win does little to advance the GOP’s effort to win the majority.

–Philip Elliott

Alabama votes to remove racist language from constitution

Alabama voters approved a revised constitution that nixes racist language about segregated schools, poll taxes, and interracial marriage. The revision also strips a clause banning slavery except “for the punishment of crime.” This phrasing has enabled the forced labor of convicted felons and reflects a national push to remove the inhumane language from the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

More than 75% of voters approved the change, while 23% voted against it, according to unofficial election results posted by the Alabama Secretary of State on Tuesday night, while votes were still being tallied.

Since it was ratified in 1901, the Alabama constitution has boasted 978 amendments and more than 400,000 words, making it the longest state constitution. Voters first went to the polls to remove racist language in 2020. Two years later, they returned to the polls to vote to approve additional removals and a more streamlined document.

Among other removed clauses is a provision that protected parents’ right to send their children to “schools provided for their own race.” That amendment had been adopted in the wake of the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education, which was supposed to make racially segregated schools unconstitutional.

–Olivia B. Waxman

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis coasts to re-election

Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis easily won re-election on Tuesday night, according to the Associated Press, positioning him for potential national ambitions or a future bid for the presidency.

DeSantis faced Democrat Charlie Crist, who himself served as a Republican Governor of Florida from 2007 until 2011. (He became a Democrat in 2012.) With 80% of votes counted, De Santis had 58% of the vote to Crist’s 41%.

A rising star in the GOP, DeSantis defined his first term as governor with resistance to pandemic-era restrictions and brash right-wing stances on America’s culture wars. His funding vastly outpaced Crist’s, and he focused his campaign on criticizing Democrats for what he described as the “woke agenda.” Widely considered to be a future Republican presidential contender, the conservative firebrand made headlines this year for his stances on LGBTQ issues, handling of immigration policy, and investigations into alleged voter fraud. He repeatedly drew liberal ire and swallowed media cycle after media cycle, leaving Crist and his moderate approach largely ignored.

While he’s been re-elected to another four years in office, it remains unclear if he’ll serve all of them—in a recent debate DeSantis, 44, did not answer when Crist pressed him to commit to a full-four year term rather than run for President in 2024. Former President Donald Trump, a registered Florida voter who is also mulling a presidential bid, told reporters on Tuesday that he had voted for DeSantis’ re-election, although he had mocked the governor at a rally just days before, potentially teeing up the primary dynamics for next cycle.

–Madeleine Carlisle

Democrat Michael Bennet reelected in Colorado

Incumbent Democrats clinched two statewide races in Colorado on Tuesday, highlighting the increasingly blue leanings of the purple state.

Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet won reelection, according to the Associated Press, securing a third term and defeating Joe O’Dea, a more moderate Republican candidate. Democratic Governor Jared Polis also won reelection in the state, according to the AP.

O’Dea, a construction company CEO, ran on a more moderate platform than many Republican candidates in other states. He supports abortion rights and distanced himself from former President Donald Trump, but he called the Senate race “a referendum on Joe Biden and his economy.”

Bennet, who has been a Senator since 2009 and ran unsuccessfully for president in 2020, defended Democrats by pointing to legislation, including the American Rescue Plan and the Inflation Reduction Act, that he said had helped Americans weather the economic challenges caused by the pandemic.

–Katie Reilly

Sarah Huckabee Sanders wins Arkansas governorship

Republican Sarah Huckabee Sanders won the gubernatorial race in Arkansas, according to the Associated Press, becoming the first woman to hold the seat in the state’s history.

Sanders, former White House press secretary during the Trump Administration, won by a landslide. Her father Mike Huckabee previously served as the state’s governor for more than a decade.

Both of the candidates for lieutenant governor are women, and though results are not yet in for that race, Sanders’ victory ensures Arkansas will become one of the first states in the country to be led by women in both top spots. (Massachusetts will also be led by two women after Democrat Maura Healey won the governor’s race there.)

–Jasmine Aguilera

Wes Moore becomes Maryland’s first Black governor

Democrat Wes Moore won the Maryland gubernatorial race, according to the Associated Press. Moore will become the state’s first Black governor.

Moore was expected to win the race against far-right Republican Dan Cox, who was endorsed by Trump and received an approximately $1.7 million boost by Democrats in his primary race, with Democrats betting that he would lose the general election.

–Jasmine Aguilera

First member of Gen Z elected to Congress

Democrat Maxwell Alejandro Frost won his race in Florida’s 10th Congressional district. Frost, 25, was born in 1997, making him the first member of Gen Z to be elected to the House of Representatives. (Republican Rep. Madison Cawthorne, 27, was born on the cusp between Millennials and Gen Z; another Gen Z Republican, Karoline Leavitt, is running for a House seat in New Hampshire, although that race has not yet been called.)

Frost, who worked as an Uber driver to make ends meet during his campaign, ran as a Gen Z leader who could represent his generation’s lack of patience with the status quo. A former March for Our Lives organizer, Frost told TIME he planned to bring a Gen Z urgency to issues like gun violence, voting rights, and climate change. “I think the biggest generational divide I see isn’t necessarily the issues—it’s the urgency of these things,” he says. “How quickly do they get done?”

–Charlotte Alter

Early winners declared

Several non-competitive U.S. Senate races have been called by the Associated Press.

Republican Senator Marco Rubio won a third term to represent the swing state, defeating U.S. Rep. Val Demings, who was vying to be the state’s first Black Senator. The race had the potential to be close, as Demings outraised him, but Rubio had opened a large lead in pre-election polls.

Connecticut Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal will serve a third term. The former Connecticut Attorney General defeated Leora Levy, who received an endorsement from former President Donald Trump.

South Carolina’s Tim Scott won re-election to the Senate. Serving in the Senate since 2013, he is the first Black U.S. Senator from a southern state since Reconstruction, and is the only Black Republican senator.

Illinois Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth won a second term. In 2018, the Iraq War Veteran and Purple Heart recipient became the first Senator to give birth while in office.

Republican Katie Britt becomes the first woman to serve in the U.S. Senate from Alabama. She succeeds her former boss, Richard Shelby, for whom she served as Chief of Staff.

–Olivia B. Waxman

This is when polls close across the country

Polls have already closed in Guam, which is 15 hours ahead of the Eastern Time Zone. Voters elected a Republican, James Moylan, as their delegate to Congress for the first time in nearly 30 years.

Delegates represent U.S. territories in the House of Representatives but cannot vote in House floor sessions. They serve two-year terms.

Here is an hour-by-hour breakdown of poll closing times in key states:

• 6 p.m. ET: Indiana and Kentucky are the first states to begin closing polls

• 7 p.m. ET: Polls in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and Virginia close

• 7:30 p.m. ET: Ohio and North Carolina close their polls

• 8 p.m. ET: Pennsylvania closes polls

• 9 p.m. ET: Polls close in Arizona, Wisconsin, and New York

• 10 p.m. ET: Nevada and Oregon close their polls

• 11 p.m. ET: California closes polls

• Midnight ET: Alaska and Hawaii are the final states to close their polls

–Solcyre Burga

What if I’m still in line after the polls close?

If you are already in line at a polling place when the polls close, you should stay in line. Poll workers are legally required to let you still vote. “Don’t allow anyone to tell you otherwise,” says Cecilia Aguilera, a counsel for the Fair Elections Center.

Read more: Everything You Need to Know About Voting in the 2022 Midterm Elections

If anyone is asking you to leave, stay in the line and call or text the Election Protection Hotline at 866-OUR-VOTE (866-687-8683) to alert their trained volunteers, who will be able to assist the situation, says Aguilera. (The same service is also available for non-English voters. Spanish speakers can call 888-VE-Y-VOTE. Speakers of Asian languages can call 888-API-VOTE. Arabic speakers can call 844-YALLA-US.) Those same numbers can be called if you feel someone is trying to stop you from voting.

–Mariah Espada

Scattered voting hiccups reported as polls close

Election Day went largely smoothly across the country on Tuesday, with a few isolated technical and logistical hiccups.

In North Carolina, the state’s Board of Elections extended voting hours at three locations after they weren’t able to open on time. Similarly, in Luzerne County in Pennsylvania, a judge ruled that polling places should remain open until 10 p.m. on Tuesday after a paper shortage caused long lines at several locations. About 35 of the county’s 186 polling sites were affected, according to local election officials, who in court filings said they didn’t discover until the morning of Election Day that “the voting machines were seriously deficient of paper to print out the ballot after the voter uses the machine to vote.” It took several hours to get more paper, according to local reports. “The constitutional right to vote requires an extension of the voting hours,” Judge Lesa Gelb said in the order, noting that some residents in the county “through no fault of their own, were disenfranchised and denied the fundamental right to vote.”

In Maricopa County, Ariz. election officials on Tuesday afternoon said they had found a solution to technical glitches that affected roughly 20% of the tabulation machines in the county. They said that county technicians had changed the printer settings, producing darker marks that were able to be picked up by the machines. Despite officials’ efforts to reassure voters that their vote would still be correctly counted, several right-wing pundits and politicians seized on these issues to raise doubts about the integrity of the election, echoing baseless election conspiracies.

Meanwhile, the office of the Mississippi Secretary of State on Tuesday afternoon said in a statement that several state websites—including theirs, which provide critical information for voters, like a polling place locator—had “experienced issues” on Election Day. They were taken offline for about 30 minutes after a Russian-speaking hacker group named Mississippi as one of its targets, according to NBC News.

–Vera Bergengruen

What voters outside Atlanta are saying

Some voters casting their ballots at a church in Sandy Springs, Georgia on Tuesday said they wanted to rebuke political excesses on both sides of the aisle.

“I’m pretty sure I’ll be voting for Kemp and Warnock,” says Dylan Spearman, a 26-year-old accountant who says he doesn’t associate with either party. “Abrams, I feel like, is a little more extreme on the left side, and I prefer not to have anyone extreme on either side. And then Herschel Walker, the other way around, more extreme on the right side.”

Georgia is holding two critical elections on Tuesday: the gubernatorial contest between Governor Brian Kemp and Democrat Stacey Abrams, and the Senate contest between Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker.

Sandy Springs, a suburb of Atlanta in deep blue Fulton County, is home to boxy houses, high gates, and big lawns, as well as mixed-use apartment buildings. Several residents characterized the neighborhood, which is dotted with signs supporting Republican Governor Brian Kemp, as either more Republican-leaning or politically mixed, although most of the voters who agreed to speak with TIME were supporting Democrats.

Ibn Blanford, a 42-year-old actor, model, and caterer, says he used to identify with Democrats, but feels the party has supported giving too many handouts. He’s supporting Abrams, but even as he walked into the polls, he wasn’t sure who he was going to vote for in the Senate race. “Now I think both parties are a little messed up,” he says. “And I think that the country is in a place where we’re somewhere in the middle.”

Multiple voters who identified with the Democratic Party also decried extremism, but they saw it primarily on the Republican side. Several of them said they weren’t thrilled with President Joe Biden, who some called “the lesser of two evils,” but they said they don’t support the GOP and former President Donald Trump—especially after the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“That whole January 6th event really took the cake for me,” says Antonne Broussard, a substitute teacher and food and beverage industry worker. “If we start going that route and challenging our democracy, we won’t have a democracy.”

Multiple voters mentioned abortion rights as a factor in their decision to vote for Democrats: “I’m not too happy about how they’re trying to overturn abortion rights,” says Antrena Williams, who said she went to school with Abrams.

–Mini Racker/Sandy Springs, Ga.

The races with the biggest stakes for abortion

Key elections stand to have a significant impact on abortion access in several states.

In Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Kansas, Democratic candidates are fighting to maintain control of their state’s governorship — which would enable them to use their veto power to defend abortion access if Republicans in control of the state legislature pass abortion restrictions. If any of the Republican gubernatorial candidates win—all of whom support tightening or defending existing abortion restrictions—abortion access would likely be curtailed in the state.

“For three and a half years, the threat of my veto is what has kept Michigan pro-choice, frankly, with the legislature that we have,” Democratic Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer told TIME over the summer of the stakes of her re-election campaign.

The governor’s races in Georgia and Arizona have also focused on abortion. Both states already have abortion restrictions in place; Georgia banned abortion as early as six weeks into pregnancy, and Arizona banned abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. But Democratic candidates for governor—Stacey Abrams in Georgia and Katie Hobbs in Arizona—have said they would work to repeal those laws if elected.

In North Carolina, Republicans already hold a majority in the state legislature, and this week’s elections could give them a supermajority, which would enable them to pass a ban on abortion and override a potential veto by Democratic Governor Roy Cooper. “It’s pretty clear that the ability of women to get reproductive care in North Carolina, and even across the southeast, will depend on a handful of competitive state legislative races here in North Carolina,” Cooper said in an interview with the Washington Post.

–Katie Reilly

Trump-endorsed candidates will test the 45th President’s power

Former President Donald Trump endorsed more than 200 Republican candidates for Senate, U.S. House, and state executive offices during their primaries this year. Some of them are now locked in close races with their Democratic counterparts in midterm elections.

The results of these races will test Trump’s remaining influence over the Republican Party and American politics as he mulls running for President again in 2024. According to CNN exit polls, most midterm voters do not have a favorable view of the 45th President: about 6 in 10 voters said they viewed Trump unfavorably, while 37% viewed him favorably. But most voters said Trump wasn’t a factor in their House vote, per CNN.

One key race to watch is the Senate battle in Pennsylvania, where Trump-endorsed candidate Mehmet Oz is less than a point behind his Democratic opponent John Fetterman, according to an analysis of poll data by FiveThirtyEight.

Read More: The Pennsylvania Senate Race Tests the Vibes Theory of Politics

The Senate races in Georgia and Nevada are also tight, and the Trump-backed Republican candidates have a very slight lead—about one point—over their Democratic counterparts, who are both incumbents. Herschel Walker, Georgia Senate candidate running against Sen. Raphael Warnock, has run a controversial campaign plagued with scandals involving his relationships with women, one of whom alleges Walker paid for her abortion, which was first reported by The Daily Beast, and the woman later told The New York Times Walker encouraged her to have a second abortion when she became pregnant again two years later.

Meanwhile in Nevada, Republican Senate candidate Adam Laxalt is running a tough campaign against Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, who has spent more than $48 million to keep her seat. In Ohio, Trump-backed J.D. Vance is running in one of the most closely-watched races in the country against Democratic opponent Rep. Tim Ryan.

Read More: The Fight for Latino Voters in Nevada Is the Future of American Politics

There are several Trump-backed gubernatorial candidates to watch as well. In Arizona, Republican Kari Lake, who falsely claims the 2020 election was rigged against Trump, holds a slight lead over her Democratic opponent Katie Hobbs. In Nevada, Trump-backed Joe Lombardo also holds a slim lead over Democratic opponent Steve Sisolak, and in Wisconsin, Trump-endorsed Tim Michaels only has a 0.7 point lead over Democratic opponent Tony Evers. In Kansas, Trump’s candidate Derek Schmit is trailing Democrat Laura Kelly.

–Jasmine Aguilera

The extreme Republican candidates Democrats boosted in the primary

The Democratic Party faced criticism for spending millions of dollars to back the most rightwing Republican candidates in key primaries. Democrats bet that the more extreme candidate, typically someone who falsely believes the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump, would lose the general election against a Democratic opponent.

The results of Tuesday’s elections will determine whether the Democrats’ gamble worked—or whether it seated more extreme rightwing politicians in Congress.

Polls suggest the Democrats’ maneuvering may have paid off. According to a September analysis by The Washington Post, Democrats spent nearly $19 million endorsing at least 13 Republican candidates in their primary races. Of those, seven lost their primary races. The remaining six are expected to lose their races on Tuesday, according to recent polling, though some races are tighter than others.

Darren Bailey and Dan Cox, the Republican gubernatorial candidates in Illinois and Maryland respectively, were both endorsed by Trump and boosted by Democratic funding. Democrats spent approximately $3.5 million in campaign ads in support of Bailey, according to the Post, who claimed voter fraud was “very real” after the 2020 election and criticized GOP leaders who called for Trump to concede the election. Now, Bailey is behind his Democratic opponent by 16.2 points, according to an analysis of poll data by FiveThirtyEight. Democrats supported Cox, who also claims the election was stolen from Trump, with $1.7 million during the primaries. He is trailing his Democratic opponent by 32 points, according to a poll by the University of Maryland and The Washington Post.

Doug Mastriano, the Republican candidate for governor of Pennsylvania and a loyal Trump supporter who also believes the 2020 election was stolen, was also boosted by the Democrats in the primary with $1.2 million. Now Mastriano is behind his Democratic opponent by 10.4 points, according to FiveThirtyEight.

Three rightwing congressional candidates backed by Democrats won their primaries, including John Gibbs, a House candidate in Michigan’s 3rd district who is now in a close race. Don Bolduc, a Senate candidate in New Hampshire, is also in a tight race, running behind Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan by only 2.2 points, according to a FiveThirtyEight analysis. Meanwhile, Republican Robert Burns, a House candidate in New Hampshire’s 2nd district, is expected to lose.

–Jasmine Aguilera