After a long election night for the Democratic Party and the Republican Party in which both parties have fiercely contested the victory in the Senate in key swing states, the Democrats have taken a step ahead by snatching a senator from their opponents.
Specifically, Democratic candidate John Fetterman beat Republican Senator Mehmet Oz in the race for the Pennsylvania seat by a narrow margin of just over 100,000 votes, all after nearly six hours of canvassing.
In addition, if until a few hours ago both parties have kept most of their fiefdoms, such as New York, Colorado, Oregon or California for the Democrats; Kansas, Oklahoma, Indiana or Alabama for the Republicans, the states of Nevada, Arizona and Georgia could definitely swing the victory to the Democrats.
In the latter state, with 96 percent of the vote counted, the race between Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock and Republican candidate Herschel Walker is still in the balance after both have been in the lead several times throughout the night.
Warnock has 1,928,000 votes, just 14,000 more than Walker, a Trump-backed former rugby player peppered with numerous controversies who has so far garnered 1,914,000 endorsements.
In the event that neither candidate gets at least 50 percent of the vote (the Democrat has 49.1 percent to the Republican’s 48.8 percent), the state of Georgia would be forced into a special runoff a couple of months later.
In the northeast, Senator Ron Johnson, a Republican, is close to beating Democratic candidate Mandela Barnes, although a flip could still occur.
With 93 percent of the votes counted, Johnson has just over 1.31 million votes, while Barnes has 1.28 million. The difference so far between the two candidates is just 40,000 votes.
However, even with a victory in Wisconsin, the Republican Party would have to take two senators away from the Democratic Party, a scenario that at the moment seems difficult.
On the other coast of the United States, the Democrats are ahead in Arizona, where astronaut Mark Kelly is ahead of Republican candidate Blake Masters by more than 120,000 votes with 54 percent of the vote count.
If the race for the Arizona seat continues like this, Kelly would consolidate his hold on the Senate seat two years after winning it after succeeding Senator John McCain, who died in 2020, and cementing the Democratic victory in the Upper House.
In addition, Nevada–which is another of the most hotly contested states–where Democrat Catherine Cortez-Masto initially faced a difficult re-election to the Senate, she has so far been able to turn the election around and is four points ahead of Adam Laxalt, the Republican nominee.
During the campaign, Cortez-Masto has been linked to the economic measures of the Biden Administration and to the inflationary process facing the United States, a fact that Lexalt has taken advantage of to criticize her opponent.
With control of the Senate, the Republican Party would have among its powers to endorse or overturn public offices or judges appointed by the President of the United States, which would hinder Biden’s power to legislate in the event he wins the House of Representatives.
The Upper House is currently divided with 50 seats for each of the two major parties which, however, breaks the tie for the Presidency of the Senate, currently held by Biden’s ‘number two’, Kamala Harris.
