Closing summary
We’re closing our live midterm elections blog now, but look out for our news reports later for developments in Senate, House and governor’s races in which winners have yet to be projected.
Democrats need to win only one of the two remaining Senate races, in Nevada and Georgia, to retain control of the chamber for two more years. Each party currently has 49 seats.
Republicans are narrowing in on victory in the House of Representatives, having won 211 of the 218 seats they need for a majority.
Here’s what we followed today:
The Republican who must win his Senate challenge in Nevada if his party is to have a chance of controlling the chamber said his path to victory was “narrowing”. Adam Laxalt, ahead by just 862 votes, conceded drop-off ballots still being tallied favored Democratic incumbent Catherine Cortez Masto at a greater rate than he expected.
Mark Kelly, whose win over Donald Trump-endorsed Blake Masters in Arizona put Democrats on the brink of retaining Senate control, criticized election deniers and praised Republican predecessor John McCain in a victory speech in Phoenix.
The atmosphere grew tense outside the Maricopa county elections office in Phoenix, where several dozen rightwing protestors hurled abuse at sheriff’s deputies. Extremist Republican Kari Lake, an election denier, narrowly trails Democrat Katie Hobbs in the race for Arizona governor.
Police say no powder was found in “suspicious” envelopes sent to Lake’s campaign headquarters last week. The candidate had closed her office and claimed what it described as an attack was politically motivated.
The race for Georgia’s Senate seat, which will be decided in a 6 December runoff between Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock and challenger Herschel Walker, will see Pac-funded negative attack ads questioning the Republican’s character, CNN reports.
Updated
The Associated Press, whose projections the Guardian uses to call election results, is explaining why it declared Mark Kelly the winner in the Senate race on Friday, but has not yet done so in the contest for governor.
“At around 10pm ET on Friday, officials in Maricopa released another batch of 75,000 votes, a tranche that provided enough information for AP to determine that Democratic Senator Kelly had won reelection against Republican Blake Masters,” the agency says.
“But there still was not enough for AP to call a winner in the governor’s race. The batch favored Hobbs over Lake by less than 10 percentage points.
“After Friday’s vote release, the margin in the governor’s race [between Republican Kari Lake and Democrat Katie Hobbs] sat at just over 31,000 votes, with Lake about a point and a half behind.”
In all of Arizona, the AP says, officials report some 400,000 ballots left to count, including up to 275,000 in Maricopa county, meaning there are simply too many left untallied to be sure which way the race will go.
The picture could become clearer around 10pm ET Saturday, when officials in Maricopa county say they will release another batch of votes.
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