Though Republicans are still favored to win the House of Representatives, the margin’s looking unexpectedly slim from early results in Tuesday’s elections—more of a pink rinse than a red wave. Moreover, the Democrats have already claimed a major win: John Fetterman soundly beat Mehmet Oz to flip one of Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate seats blue, with NBC calling it around midnight Eastern time and CNN, the BBC and The New York Times following soon after.
Other Senate toss-ups head into the early hours without resolution, most notably Georgia’s, where Dem Raphael Warnock is ahead of the GOP’s Herschel Walker, but a fraction of a percent short of the 50% needed to avoid a runoff.
The Times’ Jonathan Weisman:
A hard-fought victory by Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor, John Fetterman, over the celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz flipped a Senate seat from Republican to Democrat, the latest sign that the so-called red wave that Republicans expected on Tuesday simply was not materializing.
Both parties racked up high-profile victories in governors’ races and Senate contests, but after one of the most consequential midterm campaigns in recent history, control of the House and Senate remained uncertain in the early hours of Wednesday.
I was annoyed by how some media fluffed Oz toward the end, and disgusted at those reporters and pundits who insinuated that Fetterman’s difficulties hearing and speaking, since his stroke, made him unfit for office. But most of all I’m proud of Pennsylvanians for not sharing their ignorant and cynical assumptions about disability or, indeed, about how Pennsylvanians will vote.
