The Republicans regained control of the Senate after taking seats from the Democrats overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday.
Posted at 3:03 a.m.
Donald Trump’s party, which had to defend 11 seats in the election, had won almost all of them around 1 a.m.
West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice won a landslide victory by nearly 40 percentage points over an unheralded opponent to secure a seat vacated by Joe Manchin’s departure.
The Democratic Party had practically given up campaigning after the announcement of the departure of the elected official, a former Democrat who became independent after having crossed swords on several occasions with the administration of Democratic President Joe Biden.
A Democratic senator from Ohio, Sherrod Brown, who was seeking a fourth term in a state that had become progressively more conservative over the years, was also defeated.
His Republican opponent, Bernie Moreno, a businessman who sought to portray him as an “ultra liberal” out of step with the population, was ahead of him by five percentage points after the counting of more than 90% of the votes.
Democrats under pressure
Several analysts also expected that the outgoing Democratic senator from Montana, Jon Tester, would struggle to maintain his position in a state largely won by President Trump. He was confronted by a former soldier, Tim Sheehy, who had to defend himself during the campaign for having lied by claiming to have been shot in the arm during a deployment in Afghanistan.
Republican candidates were also in the race for three Democratic-held seats in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.
Kamala Harris’s camp, drawing on recent polls, had argued that it was possible to beat Republican Senator Ted Cruz in Texas, but the politician ultimately won by ten percentage points.
Only the race for a seat in Nebraska seemed likely to cause headaches for Republicans. An independent candidate, Dan Osborn, fought a heated battle against incumbent Senator Deb Fischer, but ultimately lost.
If the Republicans ultimately win only two seats previously controlled by the Democrats while retaining the others they held before the election, they will have a majority of 51 seats against 49 for the opposing camp.
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