Republicans flipped a US Senate seat from the Democrats in the deeply conservative state of West Virginia Tuesday as they fought for control of Congress in elections that will determine how much of the next president’s agenda gets enacted.
Jim Justice, the sitting governor of the Mountain State, had been widely expected to best former mayor Glenn Elliott in the race to replace retiring moderate Joe Manchin, an independent who voted with the Democrats.
Justice was elected governor as a Democrat in 2016 but switched soon after entering office.
In parallel with the presidential election, voters in hundreds of congressional districts were deciding if Democrats or Republicans will hold the gavel in both chambers come January.
The US Capitol is divided into the House of Representatives, where all 435 seats are up for grabs — and a 100-member Senate, which has 34 seats at stake this year.
As with polling in the White House contest, the congressional election looks close, with Republicans well-positioned to wrest the Senate back from the Democrats but control of the House a toss-up.
Justice’s victory wiped out the Democrats’ 51-49 advantage, leaving Republicans needing just one more gain to take back the chamber — and setting their sights on Montana, Ohio and possibly Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan.
Democrats were looking to mitigate losses with gains in Texas and Florida, but suffered an early disappointment Tuesday in the Sunshine State when the Senate race there was called for Republican incumbent Rick Scott.
If Republicans win all of the toss-up races, they’ll have 55 of the 100 seats, giving them huge power to block Democrat Kamala Harris’s domestic policy should she prevail over Donald Trump, and many of her appointments.
Nonpartisan political finance monitor OpenSecrets reports that $10 billion has been spent on candidates for Congress this cycle — a touch less than in 2020 but almost twice as much as the $5.5 billion price tag for the 2024 White House race.
While the Senate approves treaties and certain presidential appointments like US Supreme Court nominees, all bills that raise money must start in the House, where the majority could take days to be decided, with close races expected in New York and California.
The Democrats are in the minority, but overall control looks like a more realistic goal in the lower chamber, where they only need to flip four seats.
“The race for control of the US House remains as close as it’s ever been,” said the Cook Political Report.
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