Washington – The Latest on Election Day (all times local):
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11:02
Trump Ally Ron DeSantis Wins Florida Governor’s Race
10:36
Former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney elected to Senate in Utah, defeating Democrat Jenny Wilson.
10:27
Republicans will retain control of the U.S. Senate, American media outlets projected on Tuesday, even as Democrats appeared likely to capture control of the House of Representatives.
10:24
Republican U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas held off an election challenge on Tuesday by Democratic U.S. Representative Beto O’Rourke, keeping his seat in the upper chamber of Congress, according to media projections.
10:13
Democrat Max Rose defeats U.S. Rep. Dan Donovan, ousting New York City’s only Republican congressman.
9:18
Republican U.S. Representative Marsha Blackburn was elected to the U.S. Senate from Tennessee on Tuesday, defeating the state’s former governor, Democrat Phil Bredesen, to help her party’s efforts to keep control of the chamber.
9:14
Democratic U.S. Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia won a tough election fight on Tuesday against the state’s Republican attorney general, Patrick Morrisey, helping his party keep a narrow foothold in the conservative coal-mining state.
9:12
Democrat J.B. Pritzker elected Illinois governor, unseating Republican Bruce Rauner.
09:09
Republican Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland wins re-election, defeating Democrat Ben Jealous.
Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania re-elected, defeating Republican Scott Wagner.
09:02
NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo Re-Elected For 3rd Term
09:01
Republican John Barrasso of Wyoming and Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand of New York re-elected to the Senate.
8:59
The incumbent governors of Arkansas and Rhode Island have won re-election.
Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson defeated Democrat Jared Henderson on Tuesday to ensure another four years in the chief executive’s office for Republicans. The GOP also controls both legislative chambers.
In Rhode Island, Democrat Gov. Gina Raimondo defeated Republican challenger Allan Fung to win a second, four-year term. She will work alongside plenty of fellow Democrats, who hold commanding majorities in both chambers of the state Legislature.
8:57
In Indiana, Greg Pence, an older brother of Vice President Mike Pence, has won a heavily Republican House seat that his famous sibling once held.
The 61-year-old Pence, an owner of two antique malls, defeated Democrat Jeannine Lee Lake, who publishes a bi-monthly Muncie newspaper.
The eastern Indiana seat is open because Republican Rep. Luke Messer ran in the GOP primary for the Senate. Greg Pence is one of Mike Pence’s three brothers.
Greg Pence is a Marine veteran and once ran a now-bankrupt chain of convenience stores.
8:54
Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey re-elected to third term, defeating Republican Bob Hugin
8:53
Republican businessman Mike Braun won Indiana’s U.S. Senate election on Tuesday, unseating Democratic incumbent Joe Donnelly, ABC News projected.
8:42
The Democrats flipped their first two Republican-held House seats Tuesday as polls closed in the East, winning an open Florida district and another in the suburbs of the nation’s capital as they worked to wrest control of the chamber from the GOP and confront President Donald Trump.
In the Miami area, former Clinton administration Cabinet member Donna Shalala defeated television journalist Maria Elvira Salazar in a costly, roller-coaster contest. Virginia Rep. Barbara Comstock — among the most endangered GOP incumbents, branded Barbara “Trumpstock” by Democrats — lost to Jennifer Wexton, a prosecutor and state legislator, who was among the record number of women running this election.
That gave Democrats two of the 23 seats they need to capture the Republican-held House, slam the brakes on Trump’s agenda and exercise renewed oversight of his administration.
8:30
Republican Rep. Barbara Comstock of Virginia was the first congressional incumbent to lose as voters in her Northern Virginia district expressed their continued dislike of President Donald Trump.
Democratic state Sen. Jennifer Wexton won an easy victory in the wealthy suburban district outside Washington, which Hillary Clinton won by 10 percentage points.
Comstock tried hard to emphasize her independence from Trump, but Wexton, a former prosecutor, portrayed the two-term incumbent as a Trump ally out of touch with the diverse, well-educated district.
Comstock easily beat a Democrat in 2016 when her district went for Clinton.
The national focus on the race helped Comstock and Wexton raise more than $5 million in all, while outside groups spent more than $10 million.
8:07
Vermont’s Bernie Sanders has cruised to re-election for his third term in the Senate, easily outpacing eight candidates.
Sanders, the independent who has long been one of the state’s most popular politicians, spent little time campaigning ahead of Tuesday’s election.
Sanders has faced few serious opponents since he was first elected to the state’s lone seat in the House in 1990. He moved up to the Senate in 2006.
The Republican candidate, Lawrence Zupan, a Manchester real estate broker with experience in international trade, campaigned against what he felt was big government and social welfare programs. But his candidacy never gained traction and his campaign drew little attention.
Rather than focusing on his re-election, Sanders traveled the country to support Democratic candidates and an array of policy issues.
8:05
Virginia Democrat Tim Kaine has dispatched a die-hard supporter of President Donald Trump to win re-election to the U.S. Senate.
Kaine defeated Republican Corey Stewart on Tuesday.
The victory was widely expected as Kaine enjoyed large leads in most public polls and had a huge cash advantage.
Kaine is a former governor who was first elected to the Senate in 2012. He was Hillary Clinton’s running mate in 2016.
Stewart is a conservative provocateur best known for his outspoken support of Confederate imagery and hard-line views on immigration. He struggled to raise money and was ignored by national GOP groups.
8:02
Re-elected: Democratic Sens. Warren of Mass., Murphy of Conn., Cardin of Md., Carper of Del., and Whitehouse of R.I.
Republican Charlie Baker re-elected to second term as Massachusetts governor, defeating Democrat Jay Gonzalez
7:53 p.m.
Health care and immigration were high on voters’ minds as they cast ballots in the midterm elections, according to a wide-ranging survey of the American electorate conducted by The Associated Press.
AP VoteCast also shows a majority of voters considered President Donald Trump a factor in their votes.
Control of the Senate and the House of Representatives is at stake in the first nationwide election of Trump’s presidency. Democrats are hoping to take over one or both chambers to put a check on the president. At the same time, Trump is encouraging voters to view the election as a referendum on his leadership.
The VoteCast survey debuted Tuesday, replacing the in-person exit poll as a source of detailed information about the American electorate. In all, the survey included interviews with more than 113,000 voters nationwide.
Some early takeaways from VoteCast:
TOP ISSUES: HEALTH CARE AND IMMIGRATION
Health care was at the forefront of voters’ minds: 26 percent named it as the most important issue facing the country in this year’s midterm elections, followed by immigration (23 percent). Smaller shares considered the economy (19 percent), gun policy (8 percent) and the environment (7 percent) to be the top issue.
___
IS IT ALL ABOUT TRUMP?
Nearly two-thirds of voters said Trump was a reason for their vote, while about a third said he was not.
___
THE ECONOMY
Voters have a positive view of the state of the national economy — 65 percent said the condition of the economy is excellent or good, compared with 34 percent who said it’s not good or poor.
___
WRONG DIRECTION
A majority of voters overall said the country is headed in the wrong direction. About 6 in 10 voters said it is headed in the wrong direction, while around 4 in 10 said it’s on the right track.
___
AP VoteCast is a survey of the American electorate conducted in all 50 states by NORC at the University of Chicago for The Associated Press and Fox News. The survey of 113,677 voters and 21,599 nonvoters was conducted Oct. 29 to Nov. 6, concluding as polls close on Election Day. It combines interviews in English and Spanish with a random sample of registered voters drawn from state voter files; with self-identified registered voters conducted using NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population; and with self-identified registered voters selected from nonprobability online panels. Participants selected from state voter files were contacted by phone and mail, and had the opportunity to take the survey by phone or online. The margin of sampling error for voters is estimated to be plus or minus 0.5 percentage points. All surveys are subject to multiple sources of error, including sampling, question wording and order, and nonresponse. Find more details about AP VoteCast’s methodology at http://www.ap.org/votecast.
7:40 p.m.
U.S. stock futures slipped late on Tuesday as investors awaited the results of U.S. midterm congressional elections, with Wall Street hoping for relief following a recent selloff.
In line with opinion polls, Wall Street had been expecting that President Donald Trump’s Republican party would lose control of the House of Representatives while retaining the Senate, setting up gridlock in Washington.
S&P 500 e-mini futures
7:36 p.m.
Polls closed in 11 states on Tuesday as Americans cast votes nationwide at the end of a divisive campaign to decide whether President Donald Trump’s fellow Republicans maintain their grip on the U.S. Congress.
Early results began to trickle in from states such as Indiana, site of a vital U.S. Senate race, and Kentucky, home of a pivotal U.S. House of Representatives race, but it could be hours before the winners are determined.
Democratic Senators Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a 2016 presidential contender, and Tim Kaine of Virginia, Hillary Clinton’s vice presidential nominee in 2016, easily won re-election, news networks projected.
Republican Mike Braun opened an early lead in the crucial Senate showdown in Indiana with incumbent Democrat Joe Donnelly, but the race was too close to call with just 9 percent of the votes in.
Tightly contested Senate races in Florida, Ohio and West Virginia were too close to call, as were high-profile races for governor in Ohio and Georgia.
7:15 p.m.
As polls begin to close, the White House is stressing the effort President Donald Trump put into a political ground game aimed at putting Republicans in the win column for Tuesday’s midterm elections.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders says in a written statement that Trump has headlined 50 political rallies, 30 in the past two months. He’s campaigned for dozens of candidates at all levels of government.
Sanders says the Republican National Committee raised more than $250 million under Trump to defy what she calls “midterm history,” which tends to favor the party that does not control the White House.
Sanders says the president and first lady Melania Trump are looking forward to watching election results Tuesday night with friends and family in the White House residence.