Congressional elections live updates: House control still undecided, Republicans win control of Senate

Democratic Rep. Matt Cartwright says he has congratulated his opponent, Republican Rob Bresnahan, and conceded in the race for a competitive, Pennsylvania battleground district, though The Associated Press has yet to call the race.

He thanked supporters in a statement sent out by his campaign, adding "congratulations to Rob on his win. I wish him the best as he steers northeastern Pennsylvania through the challenges ahead."

Cartwright was seeking a seventh term in Congress. The district supported Trump in 2020's presidential election, making it a prime pickup opportunity for Republicans. The district includes Scranton, the city where President Joe Biden was born and that played prominently in his campaigns.

But McConnell, who's stepping aside from his role as the long serving GOP Senate leader, declined during a news conference at the Capitol to discuss his harsh criticisms of Trump as outlined in a new biography.

He also refused to answer questions about having Tesla CEO Elon Musk or Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime critic of vaccines and pesticides used in U.S. agriculture, play a role in a new administration.

Outgoing Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell credited his party's Senate election success to "candidate quality," saying it was "absolutely essential."

In past election cycles, Republican Senate candidates have emerged from the populist, right-wing of the party but many struggled to win statewide votes. This year, Senate Republican leaders made a concerted effort to recruit mainstream candidates who offered broad appeal.

There has been intense friction within the GOP between the camps largely headed by Donald Trump and McConnell. A recent biography revealed that the longtime Senate leader has privately excoriated Trump, especially for his efforts to overturn 2020 election results.

While McConnell credited Trump's campaign operation for the victory, he also chalked up the election results to frustrations with the current Democratic administration.

"If you're looking for a simple answer, I think it was a referendum on the current administration, in part. People were just not happy with this administration and the Democratic nominee was a part of it," McConnell said.

For all of the heady talk of democracy and the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to the next, a presidential transition also involves things that are less conceptual — and more mundane.

That includes construction of all the temporary structures for the presidential inauguration, set to occur two months and two weeks from today. In front of the White House, workers had fenced a section of Pennsylvania Avenue and Lafayette Park as they constructed the Presidential Inaugural Parade Reviewing Stands. A longtime inauguration tradition, the temporary pavilion is where Trump and his family will take in the parade as it winds in front of the White House on Jan. 20.

On the National Mall, work had also begun on the inauguration platform , from where Trump will be sworn in to office and address the nation. Nearly four years ago, on Jan. 6, Trump supporters rushed the Capitol and used pieces of the half-built structure to attack police officers. Workers on the site had to flee.

This year, members of Congress from both sides of the aisle gathered in September to drive the first nails for the structures, symbolizing the unity they aspired to forge amidst a divisive presidential campaign.

It is, of course, a temporary structure. And it will come down as soon as Trump starts his term.

The nation's top election security official says there's "no evidence of any malicious activity" that affected the security or the integrity of election systems in the 2024 presidential election.

Jen Easterly is the director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Easterly, in a statement Wednesday, praised the work of state and local election officials and the hundreds of thousands who served as poll workers on Election Day.

"As we have said repeatedly, our election infrastructure has never been more secure and the election community never better prepared to deliver safe, secure, free, and fair elections for the American people," Easterly said. "This is what we saw yesterday in the peaceful and secure exercise of democracy."

He told a group of supporters gathered in Bozeman, Montana, early Wednesday that he's been serving the country since he was 18 and was honored to continue that service in the Senate.

"We've got to make sure that the folks who go to work every day, work with their hands to pay for their own education and to put food on the table for their families, we've got to make sure the economy works for them again. That's going to be our top priority," Sheehy said.

Trump claims presidents have exclusive power to control federal spending even after Congress has appropriated money.

Trump argues that lawmakers' budget actions "set a ceiling" on spending but not a floor — meaning the president's constitutional duty to "faithfully execute the laws" includes discretion on whether to spend the money. This interpretation could set up a court battle with Congress.

Among other ideas, Trump would roll back the Biden administration's policy of extending Title IX civil rights protections to transgender students and he would ask Congress to require that only two genders can be recognized at birth.

The Republican president-elect now has a 75-day transition period to build out his team before Inauguration Day arrives Jan. 20. One top item on the to-do list: filling around 4,000 government positions with political appointees, people who are specifically tapped for their jobs by Trump's team.

That includes everyone from the secretary of state and other heads of Cabinet departments to those selected to serve part time on boards and commissions. Around 1,200 of those presidential appointments require Senate confirmation, which should be easier with the Senate now shifting to Republican control .

Pennsylvania's U.S. Senate race between three-term Democratic Sen. Bob Casey and Republican challenger David McCormick could help Republicans pad their newfound majority in the chamber in a battleground state contest that remained uncalled by The Associated Press on Wednesday.

McCormick led vote counting Wednesday morning by about 50,000 votes, or less than 1%, but a significant number of votes remained uncounted. In a statement Wednesday, Casey's campaign said, "There are more votes that need to be counted in areas like Philadelphia and it's important that every legal ballot will be counted. When that happens we are confident the senator will be reelected."

It's the first time Casey has shared the same ballot as Donald Trump, who won Pennsylvania for a second time in 2024 after winning it in 2016.

Casey, the son of a former two-term governor, is a stalwart of the state's Democratic Party, having won six statewide elections going back to 1996.

McCormick is making his second run for the Senate after losing narrowly in 2022's Republican primary. He left his job as CEO of the world's largest hedge fund to run.

Early, partial returns spotlighted tight races in a handful of districts stretching from Southern California to the Central Valley farm belt, where Democrats and Republicans have invested tens of millions of dollars to sway voters.

The spotlight was on half a dozen races widely seen a toss-ups. Much of the vote remained to be counted, but Republicans were holding a slight edge in all of them early Wednesday — in some cases by just a sliver of votes.

Two years ago the state played a pivotal role in securing the gavel for Republicans. Now only a handful of votes separate the rival parties in the House, with 220 Republicans, 212 Democrats and three vacancies.

Vote-counting can take weeks in California, where most voters use mail-in ballots — and sometimes longer.

Three-term Democratic Rep. Susan Wild has conceded in in her race against Republican Ryan Mackenzie in a hotly contested Pennsylvania congressional district, though The Associated Press still hasn't called the race.

Republicans had targeted the seat as a possible flip that would boost their prospects for keeping the House majority.

"I congratulate my opponent on winning this seat, and I am going to do everything to ensure a smooth transition, because the people of this district deserve nothing less," Wild said in her statement.

, where state courts have blocked lawmakers' efforts to restrict abortion rights, voters wrote abortion protections into the state constitution , codifying the right to an abortion up to viability. Though there's no defined time frame, doctors say viability is sometime after 21 weeks. The constitutional amendment is meant to safeguard against future efforts to restrict abortion rights.

already had laws on the books protecting abortion access, but voters there backed measures to enshrine the right in their state constitutions.

voters backed a reproductive rights measure that would bar unequal treatment based on "pregnancy outcomes" and "reproductive healthcare and autonomy," along with sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin and disability.

Lawmakers can object to a state's results during the congressional certification, as several Republicans did after the 2020 election. On Jan. 6, 2021, the House and Senate both voted to reject GOP objections to the Arizona and Pennsylvania results.

After Donald Trump tried to overturn his defeat to Democrat Joe Biden and Trump's supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, Congress updated the 1800s-era Electoral Count Act to make it harder to object and to more clearly lay out the vice president's ceremonial role, among other changes. Trump had pressured then-Vice President Mike Pence to try and object to the results — something the vice president has no legal standing to do.

Once Congress certifies the vote, the new or returning president will be inaugurated Jan. 20 on the steps of the Capitol.

Brazil's far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro says Trump's presidential election victory was historic and will empower right-wing and conservative movements across the globe, and that he hoped it will inspire Brazil to "follow the same path."

He said on X that Trump's imminent return to the White House marked "the triumph of the people's will over the arrogant designs of an elite who disdain our values, beliefs, and traditions."

Bolsonaro lost his reelection bid in late 2022 and, a little over two months later, his supporters stormed the capital in a bid to restore him to power. It was widely seen as an echo of the U.S. Capitol insurrection two years earlier, and he's now the target of several investigations.

But if Democrats wrest control of the House, it would provide an almost certain backstop, with veto power over the White House.

Trump, speaking early Wednesday at his election night party in Florida, said the results delivered an "unprecedented and powerful mandate" for Republicans.

He called the Senate rout "incredible." And he praised House Speaker Mike Johnson , who dashed from his own party in Louisiana to join Trump. "He's doing a terrific job," Trump said.

Vote counting in some races could go on for days and control of the House is too early to call.

Republicans are set to take control of the Senate. Votes are still being counted in some races, but the GOP has already secured 51 seats to take the majority in the Senate. Democrats lost seats in Ohio and Montana, where Republican challengers bested incumbents.

It's still unclear which party will control the House. There are too many races that have yet to be called to determine which party will win a majority of seats.

Election Day was mostly smooth. Fears of violence or disruptions did not materialize in most places. But bomb threats — all of which turned out to be hoaxes — disrupted voting in at least five battleground states.

Voters in several states weighed in on abortion restrictionsAbortion measures were on the ballot in nine states . In three — Nebraska, Florida and South Dakota — efforts to write abortion rights in to state constitutions failed. Voters in Missouri, Arizona and Montana backed measures to expand abortion rights. In Nevada, New York and Colorado, voters reaffirmed abortion and reproductive health rights.

With their victories, several candidates are set to be firsts.

New Jersey Rep. Andy Kim, a Democrat, won his race to become the first Korean American elected to the Senate.

Delaware State Rep. Sarah McBride, a Democrat, won her race to become the first openly transgender person elected to Congress. The former Obama administration official was elected to the Delaware General Assembly in 2021.

Democrat Angela Alsobrooks won her race and is set to become Maryland's first Black senator. Alsobrooks is currently the county executive for Maryland's Prince George's County, one of the most prosperous Black-majority counties in the nation.

Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester, a Democrat from Delaware, broke barriers again, becoming the first woman and first Black person elected to the Senate from the state. Seven years ago, when she was elected to the House, she was the first woman and first Black person to represent Delaware in the House. It will be the first time that two Black women will serve simultaneously in the Senate.

North Dakota elected its first woman to Congress. Republican Julie Fedorchak, running for the House of Representatives, won her race handily in the deep red state. She's currently a member of the state's public service commission.

Bernie Moreno, a Republican from Ohio, defeated incumbent Sen. Sherrod Brown to be the first Latino from the state elected to the Senate.

When the AP declared Republican Tim Sheehy the winner, every county in Montana had reported at least some results – and the margins were large enough that three-term Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Tester didn't have a plausible path to make up the gap in the votes left to be counted. In every part of Montana, Tester simply didn't perform as well with voters in 2024 as he did during his 2018 reelection campaign.

Republican Rep. Ryan Zinke won reelection to a U.S. House seat representing Montana on Wednesday. Zinke will serve a second term in the western Montana district, which was drawn after the state received an additional congressional seat from the 2020 census. Zinke faced a rematch against Democrat Monica Tranel, who fell a few points short of winning the seat in 2022. Zinke was U.S. interior secretary in the Trump administration for nearly two years before resigning while facing several ethics investigations. Zinke served as Montana's lone U.S. House member from 2015 through early 2017, when he resigned to become interior secretary. The Associated Press declared Zinke the winner at 6:28 a.m. EST.

Democrat Kristen McDonald Rivet won election to a U.S. House seat representing Michigan on Wednesday. Her victory means Democrats will retain control of a competitive district after Rep. Dan Kildee, who has represented the Flint area for about a decade, decided to retire. McDonald Rivet currently represents a competitive state Senate district that covers Midland, Saginaw and Bay City. She defeated Republican Paul Junge, who unsuccessfully ran against Kildee in 2022 and had worked in U.S. Customs and Immigration Services during the Trump administration. The Associated Press declared McDonald Rivet the winner at 6:09 a.m. EST.

Long lines at Montana polling places due to voters registering late delayed the counting of ballots in some of the state's larger cities.

Some people who lined up before polls closed waited hours in frigid, snowy weather to cast their votes. Roughly 200 people were still in line after midnight at the courthouse in one of the state's largest counties, Gallatin, some four hours after polls closed.

By 3 a.m., about 20 people were still there. Election officials didn't plan to begin releasing results until every voter had gone through.

"I'm tired," Tatyana Deshields, 22, said after she'd waited in line for more than four hours with some friends. "They had to tap me to tell me to keep moving."

Republicans have taken the White House and Senate, but the House is still very much in play.

With nearly 60 House elections still undecided, either party could gain control of the chamber. For Democrats, a House majority is the last hope of gaining a toehold in Washington and putting a check on Donald Trump's power. Yet if Republicans win a House majority, they'll be able to implement Trump's agenda with more ease, including extending tax cuts, funding hardline border measures and dismantling parts of the federal government.

Still, it might take some time before House control is decided. Neither party so far has a convincing advantage in the tally of key House races. There are tight races all over the country, including many in slow-counting California.

Republicans have flipped a House seat that was previously held by Democrats, giving them a valuable pickup in a frenzied race for House control.

At this point, practically every seat matters when it comes to building a House majority. In Michigan's 7th district, Republican Tom Barrett picked up a seat that Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin vacated to run for U.S. Senate. Barrett, a former state senator, defeated another former state lawmaker, Democrat Curtis Hertel.

On the campaign trail, Barrett didn't back away from his record of supporting abortion restrictions in the statehouse, but he also described abortion access as a settled issue in Michigan.

Republican Tom Barrett won election to a U.S. House seat representing Michigan on Wednesday, flipping a Democratic-held district. Two years after losing to Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin in a high-profile House race, Barrett defeated Democrat Curtis Hertel to capture Slotkin's seat. Slotkin this year chose to run for U.S. Senate. While the district includes Democratic strongholds in the Lansing area, it also includes Republican-leaning counties like Livingston and Shiawassee, making it a target for national Republicans looking to hold the U.S. House majority. The Associated Press declared Barrett the winner at 4:05 a.m. EST.

House Speaker Mike Johnson took the stage with Donald Trump as he delivered his election speech.

Johnson has tied himself closely to Trump as he seeks to help Republicans keep a House majority, as well as hold on to his job as speaker.

Johnson's job, however, is far from secure. It is still not clear who will win a House majority and whether Republicans will keep him as their leader when they hold leadership elections on Nov. 13.