Georgia Senate race heads to runoff, Dow slips, and history has been made in some American states

Republicans won a newly created congressional district in the Detroit suburbs of Michigan on Tuesday, boosting the party’s effort to take control of the House of Representatives. 

Republican nominee John James was crowned the victor in the contest for Michigan’s 10th Congressional District, The Associated Press projects.

James, who was the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in 2018 and 2020, bested Democratic nominee Carl Marlinga.

The contest was seen as a bellwether for Republican efforts to make in-roads with suburban voters. 

Michigan’s 10th Congressional District is centered around Michigan’s Macomb and Oakland counties, major suburbs of Detroit. Former President Donald Trump narrowly carried the district against President Biden in 2020, according to Michigan’s independent redistricting commission.

While the district leaned Republican on paper, Marlinga was seen as a competitive challenger. A former probate court judge, Marlinga previously served as Macomb County’s district attorney for nearly 40 years. 

Fox News Bradford Betz and Haris Alic contributed this update.

Democratic incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock will face off against his Trump-endorsed GOP challenger, Herschel Walker, on December 6 in a runoff election. 

The Georgia Secretary of State announced Wednesday that the Peach State's Senate race will advance on to a runoff election as neither candidate has been able to reach 50% of the vote. 

As it stands, Warnock currently leads Walker by a razor-thin margin, 49.4% to 48.5%. The Fox News Decision Desk confirmed shortly after that Secretary's announcement that the race will go to a runoff.

Georgia is unique from other battleground races in that a candidate must reach a simple majority — at least 50% of the vote — to declare victory. Read more below for Fox News Digital's breakdown on the upcoming Georgia runoff.

Republican nominee Zach Nunn has unseated incumbent Rep. Cindy Axne, D-Iowa, The Associated Press projects, flipping a key House seat as the GOP fights to regain a majority in the House.

Axne was first elected to her seat in 2018 winning by narrow margins against the GOP incumbent. Axne is currently the only Democratic member of the Iowa congressional delegation in Washington, D.C.

Despite President Biden's lackluster approval rating in national polls, Axne welcomed Biden on the campaign trail in a virtual fundraiser held in October — though that has not stopped her from distancing herself from some of her party's policies, such federal spending on COVID-19 aid.

Nunn, the Republican nominee in Iowa’s 3rd Congressional district, is a U.S. Air Force who was endorsed by former President Donald Trump. 

Axne made abortion a cornerstone of her campaign, pledging to codify Roe v. Wade if elected and frequently criticizing Nunn for a past debate in which he supported no exceptions for abortions — though the State Senator has walked back those positions and now supports exceptions in cases of rape, incest and medical emergencies.  

Fox News' Sophia Slacik contributed this update.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy issued a letter to his Republican colleagues in the House on Wednesday and asked for support as he announced his run for speaker of the House.

"First, congratulations on your election in a critical and pivotal year," he wrote. "Over the past century, Republicans had flipped the House from Democrats just four times: 1946, 1952, 1994, and 2010. Only twice did that flip occur in four years or less. While a number of races remain outstanding, I can confidently report that we will join that list, build on our significant gains from last cycle, and achieve our goal of taking back the House."

"This is no small feat," he added. "We have ended one-party Democrat rule in Washington by effectively prosecuting the case against their failed policies while detailing our plan for a new direction with the Commitment to America. Even so, I trust you know that earning the majority is only the beginning. Now, we will be measured by what we do with our majority. Now, the real work begins. That is why I am running to serve as Speaker of the People’s House and humbly ask for your support."

In closing his letter, McCarthy said it was up to each elected Republican "to demonstrate leadership on the issues that matter most and do what is required to get America back on track."

"There is no time to waste," he said.

The Associated Press projects that incumbent Rep. Matt Cartwright has defeated Republican challenger Jim Bognet in the race to represent Pennsylvania's 8th Congressional District.

Bognet, the Trump-endorsed Republican candidate, made his second run for congress this cycle against Cartwright, after losing to the Democrat by around 3.5 points in the 2020 race that took four days to certify.

Cartwright has represented the district in Congress since 2013.Cartwright was first elected to serve in Pennsylvania's 8th Congressional District in 2012. Before his time in Congress, he was an attorney at Munley, Munley & Cartwright, where he worked for 25 years.

Cartwright was re-elected in 2016 and 2020 despite Trump turning the district red in the presidential elections.

Throughout the 2022 campaign, Cartwright emphasized his bipartisan support, calling himself "the most bipartisan Democrat in Congress" in an October debate against Bognet. 

In August, Cartwright put out an ad labeled "Agree," featuring a Biden supporter who discussed Cartwright’s capping of drug prices and a Trump supporter praising Cartwright for bringing jobs back from China.

Fox News' Aubrie Spady and Alexandra Orbuch contributed this update.

Voters in Missouri and Maryland on Tuesday voted to legalize recreational marijuana, further loosening state pot laws for more than 12 million Americans, even though the drug is still illegal at the federal level and is classified as a Schedule 1 substance.

Maryland overwhelmingly approved the legalization of marijuana — 65% of voters were for it after two-thirds of the state's votes were counted by early Wednesday morning.

On the ballot, voters were asked, "Do you favor the legalization of the use of cannabis by an individual who is at least 21 years of age on or after July 1, 2023, in the State of Maryland?"

Missouri's ballot measure was extremely close, as votes were counted late Tuesday. However, with 99.9% of votes in early Wednesday, it passed with 53% support. That ballot measure will remove bans on the "purchase, possession, consumption, use, delivery, manufacture, and sale of marijuana for personal use for adults over the age of twenty-one."

The Show Me State's initiative will also impose a 6% tax on retail sales of recreational marijuana.

This update was provided by Fox News' Tyler Olson.

Read more about certain states that refuted measures legalizing marijuana.

Republicans Wednesday are struggling to make sense of lackluster election returns after months of predictions about a "red wave," while finger-pointing and questions about the party's future abound.

The blame game is already erupting between the pro-Trump and anti-Trump wings of the party. Other Republicans, meanwhile, say they're simply confused about what happened at the ballot box.

"Clearly something was off, I mean a target was missed," a House GOP aide told Fox News Digital early Wednesday morning. "Was it polling, was it the issues that we thought people cared about?"

"The question that should be asked, assuming Republicans still take the House, is ‘What is our mandate and what do we do?’" the aide said. "That's what's probably going to keep me up tonight."

Republicans are expected to take the House, though with a smaller majority than expected. The Senate remains a toss-up, with results in Georgia, Nevada and Arizona so far unclear.

But that isn't stopping internal recriminations. Trump's opponents say the former president and his claims about the 2020 presidential election were likely a drag on the party that had advantages in a poor economy and low approval ratings for President Biden.

This update was provided by Fox News' Jacqui Heinrich, Mark Meredith, Tyler Olson, and Chad Pergram.

Jim Messina, the White House deputy chief of staff and campaign manager for former President Obama, reacted Wednesday to the midterm election results and the issues that affected independent voters.

"Look, lots of Democrats this morning are saying that's a lot better than we could have expected," Messina said. "One again, the polls were wrong for the fourth consecutive cycle."

"The bigger last night was democracy," he added. "We had massive turnout all over the place. That is incredibly interesting and important. People criticize Biden for steering into the democracy argument and it clearly worked with his base."

Messina said he "absolutely" believes that abortion is a deciding factor in some of the races that have yet to be called.

"I think it's partially why you saw this big, unknown wave of Democratic women voting," he said.

Fox News contributor and Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen sounded off Wednesday on the results from the 2022 midterm elections, insisting that Republicans "squandered" an opportunity to defeat their political opposition.

"Florida was the silver lining in what was otherwise a very, very dark night," Thiessen said during an appearance on "America's Newsroom."

Thiessen said voters gave the GOP a "wake up call" Tuesday night and insisted that the Republican Party did not give voters a "viable" option in several key races.

"The Republican Party did not give [voters] a viable alternative to vote for," he said. "They were begging for a viable alternative and we didn't. In Florida, we did, we gave them viable alternatives in Florida. It's in the other states that we didn't."

"As a result, we squandered a historic opportunity," he added.

Republican Derrick Van Orden has won the open House seat in Wisconsin's 3rd Congressional District after defeating Democratic candidate Brad Pfaff, flipping the seat red for the first time in 26 years.

The House district was left open by the retirement of longtime Democratic Rep. Ron Kind following 26 years in Congress.

Van Orden, a former Navy SEAL and Trump-endorsed candidate, previously challenged Kind in his bid for re-election in 2020, but the Democrat won by a narrow 3-point margin.

Pfaff is a state Senator in Wisconsin and former U.S. Department of Agriculture official under the Obama administration with ties to the farming community in Wisconsin. 

Van Orden received criticism for being present at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, where protestors breached the building, which Pfaff frequently brought up to attack his Republican opponent.

Fox News' Aubrie Spady and Brandon Gillespie contributed this update.

Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz has called Democrat John Fetterman to concede the Pennsylvania Senate race, Fox News has learned.

The Fox News Decision Desk called the race for Fetterman early Wednesday morning, and Oz made the call to his opponent just hours later, the Democrat's spokesman told Fox. The Senate race was among the most important battles in the country for the midterm cycle, with Pennsylvania being one of a handful of states that will determine control over the Senate. 

"This morning I called John Fetterman and congratulated him. I wish him and his family all the best, both personally and as our next United States Senator," Oz wrote in a statement. "Campaigning throughout our great Commonwealth was the honor of a lifetime, and I will cherish the memories and the people I met. Pennsylvanians showed up with passion and a vision for a bright future that I found inspiring every day. I want to thank my supporters, so many of whom worked tirelessly to spread our message and support me and my family."

Read more: Mehmet Oz calls John Fetterman to officially concede Pennsylvania Senate race

Voters in Republican-leaning Kentucky have rejected a proposed amendment to the state constitution that would have denied any right to abortion.

The result of Tuesday’s election comes months after the Supreme Court overturned the right to abortion in a decision that has led to near-total bans in a dozen states, including in Kentucky.

The ballot question had asked Kentuckians if they wanted to amend the constitution to say: "To protect human life, nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to secure or protect a right to abortion or require the funding of abortion."

The outcome highlights a gap between voters and the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature, which added the proposed amendment to the 2022 general election slate a year ago in a move some thought would drive more conservative voters to the polls.

While seen as an important win for abortion-rights advocates, the amendment's defeat will have no practical impact on the right to an abortion if a sweeping ban on the procedure approved by lawmakers survives a legal challenge presently before the state Supreme Court.

Read more: Kentucky voters reject constitutional amendment declaring no right to abortion

The Associated Press contributed to this update.

The United States Senate race in Georgia does not have a clear winner as neither incumbent Democrat Sen. Raphael Warnock nor his Republican challenger Herschel Walker have claimed an outright majority of the vote so far. 

As of Wednesday morning, the race is too close to call, according to the Fox News Decision Desk, with more than 3.8 million ballots cast and Warnock leading Walker by approximately 35,000 votes. Warnock holds 49.42% of the vote, with 1,935,464 votes in his favor, and Walker has 48.52% with 1,900,168 votes. Third-party candidate Chase Oliver has 80,895 votes with 97.94% of precincts reporting. 

"We're in a fight," Walker told the crowd at his election party Tuesday night. He urged his supporters to "hang in there a little bit longer" as the remainder of the vote is counted.  

"We got more to say," Warnock told supporters at his campaign's watch party. 

"We always knew that this race would be close. And so, that's where we are," he said. "So y'all just hang in there. I'm feeling good." 

Georgia law requires a candidate to surpass 50% of the vote to win an election, and a runoff between the top two vote-getters will be held on Dec. 6 if no candidate meets that requirement. 

Read more: Warnock, Walker tell supporters to hang tight with race too close to call

Massachusetts votes are in, and Democrats held all nine House seats following Tuesday’s midterm election.

Republicans looked to take the majority in the House after Democrats have held it since 2018, but the GOP were unable to flip any seats in the New England state. 

The closest race was fought in Massachusetts’ 9th Congressional district, where Bill Keating faced off with Republican challenger Jesse Brown. 

Though Keating was still able to swing a more than 19-point victory over Brown, who secured roughly 40% of the district's vote compared to Keating’s nearly 60%.

The next closest race was in the state’s first district, where Richard Neal beat out Republican candidate Dean Martilli by more than 23% of the district’s votes. 

Rep. Ayanna Pressley, an incumbent candidate, secured the biggest margin of victory over her Republican challenger Donnie Palmer by landing nearly 85% of her district’s vote opposed to his 15% – a more than 69% difference in vote totals.

Read more: Democrats sweep Massachusetts House midterm races, holding 9 seats

Republican Katie Britt has made history by becoming the first woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate from Alabama. 

The self-described 40-year-old "mama on a mission" is projected by Fox News’ Decision Desk to defeat Democrat Will Boyd after, so far, capturing around two thirds of the vote. 

"You are going to see headlines about me being the first woman ever elected to the United States Senate from this state of Alabama. You’ll hear that I may be the youngest Republican woman in history elected to the U.S. Senate," Britt told supporters in Montgomery. "Or maybe that I’m the only Republican female with school-aged children in this Senate -- these are all kinds of firsts." 

"I am humbled, I am honored and grateful. I want you to know I understand what a tremendous responsibility these milestones carry and I do not take that lightly," she added.

Read more: Republican Katie Britt becomes Alabama's first female elected senator