The Midterm Elections — The Last Entry of the Day
What the Day Settled, What It Left Open
At 0000 the day’s work can be divided cleanly. Settled: control of both chambers of Congress, a majority of the governorships, at least nine state legislative chambers, and the closing prices of the markets. Left open: two Senate seats, two governorships, 26 House seats, and every question that begins on January 3.
What the Day Settled
Congress is settled, and was settled before the day began. Democrats hold the Senate, 54 seats to the Republicans’ 44, with two races uncalled. The seven flipped seats stand and none flipped the other way: Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Ohio, Iowa, Kansas, and Maine. Senate control was called at 11:39 p.m. Tuesday on the Iowa result, per the evening accounting of where things stand, filed below. In the House, the Associated Press tracker in its latest state shows 235 seats won by Democrats and 26 more led, against 146 won and 28 led for Republicans—up from the evening state of 232 won and 29 led. Control is not in question in any count on the shelf. What the counts still argue about is arithmetic, and the cocked hat below prints it.
The governors’ majority is settled. Democrats hold 28 of the 50 governorships, a majority for the first time in 16 years, with five offices changed in party—Georgia, Iowa, Ohio, Texas, and Nevada, the last called during the afternoon. Two races remain open, in Alaska and Kansas, and neither can change the majority. Below Washington, the statehouse result is also settled in its direction: at least nine state legislative chambers changed hands, every one of them to the Democrats—the Pennsylvania Senate, both Wisconsin chambers, the North Carolina House, both New Hampshire chambers, the Minnesota House, which had been tied, and, by Wednesday afternoon, the Michigan House and the Texas House. The National Conference of State Legislatures’ accounting lists the same chambers, and Reuters’ state-level report records the trifectas gained in Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin and the Republican trifectas broken in Georgia, Iowa, Ohio, and Texas. No chamber flipped to the Republicans.
The markets’ verdict is settled because the markets are closed. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up 1,569.40 points, 3.03 percent, at 53,356.12—its strongest post-midterm performance in 44 years, per the closing accounts. The S&P 500 closed up 1.58 percent at 7,688.62 and the Nasdaq Composite up 1.44 percent at 25,736.51. Oil finished what it began at midday: Brent settled at $94.62 a barrel, down $8.98, or 8.67 percent, and West Texas Intermediate settled at $88.12, down $7.97, or 8.29 percent, per the settlement figures carried in the closing report filed below. The fear gauge settled with them: the VIX closed at 16.61, down 20.26 percent, and the ten-year Treasury yield ended the day at 4.888 percent, below 5 percent. Gold rose about 3.3 percent to about $4,070 an ounce. In the evening futures trade the verdict simply held: Dow futures up 0.14 percent, S&P 500 futures up 0.11 percent, Nasdaq futures up 0.02 percent, per the after-close report. The reasons traders gave are the same at midnight as at the close: the election ended the uncertainty, the president accepted the result, and oil fell on the expectation—an expectation, not an agreement—that the war with Iran will end sooner than it would have on Tuesday morning.
The Count That Did Not Finish
Mississippi moved during the evening, toward the challenger, and stayed uncalled. The USA Today live file, in its 8:00 p.m. ET entry, put the Democrat, Scott Colom, ahead of the incumbent Republican, Cindy Hyde-Smith, by 1,138 votes, with about 96 percent of ballots counted, on the Associated Press dashboard. The evening edition of this paper carried the wire’s table at a margin of 65 votes; the noon edition carried counts of 43 and 2,169 from other tallies. The leader has not changed in any count all day. The margin has been reported at four figures, and the desk prints the latest and the range together in the cocked hat. Mail ballots postmarked by Election Day are still arriving, affidavit ballots are still being processed, and if neither candidate clears 50 percent the seat is decided in a runoff on December 1. The account of why the two open Senate races could take days or weeks is filed below; its expert’s sentence is the honest one: the Mississippi count might take “a very long time—days and weeks.”
Alaska moved by eleven votes and by one point of precincts, and stayed uncalled. The same 8:00 p.m. entry put the Democrat, Mary Peltola, ahead of the incumbent Republican, Dan Sullivan, by 637 votes, against 626 in the evening edition—with the Associated Press Senate file now showing 75.43 percent of precincts reporting, against 74.19 percent at evening. A second candidate named Daniel Sullivan holds more votes than the margin. Both leaders are below 50 percent, so the ranked-choice tabulation scheduled for November 18 stands ahead of the count, and domestic mail ballots are accepted until November 13 and overseas ballots until November 18, per the accounts filed below.
Kansas’s governorship widened on paper and stayed uncalled in fact. The Associated Press Kansas file in its latest state shows the Democrat, Cindy Holscher, at 549,974 votes and the Republican, Ty Masterson, at 542,929—a margin of 7,045 votes, with all precincts reporting—against about 5,500 in the counts carried earlier in the day. Holscher has declared victory; Masterson has not conceded and has noted that state law calls for another look at a result inside one percent. Mail ballots arriving by Friday and provisional ballots remain to be added, and a close-race audit of ten percent of precincts is required. In Alaska’s governorship, the Democrat, Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, leads the first-choice count at 49 percent, per the accounts filed below, with the ranked-choice tabulation also set for November 18.
Colorado’s 4th District narrowed, toward the incumbent, and stayed uncalled. The Associated Press count in its latest state shows the Democrat, Eileen Laubacher, at 174,963 votes and the incumbent Republican, Lauren Boebert, at 171,711—a margin of 3,252 votes, with 91.82 percent of precincts reporting. At evening the same file read 169,066 to 163,993, a margin of 5,073. Boebert, in her first public comments on Wednesday evening, put her own figure on the record: “We’re about a 5,000-vote deficit right now, a little bit less than that.” About 30,000 ballots were reported outstanding in the district, concentrated in Douglas and Larimer counties. Colorado’s 3rd District is also open: the Democrat, Dwayne Romero, leads the Republican incumbent, Jeff Hurd, by more than 2,200 votes with 88 percent counted, per the Colorado live file, which signed off for the night with the congressional races still counting. Across the country, 26 House seats were still too close to call at 8:30 p.m., per the evening accounting filed below.
The President’s Answers, in His Own Order
On the cause of the defeat, the president gave two answers on the same day, and the desk prints both. In the afternoon, at the ballroom site, he called the vice president’s assessment—that the war was the reason—“largely true,” because the war “drove the gasoline up a little bit short term,” and stated that he would decide the same way again. In an interview with Fox Business, reported in the account of his gasoline remarks filed below, he drew the line the other way: “I don’t think it’s the war, I think it’s the gasoline prices,” and, “The cause of the gasoline is Iran.” Asked when the war will end, he said, “whenever I want it to,” and, “We’re never going to let them have a nuclear weapon.” The price underneath both answers is a matter of record: the average price of gasoline in the United States on Wednesday was $4.12 a gallon, per AAA as reported in the same account, against $3.05 on November 4, 2025. The vice president’s sentence did not move all day: “The reason we lost is the war.” One difference opened inside that agreement by evening. Asked about the vice president’s future, the president said, per the account filed below: “You can have a lot of people running. Maybe nobody’s gonna run. Maybe he won’t run.”
On the Congress that convenes January 3, the president’s position is settled and stated. He will work with the Democrats where deals can be made, and he will veto what he will not sign: “They’ll send over things that are insane and I’ll veto them.” He has called himself “Mr. Veto” in advance of the session, and the account of his lame-duck position filed below records that he expects repeated vetoes to bring the majority to negotiate. An override requires two-thirds of both chambers, which neither party has. On impeachment he was asked directly and answered directly, in the same account: he is “not even a little bit” concerned, and, “I think it would destroy the Democrat Party if they did that.” The incoming Speaker’s position, stated Wednesday and unchanged at midnight, is the opposite of a plan: no member of his caucus has raised impeachment with him, and the caucus is focused on affordability and accountability. A Republican senator’s prediction of impeachments and “all-out partisan war,” carried in the evening edition, stands on the record beside both. Nothing in the day resolved which of the three statements describes January.
The Incoming Majority at Midnight
The majority’s first argument is with itself, and it ran in the open all day. Its leaders state one order of business. Hakeem Jeffries: “We ran on affordability, we won decisively on affordability, and now we have a responsibility to govern on affordability,” with bipartisan common ground available where it lowers costs. Chuck Schumer pledges the same first priority and adds the second in stronger language than his colleague uses: investigations where the party believes the law was broken, court action, and, in his words, “legislative razor wire” for a president who defies the voters’ will, per the account of the two leaders’ postures filed below. The committee-level statements are blunter than either leader’s: “Subpoenas,” from the senator in line for a finance gavel; “LAWYER UP,” from the member in line for Oversight. The argument that the voters issued two mandates and the leaders are choosing one is filed below as it was made. What is settled at midnight is the program’s content—the tax law’s Medicaid and food-assistance provisions, the health-insurance subsidies, tariffs, and the war—and what is open is its order: which bill, which hearing, and which subpoena goes first, in a Congress that does not sit for sixty days.
The World at Midnight
Abroad, the day produced readings, not a verdict, and the readings do not agree. Reuters’ file of the world’s reactions, printed in full below, carries each capital in its own words. Tehran’s parliament speaker read the vote as a message—“Americans said NO TO WAR, and we endorse this message”—and warned Washington against betraying it. Moscow’s deputy foreign minister, quoted by RIA, counseled waiting: “Let’s wait for the final results. The Democratic Party leadership’s approach to relations with Russia is sharply negative. There is nothing new about that.” The Kremlin spokesman expressed hope that the president would continue pursuing diplomatic solutions. France’s Jordan Bardella drew the European line: American intervention in Iran “carries very heavy consequences” for European purchasing power through oil prices, “so, yes, there is most certainly a link.” Britain’s prime minister said that with the president accepting the results, the focus can turn to ending wars and bringing down prices. On Ukraine the shelf points two ways at once: the Kyiv Independent’s headline was hopeful, and Rossiyskaya Gazeta read the same result as a blow to Ukraine. The desk prints both bearings. They are both reports of what their capitals believe, and a belief held in a capital is a fact the next sixty days will be governed by, whichever of them is right.
The Cocked Hat
Three bearings never give a point; they give a small triangle, and this paper prints the triangle. First, Mississippi: one Senate seat reported across the day at margins of 28 votes, 43 votes, 65 votes, 2,169 votes, and, in the latest evening entry, 1,138 votes—five snapshots of one unfinished count, taken by different tallies at different hours, agreeing on the leader and on nothing else. Second, the House: the Associated Press tracker alone shows 235 Democratic seats won and 26 led; the combined calls of the Associated Press, NBC News, and Decision Desk HQ, as compiled in the evening accounting, show 251 called for the Democrats and 158 for the Republicans with 26 uncalled—a difference of method, not of outcome, printed because a reader checking either file against this page will find the other number. Third, the president on the war: “largely true” in the afternoon, and “I don’t think it’s the war, I think it’s the gasoline prices” in the Fox Business interview—two formulations from the same man on the same day, with the vice president’s single sentence standing unchanged beside them. On the load-bearing facts of the day—both chambers lost and accepted, five governorships changed and a majority of them held, nine statehouse chambers changed in one direction only, the Dow up 1,569 points at the close, Brent settled at $94.62, gasoline at $4.12, and every capital reading the result through the war and the cost of living—every bearing on the shelf points to the same place. The triangle that remains is small, and it is named below.
What the Log Leaves Open
The last entry of the day closes with the open file, stated plainly. Two Senate seats, in Alaska and Mississippi, on counting schedules that run to November 18 and, in Mississippi, possibly to a runoff on December 1. Two governorships, in Alaska and Kansas, one awaiting a ranked-choice tabulation and one awaiting mail ballots and an audit. Twenty-six House seats, among them Colorado’s 3rd and 4th, counting on the clerks’ schedules. The control of the Arizona and Georgia legislatures, claimed by the Democrats and not yet called. The end of the war, which the president says will come whenever he wants it to and which no agreement has yet announced. The first business of the 120th Congress, which convenes on January 3, 2027—an affordability bill, an investigation, or a veto, in an order no one stated today. Until those counts and that Congress settle them, they stand in the log as open. The day is filed. The log turns.