BAD News for GOP Out of Sin City

(Sen. Cortez Masto Twitter profile)

Democrat US Senator Catherine Cortez Masto has won reelection in Nevada’s midterm election, preserving the Democratic Party’s majority in the US Senate.

This is a direct block of the Republicans’ hopes that they could seize both chambers of Congress.

Nevada Brings Dems US Senate Victory

Masto’s victory was called late Saturday night by The Associated Press, and other news outlets as the vote counting in Nevada’s US Senate contest dragged on for several days after Tuesday’s midterm election.

Her win means the Democrats now have at least 50 seats in the US Senate, thus preserving, in the worst-case scenario, their majority based on the tie-breaking vote of Senate President, US Vice President Kamala Harris, which is the case in the current Senate.

In the best-case scenario for the Democrats, they may win a 51-seat majority depending on the outcome of the US Senate runoff in Georgia.

In the Peach State’s December 6 runoff, incumbent Democrat US Sen. Raphael Warnock will again face Republican challenger, President Donald Trump’s ally Herschel Walker, after neither of them got over 50% of the cast votes in Tuesday’s midterms.

As of 11:30 am EST on Sunday, with 98% of the votes counted, US Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto had 48.8% of the vote in Nevada’s race or 487,829 votes.

Republican challenger Adam Laxalt had 48.1%, or 481,273 votes, meaning Masto’s victory resulted from a lead of fewer than 7,000 votes or 0.7 points.

Masto, the first female Hispanic American member of the US Senate, ran a campaign focused on access to abortion and a citizenship pathway for “Dreamers,” i.e., illegal immigrants brought to the US as children, The New York Post report.

Her seat in the US Senate was considered “the most vulnerable” to Republican flipping. Still, Laxalt’s failure to achieve that has become “another disappointment” for the GOP amid the backdrop of the widely anticipated “red wave” at the midterms, which never happened.

(Wikipedia photos)

GOP Challenger Was in the Lead before Mail-in Ballots Counted…

Masto’s GOP challenger Adam Laxalt is a former Nevada Attorney General who had the support of former US President Donald Trump.

Laxalt’s US Senate campaign concentrated on the sky-high inflation under Democrat President Joe Biden and the Democrats’ policies that have caused a struggling US economy.

The Republican candidate for Nevada’s seat in the US Senate was actually in the lead up until Friday.

However, his lead started to disappear with the tallying of more and more mail-in votes.

Laxalt’s team was considering seeking a recount of the votes on Friday morning as they foresaw the impact of the absentee ballots.

“Thank you, Nevada!” Democrat US Senator Cortez Masto tweeted without further comments after several media outlets called the midterm election in her favor.

Her victory in the Nevada race guarantees that the Democratic Party would enjoy a Senate majority in the next two years of President Joe Biden’s four-year term in the White House.

The US House of Representatives election results haven’t been finalized yet. For the time being, the GOP has secured 211 seats out of 218 needed for a majority, with Republican candidates flipping 16 seats.

The Democrats have secured 204 seats after their candidates flipped five GOP seats.

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