Election News

Last week, Wisconsin state Rep. Gary Tauchen (R) introduced a bill to change how the state allocates its electoral votes.  If enacted, the state would move from the winner-take-all allocation currently used in 48 states to that of Maine and Nebraska. Those two states use the congressional district method, awarding two electoral votes to the popular vote winner of the state and one to the popular vote winner in each congressional district.  U.S. Rep. Bill Huizenga (R, MI-02) has suggested his state do the same. 

At nearly the same time, Nebraska state Sen. Julie Slama sponsored a bill to switch that state back to winner-take-all. (Slama is a Republican, although the single body Nebraska legislature is officially nonpartisan.)

These proposals seem to pop up after each election. While often couched as fairer, the proposals are almost always partisan in nature, meant to benefit the electoral college fortunes of the party that introduces the bill.  That is the case in all the above.  The 31 electoral votes associated with the above 3 states went 27-4 for Joe Biden in 2020. If the proposed approaches had been in place, Donald Trump would have received 19 of them to 12 for Biden.

Georgia voters will decide the outcome of their two U.S. Senate seats in runoff elections Tuesday. Their choices will also determine which party controls the Senate in the new Congress. The runoffs were necessitated when no candidate in either race received 50% of the vote in the elections on November 3, as required by Georgia law.

Polls close at 7:00 PM ET. Live results will appear below.

Regular Election: Perdue (R) vs. Ossoff (D)

The 117th congress convened Sunday, January 3.

The 2022 Senate Interactive Map is live. 34 Class 3 seats will be contested in this next cycle.  20 of those are held by Republicans, 13 by Democrats. The Georgia special election runoff on January 5 - Loeffler (R) vs. Warnock (D) - will determine which party will be defending the last seat.  This special election is to complete the final two years of Johnny Isakson's term. Isakson resigned for health reasons at the end of 2019.

The new Senate will be seated January 3 and will initially be comprised of 51 Republicans and 48 Democrats. The Georgia seat currently held by David Perdue (R) - on its regular election cycle - will be vacant pending a separate January 5 runoff. Perdue is being challenged by Democrat Jon Ossoff.  

If Republicans win either of these runoffs, they will retain control of the Senate.

Most competitive states in the 2020 presidential election, with a comparison to 2016.  The faithless electors in 2016 are ignored for this analysis.

Decided by 5% or less

Eight states were decided by 5% or less in the 2020 presidential election.  This is down from 11 states (and one congressional district) in this category in 2016. However, the net change was only a reduction of 10 electoral votes. Georgia (16 electoral votes) was the only state added to the list in 2020. It was the closest state in the country, decided by about 0.25%. The other four states flipped by Joe Biden: Pennsylvania (20), Michigan (16), Arizona (11) and Wisconsin (10) were also decided by 5% or less in 2016.

Joe Biden won the electoral college vote Monday, affirming him as the president-elect.  California's 55 electoral votes put the former vice-president over the top.

With only Hawaii outstanding, the vote has gone smoothly, with all electors voting as pledged.

The ballots will be formally counted in a joint session of Congress on January 6, 2021. 

The Electoral College meets on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in presidential election years. This year, that date is December 14.  Electors will gather in their respective states (and District of Columbia) to cast their votes. Each elector will fill out two ballots, one for president and one for vice president.

After each state certifies the vote, it files a Certificate of Ascertainment that lists the slate of electors associated with each candidate and the number of votes received. The electors that meet Monday are those associated with the candidate receiving the most votes. For example, Biden won Massachusetts, so it is the slate of Democratic electors that will cast the vote.

As a practical matter, this means the Electoral College vote is largely symbolic; the final result is unlikely to deviate much (if at all) from the expected total of Biden 306, Trump 232. The votes will be forwarded to Congress, where they will be tallied in a joint session on January 6.

Hawaii became the final state to certify the results of its presidential election Tuesday, declaring Joe Biden the winner with 63.1% of the vote. All 50 states and DC have now certified their vote. As expected, president-elect Joe Biden emerged from this process with a 306-232 advantage in the electoral college.

Voters in Louisiana's 5th congressional district will elect a representative Saturday in a top-two election. None of the nine candidates in the November 3 all-party primary received a majority of the vote, forcing Saturday's runoff.  

This is a deep red district and both those who advanced to today's election are Republicans. Luke Letlow, who is the former Chief of Staff for the district's retiring representative, Ralph Abraham received 33% of the vote. State Representative Lance Harris finished second with about 16.5%. 

Polls close at 9:00 PM Eastern Time. Live results will appear below.

Arizona Democrat Mark Kelly was sworn in as a U.S. Senator Wednesday. Kelly had defeated Republican Martha McSally in the November 3 elections.  Since this was a special election - to complete the term of the late John McCain - Kelly became eligible to be seated once the state certified its election results. It did so on Monday.

The seat will be up again in 2022 for a regular six-year term.

The transition reduces the GOP majority to 52-48 for the remainder of this Congress. It will also be the count for the first couple days of the 117th Congress. The two other seats that flipped in November, Alabama D->R and Colorado R->D will offset. All eyes will of course be on the two runoff elections in Georgia on January 5. Republicans need to win one of those to maintain control of the Senate.