Election News

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has appointed Secretary of State Alex Padilla to serve the final two years of Harris's term. Until he is sworn in the Senate will have 51 Republicans and 47 Democrats (including two independents). The Harris seat and one in Georgia formerly held by Republican David Perdue are vacant. Perdue's term ended January 3; he lost a runoff to Democrat Jon Ossoff on January 5. Georgia's other Senate seat will be changing hands as Democrat Raphael Warnock defeated incumbent Republican Kelly Loeffler in a special election runoff. 

Once the Senate returns to full strength, each party will control 50 seats. Republicans will be defending 20 and Democrats 14 in the 2022 Senate election.

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.

Congressional District Method: 2020 Presidential Election

This is an estimate, as the data is not fully available yet. Most states do not break out votes by congressional district, so it falls on a 3rd party to do the number crunching. We use calculations by Daily Kos.  Whether or not you agree with that site's politics, they do excellent work with election data.  We've projected the outcome in each state where the data isn't yet available, looking at the margins in both the 2020 congressional and 2016 presidential elections.  

The net result is a very narrow 274-264 estimated Biden win if this approach were used. Both candidates won 25 states, giving them 50 electoral votes. On top of that, we project Biden to have won 221 districts to 214 for Trump. Finally, we allocate the 3 Washington, DC votes to Biden, where he won 93% of the popular vote.

It is important to note that even if this map ends up being 100% accurate, it is unlikely that the election would have turned out exactly this way. Campaigns make strategic and tactical decisions based on getting to 270 electoral votes. They would undoubtedly allocate resources differently in an election run under these rules.

Would this be an improvement over winner-take-all?

The appeal of a more proportional allocation of electoral votes in each state is understandable. Unfortunately, in the real world, this particular method is not a good solution.  There are rarely more than a few dozen competitive congressional districts each cycle. This is because most congressional districts are drawn by politicians - usually a state's legislature - with the party in control at the time of redistricting looking to create district lines to their benefit. This gerrymandering would become exponentially worse if it helped dictate the outcome of presidential elections.  And, in fact, it would. There will likely be fewer than 15 districts in 2020 where the winning congressional and presidential party is different. 

To see how this (and other methods) fared in the 2012 and 2016 elections, see this article on Gaming the Electoral College. 

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

This is for a full six-year term. As the prior term ended with the start of the new Congress, the seat is currently vacant. In November, incumbent Republican David Perdue finished first by about 1.8%, narrowly missing the 50% threshold. Democrat Jon Ossoff finished second.

Special Election: Loeffler (R) vs. Warnock (D)

The special election is to complete the final two years of the term of Johnny Isakson, who resigned for health reasons at the end of 2019. Republican Kelly Loeffler was appointed by Gov. Brian Kemp to serve until the special election; she remains in the Senate pending the outcome of Tuesday's vote. An all-party primary was held in November. Warnock received 33% support and Loeffler 26%. There were 20 candidates on the ballot; Loeffler split much of the conservative GOP vote with former Rep. Doug Collins who finished third with 20%.

Both races are seen as toss-ups.  Polling has been limited, with many well-regarded pollsters sitting out the race. The final 270toWin polling average in each race shows a small lead for the Democratic candidate, but most polls have been well within the margin of error. Georgia was the closest state in the 2020 presidential election; Joe Biden prevailed by about 0.25%.

History and polarization say a split decision is unlikely. The last time a double-barrel Senate election led to each party winning one seat was in 1966. In addition, there are currently only six states where each party has one seat.^{1 1}Includes Maine but excludes Vermont. Those two states have independent Senators that caucus with the Democrats. In the case of Maine, the 2nd Senator is a Republican. This is the smallest number since direct election of Senators began over 100 years ago. 

These articles provides a more detailed overview of the races, including money spent, early voting trends and what to watch for on Tuesday:

Senate in the balance: How Georgia's runoffs break down

Georgia Senate Runoffs: What to Watch For

Republicans will retain control of the Senate with a win in either race. A Democratic victory in both would yield a 50-50 Senate. In that scenario, Democrats will take control after the Biden administration gets underway January 20. Vice-president Kamala Harris becomes president of the Senate at that time and is able to cast tie-breaking votes. 

• Republicans will start in control with 51 seats, Democrats 48.
• Control of the Senate after January 20 will hinge on two runoff elections in Georgia on Tuesday. Republicans maintain control by winning either.
• The term for Georgia Republican David Perdue has ended. That seat will be vacant until a winner is certified in his runoff. Perdue is being challenged by Democrat Jon Ossoff.
• Georgia Republican Kelly Loeffler remains in office while the special election runoff is conducted. Either she or Democratic challenger Raphael Warnock will then serve through 2022.
• 34 seats will be contested in 2022. Republicans will be defending 20 of those seats, Democrats 13. The winner of the Georgia special election will determine the party for the 34th seat.
• The 2022 Interactive Senate Map is available. 

House

• Democrats retained control but have a much narrower majority.  At the outset, that party will have 222 seats, Republicans 211. There are two vacancies.
• Nancy Pelosi reelected as Speaker of the House.
• NY-22 is vacant as the November election remains unresolved. Former Rep. Claudia Tenney (R) currently has a lead of about 30 votes over Rep. Anthony Brindisi (D). 
• LA-5 is vacant. Rep.-elect Luke Letlow (R) died on December 29. An all-party primary will be held March 20. If no candidate gets 50%, there will be a runoff on April 24.
• Three Democrats are expected to resign to join the Biden administration:  Cedric Richmond (LA-2), Deb Haaland (NM-1), Marcia Fudge (OH-11). Haaland and Fudge must be confirmed by the Senate.
• An initial version of the 2022 Interactive House Map will be available in a few weeks. However, redistricting later this year - after the Census results come out - will lead to district boundaries changing in most states for the 2022 midterms.
  • District lines for congressional representation will not change until January, 2023.

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

There will be six new Senators on January 3: Tommy Tuberville (R, AL); John Hickenlooper (D, CO); Roger Marshall (R, KS); Ben Ray Lujan (D, NM); Bill Hagerty (R, TN); Cynthia Lummis (R, WY). Tuberville and Hickenlooper defeated incumbents, while the others are succeeding retiring members of their same party.  Separately, in Arizona, Mark Kelly (D) defeated incumbent Martha McSally (R) in November. As that was a special election, Kelly was eligible to be seated once the state certified its results. He was sworn in on December 2.

Two Republican Senators, Richard Burr of North Carolina and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania have already announced they will not run in 2022.  Democrat Kamala Harris of California will be replaced by Alex Padilla (D) after she resigns to becomes Vice President.

Note that on the images below, the totals only add to 99 due to the Georgia vacancy (as of January 3).

First Look at the 2022 Landscape

This map (click for an interactive version) is largely based on an overview by Sabato's Crystal Ball. 24 of the 34 races start out as safe for the incumbent party. The 10 remaining seats are expected to have varying levels of competitiveness, with seven of those looking to be the most closely-contested at this early date. Interestingly, as Sabato notes in the article, this includes the six closest states in the 2020 presidential election.

For this map, we've set the rating to 'leans' if the incumbent is expected to run (giving them the benefit of the doubt at this early point), while the open races in North Carolina and Pennsylvania are shown as toss-up. Georgia is also shown as a toss-up pending the result of the special election.

Current Party

This map shows the partisan composition of seats to be contested in 2022. Georgia is subject to change pending the January 5 runoff.

Blank Map

This map shows all 34 seats as toss-ups.

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.

Exiting this category were Minnesota (10), Colorado (9), New Hampshire (4), Maine at-large (2) and NE-2 (1).  All these states, except Colorado, were decided by between five and ten points (bottom map).  The Democratic margin of victory was 13.5% in Colorado vs. 4.9% in 2016. This 8.6% shift was the 2nd largest change in the country behind Vermont's 9.5%.

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

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.

As the votes become known, we'll populate this map with the results. 

The schedule below shows the time the electors are expected to convene in each state. Indiana, Tennessee, New Hampshire and Vermont kick things off at 10:00 AM Eastern; Hawaii is the final state at 7:00 PM Eastern.  

The schedule below has updated meeting times for Nebraska and New Hampshire.

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

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