Staff Reports
To capture control of the House of Representatives, which is still up in the air five days after the midterm elections, Republicans need to win a number of seats, one of which they did on Sunday.
Republican Democratic candidate Jamie McLeod-Skinner in Oregon's 5th Congressional District lost to Republican Lori Chavez-DeRemer.
With this victory, the Republicans increased their number of House members to 212, but with 19 contests still undecided, they remain short of the 218 needed to hold a majority. But the Republicans aren't out of the woods yet; they need to hold onto most of their leads to capture the House.
As of Sunday afternoon, the Republicans have the lead in nine of the remaining elections around the nation. They need to win six of them to reach their goal of 218 seats.
As the lengthy counting of mail-in votes proceeds, the Republican advantages in several of these nine contests are becoming more tenuous.Of these nine contests, six are in California, where the Republican Party's tenuous advantages in those elections look to be at greater danger of being lost. For instance, as of Sunday, just about half of the ballots had been tallied in California's 13th Congressional District, where Republican John Duarte had a slim 100-vote advantage.
Many other races had Republican leads, but on Thursday, California revealed that millions of ballots were still not tabulated, which may change the results. The state of California has also indicated that the outcomes of those contests may not be known for many more weeks.Colorado, Arizona, and New York all have similarly close races, with the GOP holding tiny leads in each. Colorado Republican Representative Lauren Boebert has a lead of just over 1,000 votes over her Democratic opponent with over 99% of the vote counted.
Nearly 87% of the vote has been counted in Arizona's Senate race, with the Republican Juan Ciscomani leading by less than 2,000 votes.As of Tuesday night, 97% of the ballots had been counted in New York's gubernatorial race, with Republican Brandon Williams leading his Democratic opponent by over 5,000.
Republican leaders in the House have often predicted that their party would gain a majority there, but even if they were to win all nine of the elections in which they now have a lead, they would only have a 221-seat advantage.
On Friday, California's House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said he expects to reach at least 218 seats, and that even President Joe Biden gave him his blessing in a quick phone chat, suggesting that the president also feels it's headed in that way.
McCarthy stated of his conversation with Biden,"He congratulated me, so for anyone who thinks we didn’t win the majority, Joe at least believes we did as well,"
The preceding is a summary of an article that originally appeared on Fox News.
