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The 16 Races That Are Still Too Close To Call
And which way they’re leaning.

The 16 Races That Are Still Too Close To Call
And which way they’re leaning.

Everyone has voted, the results are in and we now know who will control the Senate and the House — but several races remain unresolved. (We warned you this might happen.) As of 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 7, our colleagues at ABC News have yet to project winners in 16 races: three for the U.S. Senate, 12 for the U.S. House and one for Georgia governor. These races have the potential to meaningfully change the narrative around this election — for example, Democrats could pick up 40 House seats instead of 29, or turn a disappointing showing in the Senate into a draw. Here’s the state of each undecided race — including our best estimate on who might prevail when all is said and done.

Senate
As things stand right now, Republicans have picked up two seats in the Senate, but that net gain could be anywhere from zero to three when the races in Arizona, Florida and Mississippi get resolved. In Arizona, Republican Rep. Martha McSally currently leads Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema by about 1 percentage point. However, the Arizona Republic estimates that almost 650,000 votes have yet to be counted statewide — including 80,000 to 100,000 in blue-leaning Pima County and 500,000 (!) in Maricopa County (the Phoenix area). Maricopa has some very blue corners and some very red corners, so without knowing where the outstanding ballots are coming from, this is a totally wide-open race. Reportedly, the state will issue updated vote totals at 5 p.m. local time every day starting on Thursday, Nov. 8.

In Florida, Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson initially appeared to have conceded early on Wednesday morning, and his opponent, Republican Gov. Rick Scott, also claimed victory. But as the last votes were counted, Nelson closed the gap so that he is now less than half of a percentage point behind Scott. That’s Nelson’s magic number, as it triggers a machine recount under Florida law. Nelson has since reversed course and released a statement on Wednesday that said, “We are proceeding to a recount.” It’s not a sure thing yet, though: Three (Democratic-leaning) counties were still counting ballots as of Wednesday afternoon; what’s more, a recount must be officially ordered by the secretary of state, whom Scott appointed to the job. But don’t hold your breath, Democrats: Recounts rarely overturn election results.

Finally, as we expected, the special U.S. Senate election in Mississippi will proceed to a runoff on Nov. 27 as none of the candidates secured 50 percent of the vote on Tuesday. Although they both received 41 percent of the vote, appointed Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith will be a heavy favorite against Democratic former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Mike Espy thanks to the state’s dark red hue.

House
Of the 12 unresolved House races, Democrats lead or look like they’re in good position in nine of them. Here’s the full lowdown:

Five of the races are in California: specifically, the 10th, 39th, 45th, 48th and 49th districts. It’s not unusual for close races in California to still be uncalled even a couple days after the election. That’s because mail ballots in California only have to be postmarked by Election Day; they can arrive at elections offices as late as Friday and still be counted. Since so many people in California vote by mail, that means that thousands of ballots are probably still in transit. Currently, the Republican candidates have leads of between 2 and 4 percentage points in four of the five districts. However, late-arriving ballots tend to lean Democratic in California, so those GOP leads will probably shrink, if not reverse entirely. Because of this, we’re guessing that Democrats might win most, if not all, of these districts when all is said and done. The Democratic candidate already leads in one of them — the California 49th — which has prompted the Associated Press to call it for Democrat Mike Levin already.

After hosting the most expensive congressional election in U.S. history in 2017, the Georgia 6th District was once again closely fought in 2018. And we mean closely — according to the Georgia secretary of state, Democrat Lucy McBath leads Republican Rep. Karen Handel by less than 1 percentage point. McBath has declared victory, while Handel is making noise about requesting a recount. Even with some provisional and overseas ballots outstanding, though, she has an improbable road to a comeback.
The Maine 2nd District will probably not be decided until next week. Several towns have yet to report their votes, but both Republican Rep. Bruce Poliquin and Democratic state Rep. Jared Golden appear to be stuck below a majority. If that holds, it means that Maine’s new system of ranked-choice voting will decide the winner. A computer program will redistribute the votes of the last-place finisher, independent William Hoar, among the other three candidates based on who those voters listed second on their ranked-choice ballots. If a candidate still doesn’t have the majority, the third-place finisher, independent Tiffany Bond, will then be eliminated, and her voters redistributed. At that point, either Poliquin or Golden will have a majority of the remaining votes, and whoever does will win the congressional seat. Golden is probably favored in this scenario; both Bond and Hoar indicated in a debate that they would prefer Golden over Poliquin (we’ll see if their voters agree). But it might not end there: If Poliquin ends up finishing first in the initial returns but loses the ranked-choice tabulations to Golden, he has left the door open to a court challenge.

With 100 percent of precincts reporting, Republican Jim Hagedorn held a slim lead over Democrat Dan Feehan in the Minnesota 1st District. If he holds on, it will be the second seat that Republicans flipped from blue to red this year. The Associated Press has called the race for Hagedorn — and he is definitely favored — but Feehan has not yet conceded.

Republican Rep. Tom MacArthur and Democrat Andy Kim are locked in an uncertain battle in the New Jersey 3rd District. From Tuesday into Wednesday, the two traded leads of 2,000+ votes. Mail ballots continue to be delivered through Thursday, and election officials say the counting of provisional ballots could take weeks — so the election may not be decided until then either.

In the North Carolina 9th District, Republican Mark Harris led Democrat Dan McCready by less than 2,000 votes with all precincts reporting. That was well within the necessary range to request a recount, but on Wednesday afternoon, McCready conceded the race. However, media outlets are being more cautious.
Despite what President Trump said at his Wednesday press conference, Republican Rep. Mia Love has not yet lost in the Utah 4th District — although she trails Democratic Salt Lake County Mayor Ben McAdams by a sizable 3 percentage points. The reason no projection has been made is that it may take up to two weeks to count all the mail ballots in the race. More than 200,000 ballots in Salt Lake and Utah counties have yet to be counted (although not all of them are in the 4th District), and we won’t get an update from Utah County — Love’s political base — until Friday.

Finally, the Washington 8th District unsurprisingly remains undecided. Why? Washington votes almost entirely by mail and reports its election results in waves as the ballots arrive — and they can remain incomplete for a week or more. As of Wednesday evening, Democrat Kim Schrier leads Republican former state Sen. Dino Rossi 53 percent to 47 percent, but that is very much subject to change.

Governor
Finally, the gubernatorial race in Georgia remains uncalled — not because Democratic former state House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams has a chance at taking the lead, but because Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp needs to win at least 50 percent plus one vote in order to avoid a rematch with Abrams in a Dec. 4 runoff. Unofficial election results on the state’s website give Kemp 50.3 percent of the vote with 100 percent of precincts reporting. However, that doesn’t include some absentee and provisional ballots, which became a flashpoint in Georgia in the race’s closing days. A judge ordered that absentee ballots with mismatched signatures in Gwinnett County be treated as provisional ballots (and voters given the opportunity to appeal or confirm their identity), and up to 53,000 Georgians whose voter-registration applications were put on hold may have had to cast provisional ballots if they couldn’t prove their eligibility at the polls. Believing that the outstanding ballots could still force a runoff, the Abrams campaign has refused to concede, but she1 would need to net more than 25,000 votes in order to deny Kemp a majority. We don’t know how many votes have yet to be counted, but … that’s a lot.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-16-races-still-too-close-to-call/