US midterm elections updates: Biden urges cooperation in Congress

House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy has announced his bid to run for speaker.

In a letter to his Republican colleagues on Wednesday, McCarthy asked for support, saying: “I trust you know that earning the majority is only the beginning. Now, we will be measured by what we do with our majority. Now the real work begins.”

His announcement comes before it is even clear if his party would control the House of Representatives.

NPR said no one is currently challenging the California Congressman for the post. An internal vote is expected next week, it added.

The fate of a potentially decisive US Senate seat will not be determined this week, as the hard-fought midterms contest in Georgia is now moving to a runoff next month between Warnock and Walker.

Though both candidates garnered more than 1.9 million votes each, they failed to earn a simple majority with 50 percent of the vote.

This launches the two men into four more weeks of campaigning, as they attempt to woo the Georgia electorate again before the runoff election on December 6.

Read more here about the two candidates and what is at stake.

Republicans and Democrats are still fighting for control of Congress as neither party has met the threshold needed to secure majorities in the House or Senate.

Check out Al Jazeera’s up-to-date results page here.

With the prospect of an overwhelming Republican victory fading, Al Jazeera’s Kimberly Halkett has said the realisation is sinking in “that neither side is going to be able to accomplish very much for the next two years”.

Many Republicans had hoped for a “red wave” that would give them solid majorities in the House and the Senate but that did not materialise.

If Republicans win control of the House, Halkett said “it’s going to be with such a narrow majority that in order to get any sort of legislation done it’s going to have to be in a bipartisan way”.

Several US House races have been called for Democrats on the country’s west coast.

In California, Democratic incumbents Judy Chu and Pete Aguilar were reelected. Democratic Congresswoman Marilyn Strickland also was reelected in her district in Washington state.

Margins between Democrats and Republicans have narrowed considerably in key Arizona races as election officials chipped away at counting more than 500,000 mail-in ballots returned on Election Day and shortly before.

Democrats maintained small but dwindling leads in key races for US Senate, governor, secretary of state and attorney general, while Republicans were optimistic the late-counted ballots would break heavily in their favour as they did in 2020.

It could take several days before it is clear who won some of the closer contests.

Potential Republican control of at least one chamber of the US Congress sets the stage for economically risky battles in 2023 over federal spending limits and the government’s response should a recession develop.

The results of Tuesday’s election remain uncertain, with Republicans nearing the threshold needed for a majority in the House but Democrats performing better than expected and potentially in a position to retain control of the Senate.

“This will be de facto gridlock regardless of the outcome,” Brian Gardner, Washington-based strategist for Stifel, told Reuters. “The chambers will be so closely divided.”

Despite his call for partisanship, Biden has vowed not to alter his governing style, stressing Americans are not displeased with his policies, including investments in infrastructure and a push to lower prescription drug prices.

Asked what he intends to do differently ahead of a potential reelection campaign in 2024, the US president said: “Nothing.”

“It’s hard to sustain yourself as a leading democracy in the world if you can’t generate some unity,” Biden told reporters. “So I’m not going to change anything in any fundamental way.”

His comments stand in stark contrast to previous presidents who vowed to reassess their positions after midterm losses.

Biden has urged cooperation in the next US Congress, saying Americans made it clear during the election “they don’t want every day going forward to be a constant political battle”.

“There’s too much of that going on, and there’s too much that we have to do,” the president said.

“The future of America is too promising, too promising to be trapped in endless political warfare.”

Biden has stressed that Tuesday’s election results were good for his Democratic Party, citing gains in Congress and state-level races compared with previous midterm elections.

“While the press and the pundits [were] predicting a giant ‘red wave’, it didn’t happen,” Biden told reporters.

“And I know you were somewhat miffed by my optimism, but I felt good during the whole process. I thought we’re going do fine. While any seat loss is painful and some good Democrats didn’t win last night, Democrats had a strong night.”

In his first public comments since Election Day, Biden has said Tuesday’s vote marked “a good day for democracy” in the US.

“And I think it was a good day for America,” the president said from the White House.

“Our democracy has been tested in recent years, but with their votes, the American people have spoken and proven once again that democracy is who we are.”

No instances of digital interference are known to have affected the counting of the midterm vote, officials have said.

A few state and local governments appeared to be hit by a relatively rudimentary form of cyberattack that periodically made public websites unreachable. But federal and local officials said none breached vote-counting infrastructure.

“We have seen no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was any way compromised in any race in the country,” Jen Easterly, director of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency, said in a statement.

Democrat Susan Wild has won reelection to the US House in Pennsylvania’s 7th congressional district, beating Republican Lisa Scheller.

Former US President Donald Trump has described the results of the midterms as “somewhat disappointing”, but said he nevertheless sees them as a personal success.

“While in certain ways yesterday’s election was somewhat disappointing, from my personal standpoint it was a very big victory – 219 WINS and 16 Losses,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social media platform, referencing the candidates he endorsed.

The stars appeared aligned for Republicans. With economic uncertainty, a seemingly unpopular president from the opposite party in the White House and historic trends on their side, they were hoping to deliver a knockout punch to their Democratic rivals in the midterms.

But as Americans woke up on Wednesday morning, it seemed like the much-anticipated “red wave” changed course and never made landfall.

What happened? Find out here.

Republican John James has won the US House seat in Michigan’s 10th congressional district, defeating Democrat Carl Marlinga.

Encouraged by better-than-expected midterm results, Democratic strategists have predicted Biden will run again for president despite exit polls showing two-thirds of voters, including 43 percent of Democrats, prefer he not seek reelection in 2024.

While final results in several races are not in yet, Democrats may have held onto control of the Senate and narrowed expected losses in the House, bucking historical trends for the party of a new president.

“[Biden] has led a tremendously successful administration and the American people recognise that. Republicans and pundits alike continue to underestimate him at their own peril,” Jennifer Holdsworth, a Democratic strategist, told the Reuters news agency.

Another Democratic strategist, Karen Finney, said the midterm results should mean Biden “gets all the time he wants to decide” on what to do about 2024.

Republican Zach Nunn won election to the US House in Iowa’s 3rd congressional district, beating incumbent Democrat Cindy Axne, AP has reported.

“We’re humbled and honored to have won our mission and are ready to bring change to our country,” Nunn wrote on Twitter.

From Day 1, we’ve been a grassroots team of Iowans from all over the district ready to bring our Iowa values to D.C. We’re humbled and honored to have won our mission and are ready to bring change to our country. https://t.co/ZPCjZElSXd

— Zach Nunn (@NunnForCongress) November 9, 2022

The midterm results so far have shown “the polls were really only measuring a portion” of the country, said Al Jazeera’s White House correspondent, Kimberly Halkett.

She noted that polls tend to focus on results from landline telephone calls, which young people are less likely to use.

“This [Republican] ‘red wave’ was really factoring in the older voters that tend to lean more conservative, but when it comes to the so-called Gen Z or younger voters under 30, they came out in much stronger numbers than anyone expected,” Halkett said.

A pastor at the Atlanta church where Martin Luther King Jr served until his assassination, Warnock is the Democratic incumbent in the US Senate race that will be decided in a December runoff in Georgia.

Warnock won a 2020 special election to become the first African-American man to represent the state in the Senate.

His Republican challenger, Walker, is a football star-turned-politician endorsed by former President Donald Trump. In the last month, his campaign has been riddled with allegations that he paid for a girlfriend’s abortion, in contrast to his anti-abortion stance.