While the U.S. presidential contest was decided fairly quickly—with the Associated Press calling Donald Trump’s victory over Kamala Harris early Wednesday, Nov. 6, the morning after voters headed to the polls—in a number of downballot races, two weeks after Election Day, a clear winner has yet to emerge.
Republicans have already secured control of both chambers of Congress, but the margins of their majorities aren’t set.
In the House, the AP has yet to call five races—as of the end of Mon., Nov. 18. And while all the Senate races have been called, one is headed to a recount.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]While all election results will be officially certified in the weeks to come, the AP and other media outlets use their own methodologies to “call” race winners based on tabulations of the votes that have been counted and projections about what remains to be counted. The AP is among the most conservative, only calling a race once its Decision Team is “fully confident” that “the trailing candidates no longer have a path to victory.”
Here’s what to know about the races that are still undecided.
Republican challenger Nicholas Begich III is currently leading by about 7,000 votes over Democratic incumbent Rep. Mary Peltola in the race to represent Alaska’s lone congressional district. But elections in Alaska are conducted via ranked-choice voting (also known as instant runoff), which means that if no candidate achieves a majority of first-choice votes, multiple rounds of tabulation are required to reallocate votes from the least popular candidates to whomever each voter ranked as their next choice. Begich has received about 48.5% of first-round votes, according to the Alaska Division of Elections, with some absentee ballots still being counted, while ranked-choice results won’t be available until at least Nov. 20.
Begich, a businessman and the grandson and namesake of a former holder of the same seat and nephew of former Senator Mark Begich (D-Ala.), declared victory in the race on Saturday after Decision Desk HQ, another election race caller, called the race for him. Peltola, who is Yup’ik and made history as the first Alaska Native elected to Congress, beat Begich twice in 2022, during a special election following the death of longtime Rep. Don Young, a Republican who held the office for 49 years, and again in the regular election months later—both of which saw Begich eliminated before the final round as he ran alongside fellow Republican former Gov. Sarah Palin.
California’s size and its heavy reliance on vote-by-mail ballots has led to a notoriously slow vote count. In the state’s 13th U.S. House district, which includes parts of Fresno, the race between Republican incumbent John Duarte and his Democratic opponent former state assemblyman Adam Gray is still too close to call, as Duarte leads by about 2,000 votes, according to the AP, which estimates that 14% of ballots remain to be reported.
The race in the state’s 45th district, which includes parts of Orange County and Los Angeles County and has a significantly Asian American population, is even tighter. Democrat Derek Tran, a consumer rights lawyer who is Vietnamese American, currently leads by just 102 votes over Republican incumbent Michelle Steel, who is Korean American, after an estimated 94% of votes have been counted, according to the AP.
Democratic challenger Christina Bohannan, a former state representative, is seeking a recount in her race against Republican incumbent Mariannette Miller-Meeks, who leads by 801 votes and has called Bohannan an “election denier.” AP has not yet called the race, while Decision Desk HQ has. “This is a delaying tactic to thwart the will of the people,” Miller-Meeks’ campaign said of the recount request in a statement. Recounts rarely change election results.
Miller-Meeks has gone through such an extended process before—with an even narrower margin of victory: In 2020, she won her first term in Congress, representing what was then numbered as Iowa’s 2nd district, by just six votes over Democrat Rita Hart, who didn’t concede until the following March, after Miller-Meeks had already been sworn in.
Democrat Rep. Marcy Kaptur, the longest-serving woman in House history, claimed victory early Wednesday, Nov. 6, after Election Day, hoping to go into her 22nd term, but the AP has yet to call the race, though Decision Desk HQ has. Kaptur leads by about 1,000 votes over Republican challenger Derek Merrin, with an estimated 99% of votes counted, according to the AP, while election officials expect to have a final tally of votes this week.
The AP called the race for Republican Dave McCormick on Nov. 8, but Democratic incumbent Bob Casey has not conceded, and the state is headed for a legally-required statewide recount, which begins Wednesday and must conclude by Nov. 26, because the margin of victory is below 0.5%. With nearly 7 million ballots counted, McCormick leads by less than 20,000 votes, which NBC News describes as “too close to call,” though experts say such a magnitude is unlikely to be overcome by a recount.
