Democrats take key Senate battleground seat of Pennsylvania as Republicans close in on House of Representatives

9 November 2022, 06:41

Democrat John Fetterman is projected to win the Senate seat for Pennsylvania, a key battleground seat, but the Republicans are expected to take control of the House of Representatives.

Election forecasters and polls have suggested the Republicans have a strong chance of winning a major House majority, while control of the Senate is likely to be a more closely fought race.

All eyes are on a number of other key battleground states, such as Georgia.

READ MORE: Meghan Markle wears 'I voted' sticker amid US midterms and shares 'checklist and reminders' for voting

All 435 seats in the House are up for grabs, as well as 35 of the 50 Senate seats.

There are also 36 governorships for the taking.

The results will determine how hard it is for President Joe Biden to pass laws in the second half of his premiership.

Voting in the midterms has not gone without its hitches.

During the night one man was arrested for threatening staff at a polling station with a knife and demanding them to ‘stop the voting’.

West Bend Police Department in Wisconsin said the 38-year-old was arrested and taken into custody and that nobody had been harmed.

Voting was paused for just over 30 minutes while the scene was ‘secured’.

Writing on Facebook, officers explained: “The Police Department would like to thank the library staff for taking quick action and voters to waited patiently to vote. The incident remains under investigation and charges will be forthcoming. This is no further threat to the community.”

Other issues arose around America when polling stations at major states ran out of paper or ran into technical issues.

Posting on Twitter, one Trump supporter shared a video of Donald Trump urging voters to ‘stay in line’ at polling stations – particularly in Arizona where technical issues were affecting ballots.

He added: "They want to delay you out of voting and you can not let them delay you out of voting."

Voting hours were also extended in Pennsylvania after a shortage of paper for printing the ballots meant that one in five of the polling stations was affected for four hours.

According to American news outlet NBC, a voting site in Illinois also claimed it had been hit by a deliberate cyberattack, known as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) which overwhelms the website with traffic making the server not function. They said it 'wouldn't impact voters' to cast any ballots but would make accessing the website, which has information on how to vote or the location of where to go, more difficult.

What are the midterms and why do they matter?

Any new laws that are made by the US government have to pass through two chambers: the House of Representatives and the Senate first.

All 435 seats in the House of Representatives, known as the lower chamber of congress, are re-elected every two years. Seats are relatively proportional to the population in each area – so larger states like California have more seats and states with smaller populations like Wyoming have less seats. Laws are decided in the House of Representatives and voted on before heading to the Senate which can approve or block them.

The Senate, known as the upper chamber, is made up of 100 seats. There’s only two seats per state, regardless of how big the state is or how many people live there. In each even numbered year roughly one-third of the senators are elected for a six year term.

All 435 seats in the House of Representatives will be up for grabs, as well as 35 Senate seats. There are also 36 governorships for the taking.

The elections are called mid-terms because they happen in the middle of the four-year presidential term.

Going into this election the Democratic party (the party of the president Joe Biden) controlled both chambers of Congress.

The issue is, if the Democrats lose control of the Congress, Republicans are likely to push back against any plans made by Joe Biden so he will ultimately find it harder to pass laws and secure key election promises.

When are results expected to be announced?

The first results are expected to come in around 10pm EST (3am UK time) and the whole process to be completed by 2am EST (7am UK time) if all goes to plan.

This is when the polling stations close at each of the states, meaning the results will come in some time after:

7pm EST time (midnight UK time)

• Florida
• Georgia
• Indiana
• Kentucky
• New Hamshire
• South Carolina
• Vermont
• Virginia

7.30pm EST time (00.30am UK time)

• North Carolina
• Ohio
• West Virginia

8am EST time (1am UK time)

• Alabama
• Connecticut
• Delaware
• District of Colombia
• Illinois
• Kansas
• Maine
• Maryland
• Massachusetts
• Michigan
• Mississippi
• Missouri
• New Jersey
• North Dakota
• Oklahoma
• Pennsylvania
• Rhode Island
• South Dakota
• Tennessee
• Texas

8.30pm EST time (1.30am UK time)

• Arkansas

9pm EST time (2am UK time)

• Arizona
• Colorado
• Iowa
• Louisiana
• Minnesota
• Nebraska
• New Mexico
• New York
• Wisconsin
• Wyoming

10pm EST time (3am UK time)

• Idaho
• Montana
• Nevada
• Oregon
• Utah

11pm EST time (4am UK time)

• California
• Washington

12pm EST time (5am UK time)

• Hawaii

1am EST time (6am UK time)

• Alaska