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Amanda Northrop/Vox Democrats have kept the House, but some races have yet to be called. Follow the vote count here. Update, November 8, 8:50 pm : Democrats have held on to their majority , with races yet to be called that will determine the exact balance of power. While Democrats aimed to retake the White House and the Senate on Election Day , they are also defending their US House majority in 435 congressional elections across the country. But the vote count, as in several other races, is coming in slowly — and it could be days or weeks before we know the House’s exact makeup. Democrats appear to have maintained control of the chamber, but with a slimmer majority. Democrats won the House in the 2018 midterm elections, netting more than 40 seats to regain a sliver of power after two years of complete Republican control. Their new majority set about passing a largely symbolic agenda meant to demonstrate how they would govern if they retook the presidency and the Senate (with vo...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer speak with members of Congress after honoring the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on September 25, 2020, at the Capitol building in Washington, DC. | Jonathan Ernst/Getty Images Democrats will keep the House. But Republicans had a better night than expected. House Democrats did not have the election they expected. Decision Desk HQ projected Democrats will keep their majority in the House after calling races for Democratic Reps. Abigail Spanberger in Virginia and Tom O’Halleran in Arizona, officially bringing their count to 219 seats. Many more races have yet to be called. Democrats faced unexpectedly stiff competition from Republican candidates in multiple districts. Rather than expanding their majority as many Democrats — and nonpartisan forecasters — expected, the Democratic margin in the House appears to be shrinking after they first flipped the chamber in 2018. The story of the night for House...

Vice President-elect Kamala Harris arrives to speak in Wilmington, Delaware. | Andrew Harnik/AP Harris wore all white for her victory speech, honoring suffragists. Vice President-elect Kamala Harris began her acceptance speech with a strong statement: a white suit. It was a striking message, sent before she said a word — the color was the one worn by suffragists as they fought for the right to vote. Salutes to those women have been popularized by Democratic women in recent years — at this year’s State of the Union address, many lawmakers wore white in honor of the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote. Many women lawmakers wore white during the 2017 and 2019 State of the Union speeches as well. As Vox’s Anna North has explained, the suffragist movement was not an inclusive one; Harris herself likely would have been excluded from the famous Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 that helped pave the path to the vote for women. While it was fou...

Vice President-elect Kamala Harris speaks in Wilmington, Delaware, on November 7. | Andrew Harnik/AP Kamala Harris’s acceptance speech is historic. Kamala Harris just made history in her speech as the first woman to be elected vice president of the United States. “America’s democracy is not guaranteed. It is only as strong as our willingness to fight for it,” Harris declared. Dressed in a suffragette white suit and a (possibly pointed) pussy-bow blouse , Harris thanked all the poll workers and elected officials who worked on this week’s long election, saying, “You have protected the integrity of our democracy.” Harris, who is also the first Black person and first South Asian elected vice president, spoke of the women who have “paved the way for this moment tonight,” sparing particular attention for “the Black women who are too often overlooked, but so often prove they are the backbone of our democracy.” She added that she wanted to prove to all children watching that America “i...

MSNBC host Steve Kornacki on March 4. | Nathan Congleton/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images Biden’s lead has been expanding. But only one election analyst group has called the race. The major news outlets have not yet called Pennsylvania — the state that would give Joe Biden the 270 electoral votes he needs to win the presidency — as of 7:40 pm Eastern. Biden took the lead from President Trump in the Pennsylvania count Friday morning, and soon afterward, Vox’s election-calling partner, Decision Desk, called the state for Biden . But the other major elections-calling outfits — NBC News, CBS News, NBC News, Fox News, CNN, the Associated Press, Reuters, and the New York Times — have not yet done the same. As I wrote Friday morning , Decision Desk called Pennsylvania for Biden because their assessment of the votes that remain to be counted — how many there are, where they’re coming from, what type of votes they are, and how similar votes have broken down previously — is that the remain...

President Trump arrives to speak to reporters at the White House on November 5. | Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images Trump’s lawyers haven’t come up with anything that could plausibly flip the election. President Trump gave a brief, alarming speech in the White House Press Room Thursday evening, where he claimed — without any evidence — that the election is being “stolen” from him. He also suggested that he may have an ace in the hole. “We think there’s going to be a lot of litigation because we have so much evidence, so much proof, and it’s going to end up perhaps at the highest court in the land,” Trump said. It’s not the first time Trump has suggested that the Supreme Court, which currently has a 6-3 Republican majority, will throw the election to him. Shortly after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death opened up a vacancy on the Court, Trump said he thought the election “will end up in the Supreme Court, and I think it’s very important that we have nine Justices .” There n...

Anderson Cooper has had it with Donald Trump’s nonsense. | Getty Images for CNN Cooper used to be a conventional TV reporter. Then Trump became president. Anderson Cooper has gone on a journey over the past five years, from a conventional mainstream television news journalist to a man who looked into the camera Thursday night and described Donald Trump’s update on the state of the vote count like this: “That is the president of the United States. That is the most powerful person in the world, and we see him like an obese turtle on his back flailing in the hot sun.” WATCH: CNN' Anderson Cooper: "That is the President of the United States. That is the most powerful person in the world and we see him like an obese turtle on his back flailing in the hot sun..." pic.twitter.com/pZBOhyKlzC — Breaking911 (@Breaking911) November 6, 2020 Though markedly colorful for a mainstream journalist, Cooper’s assessment isn’t inaccurate. Trump’s 15-minute statement from the White H...

President rump speaks in the press briefing room at the White House on November 5. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images There’s no evidence of widespread voter fraud. Trump is lying. If anyone was hoping that President Donald Trump would gracefully acknowledge the increasingly likely chance that he will lose the presidency to Joe Biden, the dishonest press event he held Thursday evening at the White House indicated he still has little respect for democracy. With Biden now in striking distance of the 270 electoral votes he needs to become president-elect — as this is written, he is narrowly trailing Trump in 20-electoral vote Pennsylvania, with a large number of votes in heavily Democratic areas still to be counted — the president stood behind the White House podium and tossed out baseless accusations that he was the victim of election fraud. Trump began with a whopper, saying, “If you count the legal votes, I easily win. If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the electio...

Claire McCaskill attends the Common Good Forum & American Spirit Awards 2019. | Photo by Sylvain Gaboury/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images We’re going to argue about “pocketbook issues” versus “social issues” again, it would seem. So Claire McCaskill, a former senator from Missouri, said some bullshit on MSNBC last night. I probably shouldn’t start this article that way. I should probably start with something like: “In the wake of a better-than-expected election performance by Republicans and President Donald Trump, Democrats are wondering just what path to take to ensure better performance for their candidates in the future, even as former Vice President Joe Biden looks likely to win the presidency. Republicans’ built-in advantage in the Electoral College continues to be a massive headache for the Democratic Party (which has now won the popular vote in seven of the past eight elections). But a schism the party perpetually faces in the eyes of pundits who informally advise the ...

Amanda Northrop/Vox Follow live results for the race between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. A clearer picture of the results of the 2020 presidential election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden is slowly coming into view, days after Election Day. Trump racked up early victories in Florida, Ohio, and Iowa. But Biden appears to have more paths to 270 Electoral College votes than the president does: He has won two Midwest states that are likely to prove pivotal, Michigan and Wisconsin. Pennsylvania , meanwhile, is still counting, and could seal Biden’s victory. There are other positive signs for Biden: He is ahead in Nevada and Arizona, although the race has tightened in Arizona . And as of Thursday evening, Biden is very close to potentially overtaking Trump in Georgia as the final votes are tallied. A win in two of these states would make him the next president, even without Pennsylvania. Based on this outlook, Biden has projected optimism, saying on Thursday , “We have no doubt ...

Wolf Blitzer announces CNN’s election night coverage. | CNN The election is in an anxiety-inducing holding pattern, and TV doesn’t know what to do. “What are we doing?” Stephen Colbert kept asking his producer as his 2020 election special on Showtime wound its way toward a chaotic conclusion. In 2016, the late-night host’s live election special had felt a little like a wake for America as Colbert attempted to cope in real time with a country that had voted by a slim majority to elect Donald Trump as its commander in chief. It was surprisingly electrifying television. His 2020 special — which aired while America waited for votes to be counted, with no immediate end in sight — was much less electrifying. Colbert was already filming in the midst of a pandemic, a performer who’s at his best when he has other people to play off of interacting only with a handful of people in the studio (most notably his wife, sitting off to his side) and then a variety of guests beamed in vi...