2022 midterm election results

Former President Donald Trump "is livid” and “screaming at everyone” after last night’s disappointing GOP results in the midterms, a Trump adviser who has been in contact with Trump’s inner circle tells CNN. 

“Candidates matter,” the Trump adviser said. “They were all bad candidates,” the adviser continued, critiquing many of Trump’s handpicked contenders in key battleground states. 

This adviser said it’s unlikely Trump would delay his expected presidential announcement because “it’s too humiliating to delay.” But the adviser said there are too many unknowns at this point. 

The most striking loss for Trump came in Pennsylvania, where Republican Mehmet Oz fell to Democrat John Fetterman in what was the most expensive Senate race in the country. Trump endorsed Oz, during the contentious Republican primary, effectively pulling through a brutal primary and narrowly into the general election. But where the former president’s backing was decisive in the primary, it was an albatross in the general election for a Republican Senate candidate who was attempting to make inroads in the suburbs by touting his own moderation.

While Trump did score some Senate wins — Trump-backed GOP JD Vance defeated a stronger than expected challenge from Democrat Tim Ryan in the Ohio Senate race, while Republican Ted Budd defeated Democrat Cheri Beasley in North Carolina — those wins have so far been limited to clearly lean Republican states.

In the House, too, Trump acolytes lost in what were seen as competitive contests that Republicans needed to win if they were going to build a significant majority in the legislative body.

In New Hampshire, former Trump aide Karoline Leavitt lost to Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas in what was seen as a highly competitive contest. In North Carolina, Trump-backed Republican Bo Hines lost to Democrat Wiley Nickel in a race that was widely seen as a test of the former President’s influence. And in Ohio, Democratic state Rep. Emilia Sykes defeated Republican Madison Gesiotto Gilbert who bullishly touted her ties to Trump.

Trump’s evening was particularly bad when viewed through the lens of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ romp of a night.

DeSantis, Trump’s clearest rival for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, overwhelmingly won reelection on Tuesday, crushing Democrat Charlie Crist by nearly 20 percentage points, continuing to consolidate Latino support in Florida and even by winning populous counties like Miami-Dade.

The headline in Trump’s one-time hometown paper, the New York Post, said it all: “DeFUTURE,” the headline blared, showing the Florida Republican on stage with his family.

US stocks on Wednesday dipped modestly after the opening bell, with the Dow sliding nearly 200 points, or 0.6%. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq fell 0.7% and 0.9% respectively. 

Wall Street was betting on a red wave in the midterm elections Tuesday. But so far, it appears that didn't necessarily happen. 

The market had rallied the past three days, following a historic surge for stocks in October. That was due in part to expectations of a convincing victory for Republicans that could give the party control of one or both chambers of Congress — a development that could lead to more investor-friendly gridlock. 

All advance in-person, absentee-by-mail and Election Day results have been counted in Gwinnett County, Georgia, according to county media relations manager Deborah Tuff.

“That leaves a small number of provisional ballots, cures and some overseas ballots,” she said in an email to CNN Wednesday morning.

Tuff will provide an estimate of when those ballots will be counted later Wednesday.  

Gwinnett County is located about 30 miles northeast of Atlanta. 

Meanwhile, in Georgia's Columbia County, all mail-in, early voting and same-day voting ballots have been counted, according to Columbia County Director of the Board of Elections Nancy Gay. The county is in eastern Georgia near Augusta.

There are 52 provisional ballots left to research and determine if they can be counted or not and an unknown number of military ballots left to count, Gay said.

CNN's Ellie Kaufman contributed reporting to this post.

Kentucky voters on Tuesday rejected a proposal to amend the state’s constitution to say that it does not "secure or protect a right" to abortion or the funding of abortion, CNN projects. 

If adopted, the measure would have gone into effect immediately once the results of the election are certified by the State Board of Elections. 

The ballot question voters faced read: "Are you in favor of amending the Constitution of Kentucky by creating a new Section of the Constitution to be numbered Section 26A to state as follows: To protect human life, nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to secure or protect a right to abortion or require the funding of abortion?"  

Kentucky's "trigger law," which bans most abortions at all stages of pregnancy, and a law banning abortion after roughly six weeks of pregnancy have been allowed to be enforced temporarily while a lawsuit challenging the laws continues.  

Kentucky Right to Life executive director Addia Wuchner, who chairs the Yes for Life Alliance which supported Amendment 2, previously said voting "yes" would "ensure there's no false interpretation of the constitution."  

Without the amendment, "instead of the lawmakers who duly reflect the people's will, we would end up with the abortion industry taking each law back into court," Wuchner said.  

Tamarra Wieder, the Kentucky state director for Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates, had said passing the amendment would "open the door to more attacks on abortion access," but rejecting it would allow abortion rights advocates to "continue to fight back" against the six-week ban and the trigger ban. 

GOP Rep. Nancy Mace told CNN she is “cautiously optimistic” that Republicans will win a majority in the House of Representatives, adding that until both parties reach across the aisle it will be “difficult for anyone to govern.” 

Mace also acknowledged she expected her Republican colleagues to perform better than they did Tuesday.

Mace also said she did not support “at this juncture” any effort to impeach President Joe Biden if the GOP does take the House of Representatives. 

“That’s not something I support at this juncture without a heavy investigation. Impeachment has been weaponized over the years – and we’ve seen that in the last five years or so. We need to really focus on economic issues,” Mace said Wednesday. 

As of early Wednesday morning, Republican Mehmet Oz has not publicly conceded after his projected loss to Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman in the race for Senate in Pennsylvania. 

The silence from the candidate and staff is noteworthy. 

After repeated attempts to get in touch with the campaign, no comment or details on a statement from the candidate — written or verbal — have been confirmed. 

Oz spoke at his campaign headquarters in Bucks County late Tuesday before the race was projected, saying to the crowd, “When all the ballots are counted, we believe we will win this race.” 

Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel will be reelected, CNN projects, and defeat Republican Matthew DePerno. 

DePerno was a leader in the efforts to challenge Michigan’s 2020 election results, including by filing a lawsuit claiming vote fraud in Antrim County. While the suit failed and DePerno’s theories about Dominion voting machines have been thoroughly debunked, he pledges to “prosecute the people who corrupted the 2020 election.” 

Four Senate races must still be called, but only one offers a chance of a rematch: Georgia.

As day breaks the morning after the election, the campaigns of Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker are starting to prepare for one more month of campaigning – not waiting for a runoff to be formally called by state election officials.

Both candidates are expected to speak later today, aides say, with specific plans still in flux.

Top officials from the Democratic and Republican parties also tell CNN they intend to double down on their significant investments in Georgia, with an increasing assumption that control of the Senate could hinge on the outcome of a likely Dec. 6 runoff.

While Warnock holds a narrow edge over Walker of about 18,000 votes – out of more than 4 million ballots cast – Republican officials are alarmed by another tally from election night: Walker’s underperformance compared to Gov. Brian Kemp. 

In his reelection victory, Kemp performed far stronger than Walker in suburban areas, earning about 163,000 more votes than Walker.

Georgia election official Gabriel Sterling told CNN that the state’s secretary of state office began making preparations last night for a runoff in the US Senate race. Preparations include building ballots and pushing proofs to counties starting Monday.

So far, neither candidate has reached the 50 percent needed to avoid a runoff, which makes a runoff a very real possibility.

There are at approximately 300,000 ballots left to be counted in Maricopa County, Board of Supervisors Bill Gates told "CNN This Morning" on Wednesday.

Approximately 17,000 ballots from Election Day, not including mail-in ballots, have yet to be counted, Gates said. Those ballots comprise roughly 7% of ballots that went into “Box 3,” meaning “they were not run through the tabulator there at the vote center, but they are secure and they will be tabulated in our central count facility,” Gates said.

In addition, there are 90,000 mail-in ballots that were received after Friday but before Tuesday that have not been counted, and approximately 200,000 mail-in ballots received Tuesday that also have yet to be counted, Gates told CNN This Morning. 

He noted that they do not have a precise count of how many mail in ballots were received Tuesday, but said the roughly 200,000 “all came in late last night.”

Gates stressed that voters in Maricopa County “should not be concerned” about their votes being counted after a technical issue, telling CNN that the bottom line is that “everyone who showed up yesterday with a valid ID…they had the opportunity to vote a ballot and that vote is going to count.”