Today’s episode with campaign-related news items from across the country.
* Vote counting in Nevada’s U.S. Senate race took some time, but incumbent Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen prevailed over Republican challenger Sam Brown, despite Donald Trump becoming the first Republican presidential candidate to win in Nevada in two decades .
* Relatedly, Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report noted that Rosen will likely receive fewer votes than Kamala Harris in Nevada. So how did the senator win while Harris lost in the state? Because tens of thousands of Trump voters “couldn’t be bothered” to vote for Brown on their ballots either.
* With Trump winning Arizona, every state has now been called, and the Republican president-elect will ultimately receive 312 electoral votes – six more than he received in his successful 2016 campaign.
* Speaking of the Grand Canyon State, a Republican state lawmaker named Justin Heap was chosen last week to oversee the election process in Maricopa County, Arizona’s most populous county. That wouldn’t be particularly remarkable if it weren’t for the fact that Heap is a far-right election conspiracy theorist who has claimed for years that Trump secretly won in 2020.
* In the closely watched battle for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, Republican Dave McCormick appears to have unseated incumbent Democratic Senator Bob Casey, but there are roughly 122,000 ballots that have not yet been counted, and McCormick’s current lead is just over 40,000 votes.
* And with Republican Sen. J.D. Vance set to become vice president, it will be up to Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, to pick someone to fill the Senate vacancy. Special elections will follow in 2026.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
