Lauren Boebert Loses Re-election Bid in Colorado House Race to Eileen Laubacher

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Scott Colom, the Democratic Senate nominee in Mississippi, held a slim but growing lead on Friday, as election officials continued to count votes in a race that could expand the Senate majority that Democrats secured in the midterm elections.

The latest vote report showed Mr. Colom leading the Republican incumbent, Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, by 2,574 votes, according to The Associated Press. If he wins, Mr. Colom would be the first Democrat to capture a Senate seat in Mississippi in 44 years and the state’s first Black senator since Reconstruction.

Democrats wrested back control of the Senate and the House in the midterms on Tuesday, as voters voiced displeasure with rising prices during President Trump’s tumultuous second term. As of Friday evening, Democrats had won at least 253 seats in the House and at least 54 in the Senate, the party’s largest majorities since the first years of the Obama administration.

But the election officials were still tallying ballots, and those numbers were expected to grow.

In addition to two Senate races, in Alaska and Mississippi, nearly two dozen House races were still too close to call.

In Mississippi, lawyers for Ms. Hyde-Smith formally asked election officials on Thursday to preserve provisional ballots, a signal she might challenge the results in court. Mr. Colom’s campaign objected in a letter to election officials to parts of Ms. Hyde-Smith’s request. Mail-in ballots can continue to arrive, and provisional ballots can continue to be verified, until Tuesday. Counties have until Nov. 13 to certify their election results to the state.

In the Senate race in Alaska, the Democratic challenger, former Representative Mary Peltola, still had a slim lead on Friday over the Republican incumbent. A New York Times analysis indicated that Ms. Peltola’s lead would most likely hold, but it could be days before remaining mail ballots are counted.

The next batches of votes from Alaska are expected to be posted on Monday and Tuesday, according to the state’s Division of Elections. The race may also require a ranked-choice tabulation, which would not occur until Nov. 18.

Across the country, Republicans were reckoning with their worst performance since the aftermath of the Watergate scandal a half-century ago. President Trump defended his role in the defeat on social media late Thursday, arguing his party had faced a drubbing because he was not on the ballot.

But others in the party placed the blame squarely on the president. Senator John Curtis, a Utah Republican, said people had voted against Republicans because of the state of the economy under Mr. Trump’s leadership. “This was about the president and the president’s policies,” he said.

Here’s what else we’re covering:

• Democratic socialist mayors: Nithya Raman’s victory in the race for Los Angeles mayor makes her the latest democratic socialist to be elected to lead a major U.S. city over the past year. The group includes the mayors of New York, Los Angeles and Seattle. Read more ›

• Transgender athletes: Voters in four states chose to bar transgender athletes from competing on female sports teams. Opinion polls show that most Americans say transgender girls and women should not play on girls’ and women’s sports teams, and the Democratic Party has wrestled with internal divisions on the issue. Read more ›

• Progressive power player: Representative Katherine M. Clark of Massachusetts, the No. 2 House Democrat, is set to become the majority leader in January. Ms. Clark would make history as the first woman to hold that title, though Representative Nancy Pelosi of California served as House speaker, a loftier role. Read more ›

Lauren Boebert, a MAGA Favorite, Loses Her Re-election Bid in Colorado

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Representative Lauren Boebert, a hard-line Republican, on Friday narrowly lost her bid for re-election in a conservative Colorado district, according to The Associated Press, an outcome that showed just how deeply Democrats encroached into Republican territory this year.

Ms. Boebert, a fiery favorite of the MAGA movement, switched congressional districts a few years ago after her old seat in Colorado grew more competitive. But the change was not enough to keep her from being ousted by Eileen Laubacher, a Democrat and a retired rear admiral in the Navy.

Ms. Laubacher declared victory on Monday, and was leading by more than 3,000 votes when the race was called on Friday. Ms. Boebert, who amplified President Trump’s false claims of a stolen election in 2020, has not yet conceded. Her lawyer suggested last week that Ms. Boebert would request a recount.

Democrats flooded the airwaves in the district with more than $7 million worth of ads, outspending Republicans by more than 23 to 1, according to the media tracking firm AdImpact. Many of the ads fixed on Ms. Boebert’s polarizing nature and past scandals, with one calling her “uniquely unfit.” Another ad contrasted Ms. Laubacher’s profile as a Navy veteran and mother of five with headlines about Ms. Boebert.

“Lauren Boebert flips out over ‘Beetlejuice’ groping footage,’” the chyron read in one clip, referring to Ms. Boebert’s ejection from a Denver theater in 2023. Another showed Ms. Boebert cursing at the person filming.

“Like so many of us, Eileen is done with the extremists in both parties,” a narrator said in the ad, which was run by Ms. Laubacher’s campaign. “Maybe the best way to break through the noise is a little less talking and more listening.”

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Democrats had viewed Ms. Boebert as vulnerable in the closing stretch of this year’s race, as her once-close alliance with President Trump became a liability among voters who blamed his administration for high gas prices and other affordability concerns.

Ms. Boebert, first elected in 2020, broke with Mr. Trump at times during the past year, particularly over her calls to release files related to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. And she drew the president’s anger by campaigning for Representative Thomas Massie, the Kentucky Republican who became a nuisance for Mr. Trump.

After the election, Ms. Boebert declined to blame Mr. Trump for Republicans’ blowout losses, though she said she was “very frustrated with the war.” She told reporters this week that the Trump administration should have gone further to deport immigrants who were in the United States illegally and that Republican lawmakers “could have done a lot more.” Ms. Boebert did not respond to a request for comment.

Ms. Laubacher ran on a centrist platform but hammered Ms. Boebert for her votes against resolutions directing Mr. Trump to end the war in Iran or seek congressional approval. She also centered a promise to protect rural hospitals in the wake of Medicaid cuts.

Ms. Laubacher served in the National Security Council for two years during the Biden administration, and earlier in her career she worked as a Navy intelligence officer and served in the Navy Reserves. She was promoted to the rank of rear admiral in 2018.

“I don’t answer to a political party,” Ms. Laubacher said in a statement declaring victory on Monday. “I answer to the people of the 4th district and I’ll work with anyone and everyone, including President Trump, Republicans, and Democrats to get things done for Colorado.”

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The Voters Who Powered the Blue Tsunami

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Democrats Hold Kansas Governorship, Retaining Power on the Plains

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State Senator Cindy Holscher won election as governor of Kansas, keeping the seat in Democratic hands for a third straight term, The Associated Press said on Thursday.

She narrowly defeated Ty Masterson, the Republican nominee and the president of the Kansas Senate. Gov. Laura Kelly, the Democratic incumbent, was barred by term limits from seeking re-election.

Ms. Holscher’s victory added to a momentous election for Democrats in Kansas and across the country, and it maintained a rare lever of power for the party on the Great Plains.

Adam Hamilton, a Methodist pastor, became the first Kansas Democrat to win a U.S. Senate race since the 1930s. In addition, Democrats flipped several legislative seats to break a Republican supermajority in the Kansas House of Representatives, which will make it much harder to override vetoes by Ms. Holscher.

Kansans also voted out Attorney General Kris W. Kobach, a Republican who helped elevate illegal voting as a political issue. Republicans prevailed in other statewide races and will still have majorities in both legislative chambers.

Though Kansans reliably vote for Republicans for president, they have shown an independent streak in midterm elections, swinging for decades between Republican and Democratic governors. High costs, dissatisfaction with President Trump’s policies and a tangle of challenges facing farmers made the Plains region more winnable for Democrats this year.

Both parties spent heavily on the race for Kansas governor. For Republicans, it represented a tantalizing flip opportunity on an otherwise foreboding electoral map. For Democrats, it was a chance to maintain power in a reliably conservative state.

Ms. Holscher, a lawmaker from suburban Kansas City, ran on a populist platform that called for legalizing marijuana and placing a moratorium on data centers. She also promised to prioritize funding for public schools and to reduce property taxes. She will be the fourth woman to serve as governor of Kansas.

“I stand with the people — not the corporations, not the billionaires,” Ms. Holscher said in a debate at the State Fair.

Ms. Holscher emerged from a competitive Democratic primary in which Governor Kelly had endorsed a different candidate. Ms. Kelly had also publicly questioned Ms. Holscher’s ability to win a general election, suggesting that the candidate had positioned herself too far to the left. After the primary, Ms. Kelly endorsed Ms. Holscher.

Ms. Kelly said in a post-election interview that she was “more confident now that Cindy will be a good governor.”

“You really have to look at things very differently when you’re governing than you do when you’re campaigning,” Ms. Kelly said, “and I am absolutely confident that Cindy Holscher will surround herself with good people, and that she’ll keep things moving forward.”

Ms. Holscher will be the first Democratic governor elected to succeed a fellow Democrat in Kansas history. Her running mate, State Representative KC Ohaebosim, is the first Black person to win statewide office in Kansas since the 1880s.

Mr. Masterson, a legislator from the Wichita area, emphasized his endorsement from Mr. Trump on the campaign trail. He pledged to lower taxes and cut costs for residents.

In a statement on Thursday, Mr. Masterson said it “looks like we will come up just short” and that he had called Ms. Holscher to congratulate her.

“This was a hard election for people who share our vision, here and across the country,” Mr. Masterson added.

Though not a household name in much of the state, Mr. Masterson amassed considerable power at the Kansas Capitol. During his tenure as president of the State Senate, lawmakers overrode Ms. Kelly’s vetoes to enact dozens of bills, including ones that placed restrictions on transgender people, overhauled election procedures and limited officials’ ability to impose restrictions during public health emergencies.

But with Ms. Kelly in office, Mr. Masterson’s power was sometimes limited. Though he and other legislative Republicans wanted to redraw the state’s congressional map last year, he would have needed near-unanimous Republican support to overcome a veto from the governor. That plan unraveled when several Republicans voiced opposition, leaving in place a single Democratic-leaning U.S. House district.

Rep. Ken Calvert Wins House Battle Between Two California Republicans

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Representative Ken Calvert defeated another Republican incumbent, Representative Young Kim, in California’s 40th Congressional District in a rare intraparty contest, according to The Associated Press.

The Southern California district, which includes parts of Riverside and Orange Counties, is one of the state’s last Republican strongholds. Ms. Kim had represented the district since 2018. Mr. Calvert ended up running against her after his former district, which encompassed much of Riverside County, including Palm Springs, was carved up and distributed among several neighboring districts.

During the nonpartisan primary, Mr. Calvert and Ms. Kim attacked each other as insufficiently supportive of President Trump’s agenda. But the tone shifted this fall as both candidates portrayed themselves as pragmatic, “common sense” politicians, distancing themselves from Mr. Trump.

The campaign turned especially negative, in part because both candidates viewed the race as a fight for their political lives.

Ms. Kim repeatedly labeled Mr. Calvert corrupt, citing ethics complaints and an F.B.I. investigation targeting several real estate deals. Mr. Calvert has denied any wrongdoing and was never criminally prosecuted.

Mr. Calvert focused his attacks on a campaign donation Ms. Kim received from a Chinese American businessman who has been a target of an investigation into Chinese foreign influence. Ms. Kim donated the money from the donation and said she did not know about the allegations against him.

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California Voters Reject Billionaire Tax That Divided Democrats

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California voters rejected a billionaire tax, The Associated Press determined on Monday, rebuking a measure that would have created the nation’s first wealth tax by targeting the assets of residents with a net worth beyond $1 billion.

Under the tax measure, Proposition 40, the state would have imposed a one-time, 5 percent tax on the personal assets of billionaires and devoted most of the revenue to health care.

The Democratic voters who dominate the California electorate generally support the concept of making wealthy people pay higher taxes. But Democratic leaders were divided over the proposal — Gov. Gavin Newsom opposed it while the California Democratic Party endorsed the tax. And some of the California billionaires who stood to pay the tax contributed heavily toward a campaign that slammed the proposal with attack ads on TV throughout October.

Proposition 40 also suffered from having a weak coalition of supporters who could not compete with those ads and relied on cheaper methods, such as social media and influencer campaigns, to rally support.

The race was not called until almost a week after the election as California counted mail ballots at a deliberate pace. Though the vote gap shrank as more ballots were tallied, the measure ultimately failed to get enough support despite it being a hugely successful election for Democrats and left-leaning candidates.

As of Monday night, Proposition 40 had only 47 percent support with an estimated 83 percent of the votes counted.

The failure of the billionaire tax in California, a liberal state, is likely to be used as evidence for years to come that Americans will not stomach similar wealth taxes. The concept is expected to come up during the 2028 presidential campaign, and Mr. Newsom has already said he would be interested in a national wealth tax but not one only in his own state.

Not only did the billionaire tax fail, but its emergence prompted a billionaire coalition to put a countermeasure on the ballot that could deal a further blow to the wealth tax movement in California. The proposal, Proposition 42, would prohibit future wealth taxes in the state, and that measure was ahead on Monday.

The billionaires tried to make the case that voting against Proposition 40 and for Proposition 42 would protect middle-class retirement savings from higher taxation in the future.

Supporters of the tax blamed the failure of Proposition 40 on their vast campaign spending disadvantage and considered the initiative’s failure a sign of oligarchic power.

During a news conference on election night, proponents pointed to the astronomical spending by the opposition, led by Sergey Brin, the Google co-founder who gave more than $100 million toward defeating the wealth tax. His group has raised more than $300 million this year, based on the most recent campaign finance records.

Dave Regan, the head of the health care workers’ union that put the tax on the ballot, said the billionaire-funded attacks produced “a lot of confusion and a lot of second-guessing among people who really in their hearts know what the right thing to do is.”

Mr. Regan vowed to pursue another billionaire tax in 2028.

His union had argued during the campaign that revenue from billionaires was necessary to offset cuts to health care programs that President Trump signed into law last year. Without the tax, millions of Californians would lose health insurance and hospitals would close, said the union, the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West.

It garnered support from prominent liberal economists and national progressive leaders, including Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, who called Proposition 40 “the most important ballot item in the country.”

But the measure divided labor unions and Democratic politicians in California. Mr. Newsom and Xavier Becerra, the Democrat who will replace him, opposed the tax, arguing that it would drive away entrepreneurs, and said a one-time surge in tax revenue wasn’t worth the potential long-term harm to the state budget. Teachers, firefighters and Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California joined them in arguing that the tax would ultimately reduce the money available for many government services.

“You don’t pass a landmark progressive tax increase that is a change to how America has historically done anything by dividing up the progressive coalition,” said Thad Kousser, a political science professor at the University of California, San Diego.

He noted that the union behind the tax moved ahead with it before securing sufficient support from key allies. “The policy substance was much harder to sell because of this key strategic choice at the beginning to go it alone,” he said.

The billionaires have said very little publicly about their ballot efforts and have relied on Democratic-leaning organizations and Mr. Newsom to be the face of the opposition.

On behalf of doctors, the California Planned Parenthood branch, school boards and health clinics, opponents said voters made the right decision to protect California’s fiscal health and called the ballot initiative “a reckless experiment conducted on our state’s economy.”

Orlando Mayorquín contributed reporting from Los Angeles.

The Justice Dept. dismisses a lawsuit against California over 20,000 ballots.

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The Department of Justice on Friday dismissed its failed effort to force California to set aside 20,000 mail-in ballots that it claimed had been sent to noncitizen voters, putting a formal end to a bid that was soundly rejected by the Supreme Court on election eve.

The notice of voluntary dismissal, filed late in the day in Los Angeles to Judge David O. Carter of the U.S. District Court for the Central District in California, followed a sweeping repudiation of the Trump administration in Tuesday’s midterm elections. It also came in the wake of a series of federal court decisions that rejected the administration’s claim of widespread illegal voting by noncitizens.

Federal officials had claimed that the administration had cross-referenced an assortment of databases to produce a list of thousands of “likely noncitizens” that it alleged were on voter rolls in California. State and local officials had responded that the administration’s list was outdated and riddled with errors and included the names of citizens who would be disenfranchised if their ballots weren’t counted.

Judge Carter had denied the bid in a blistering opinion, and two appeals were also rejected before the Supreme Court swiftly and summarily denied the extraordinary emergency request from the administration on Monday.

“The United States sought this relief to protect American voters in this state because each legal vote that is offset by an illegally cast vote constitutes irreparable harm,” the motion to dismiss the lawsuit noted. “The United States needed this relief around November 3.”

The motion added that the relief the administration sought “is no longer available — rendering voluntary dismissal necessary.”

As of Friday evening, nearly 11 million ballots had been processed in California.

“After four court defeats in just one week, including at the U.S. Supreme Court, the federal government has now thrown in the towel,” California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, said in a statement. “California stood firm and prevailed, and the nationwide election results made clear that Americans overwhelmingly reject the Trump Administration’s anti-democratic agenda.”

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Kansans elect a Democrat as attorney general, voting out Kris Kobach.

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Kris W. Kobach, Kansas’ Republican attorney general, helped to make claims of widespread illegal voting a potent political issue years before President Trump became the party’s leader.

But Mr. Kobach was denied another term by voters, The Associated Press reported on Friday. The result demonstrated both how Kansas and Mr. Kobach’s own trajectory have shifted since he crashed onto the national political landscape more than 20 years ago.

Chris Mann, a Democrat who has worked as a police officer and prosecutor, defeated Mr. Kobach, marking the first time in 20 years that Kansans have elected a Democrat as attorney general.

It was a momentous election for Democrats in Kansas and across the country. Adam Hamilton, a Methodist pastor and centrist Democrat, became the first member of his party to win a Senate race in Kansas since the 1930s. He unseated Senator Roger Marshall, a first-term Republican and close ally of President Trump. And in the governor’s race, Cindy Holscher, the Democratic nominee, was leading in a close contest that had not yet been called.

Mr. Kobach was, in many ways, ahead of his political time. As a law professor and Justice Department official in the 2000s, he pushed for tighter immigration laws. And as Kansas’ secretary of state in the 2010s, he sought and received the authority to prosecute people for illegally voting, making national headlines with the handful of cases he pursued.

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Though studies have shown that a very small percentage of ballots are cast by noncitizens, Mr. Kobach’s focus on the issue helped to elevate illegal voting as a national issue years before Mr. Trump seized on it during his presidential campaigns. During his first term as president, Mr. Trump tapped Mr. Kobach to lead a panel on voter fraud.

While Mr. Kobach’s message resonated, his own record was more mixed. A federal judge once found him in contempt of court. And Mr. Kobach lost his campaign for governor in 2018 to Laura Kelly, a Democrat, before losing the Republican primary for Senate in 2020. He returned to statewide office four years ago after narrowly defeating Mr. Mann to win a first term as attorney general.

As attorney general, Mr. Kobach has defended a state law restricting gender-transition treatments for minors and pushed unsuccessfully for an elected State Supreme Court. His office also prosecuted the Mexican-born mayor of a small Kansas town, who admitted to voting in U.S. elections without being a citizen, in a case that captured the attention of the Trump administration.

Though Mr. Kobach was once seen as an outlier among Republicans, his views on immigration and voting have become centerpieces of the party’s platform during the Trump era. But in that same period, Republicans’ hold on Kansas has slipped somewhat.

Republicans continue to win presidential elections in Kansas by large margins, but Ms. Kelly won two terms as governor and the once-conservative suburbs of Kansas City have turned blue, repeatedly electing Representative Sharice Davids, a Democrat, to Congress.

Nancy Lacore, a Democratic former Navy admiral who was fired by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, flipped the South Carolina House seat held by Representative Nancy Mace, a Republican who ran unsuccessfully for governor instead of seeking re-election, according to The Associated Press.

Lacore defeated Jenny Costa Honeycutt, a Republican who is an ally of President Trump’s, in a district that not only leans conservative but was restructured through gerrymandering to further favor Republicans.

Democrats had eyed the seat in the First Congressional District, hoping that Lacore’s military background could be an asset. Her ouster as chief of the Navy Reserve during Hegseth’s broader purge of senior military leaders last year gave her a national profile, and Lacore said that her dismissal motivated her to run for office.

Lacore has spoken in support of codifying Roe v. Wade in federal law, restoring expanded Medicaid benefits and imposing stricter oversight on Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

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Eliott Rodriguez, a South Florida Democrat whose race for the House remains too close to call, filed a lawsuit on Friday in federal court in Miami requesting that the Miami-Dade County elections supervisor, Alina Garcia, recuse herself from any recount process in his race.

The complaint cited a Miami Herald article that reported Garcia said on election night that Representative María Elvira Salazar, the Republican incumbent, was the winner “with or without a recount.” The complaint also says that Garcia, who is also a Republican, and the congresswoman are friends.

“We have an election supervisor who is crossing the lines,” Rodriguez said by phone. Garcia’s office and Salazar’s campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

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In the Mississippi Senate race, Scott Colom’s lead over Cindy Hyde-Smith, the Republican incumbent, grew to about 2,500 votes on Friday, according to The Associated Press, after three more counties reported votes around 4:10 p.m. Eastern. Colom’s margin has increased by nearly 700 votes today, though just under 1,500 new votes have been reported statewide.

The next batches of votes from Alaska are expected to be posted on Monday and Tuesday, according to the state’s Division of Elections. These are expected to consist of ballots cast early in-person and by mail.

The remaining votes, mostly from mail-in ballots, have until Nov. 18 to be counted. At that time, ranked-choice tabulation would begin if the top candidates in the Senate, governor and House races have not received a majority of votes.

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Senfronia Thompson, a Houston Democrat who has served in the Texas House for more than 50 years, just announced in the Texas State Capitol that she had enough votes to become speaker next year. Thompson said she would work with Republicans, who are now in the minority party for the first time in more than 20 years, when state lawmakers meet for their next session in January. “I do not have a dictatorship,” she said.

Thompson, 87, would be the first Black speaker and first female speaker.

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California still has nearly 5 million ballots to count.

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In California, more than a third of ballots from Tuesday’s election have yet to be counted, holding up results for the state’s billionaire tax initiative as well as various local races in the state.

California normally draws attention — and plenty of criticism — for its protracted vote count. But this election, the state’s uncalled races won’t factor into the balance of power in Congress after Democrats won both houses Tuesday in dominant fashion. And far more attention has been paid to Mississippi and Alaska, where Senate races are so tight that Americans are following daily updates.

In California, there were about 4.8 million ballots left to tally statewide as of Thursday evening, roughly 35 percent of the 13.7 million cast in Tuesday’s election, according to the California secretary of state’s office. Remarkably, some counties, including Sacramento, Riverside and Napa, had more ballots left to count than they had already tallied since Tuesday.

The reasons for California’s slow count are explained after each election. California relies heavily on mail balloting, which delays the tally because of the labor-intensive work it takes to check signatures, open envelopes and inspect ballots before counting them. The state also accepts mail-in ballots up to seven days after polls close as long as they were postmarked by Election Day.

California’s leaders take pride in a deliberate process that is meant to make voting easy while keeping elections secure, they say.

Still, the slow vote count in California has delayed results in pivotal contests once again. It wasn’t until Thursday that The Associated Press called the Los Angeles mayor’s race for Nithya Raman, a democratic socialist, over the incumbent, Karen Bass.

And The A.P. is still waiting for more results before calling the billionaire tax initiative, which would impose a one-time wealth tax on individuals and trusts with more than $1 billion in assets. The measure is currently trailing.

Five of the state’s 52 House races also have yet to be called. Four of them are intraparty battles that will not affect the final House makeup, but the fifth is in the 23rd Congressional District, where Representative Jay Obernolte, a Republican, is locked in an unexpectedly tight contest with Tessa Lynn Hodge, a Democrat.

California gives counties 30 days from Election Day to count all ballots and certify the results.

It’s unclear how long it will take for all of the races to be called. Dozens of counties are expected to issue updated results on Friday afternoon.

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In the Texas Capitol today, Senfronia Thompson, who has been in the State House since 1973, will announce she has more than enough support to become speaker. The Texas House press room is packed with lawmakers, staff members and members of the news media awaiting the announcement.

Thompson, known affectionately as “Miss T,” would be the first Black speaker in the state. This week’s blue sweep across Texas gave Democrats control of the Texas House for the first time since 2003.

David Chen

National reporter

Arizona Democrats have won the State Senate and State House of Representatives, according to The Associated Press. Coupled with Gov. Katie Hobbs’s re-election victory, Democrats will now have a trifecta — both legislative chambers and the governor’s office — for the first time since the mid-1960s. In fact, the Democrats have not had an outright majority in any legislative chamber in Arizona since the early 1990s.

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President Trump announced that Stephen Miller, the architect of his mass deportation effort and a perennial target of liberal critics of the Trump administration, would be promoted to be the White House chief of staff, a stunning move to elevate a hard-liner in his staff after a stunning Republican defeat in the midterm election.

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As lawyers descended on Mississippi to watch ballots be counted, Scott Colom, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, spoke to reporters at a senior center in Jackson, Miss. “Listen, they need to accept the results, right?” he said of Republicans. “That’s what our democracy is all about. When people lose, they can’t be sore losers. They have to accept the results.“

Colom’s lead in the race has grown to more than 2,000 votes, but three days after the election, the race remains too close for The Associated Press to call.

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The latest vote report from Mississippi was favorable for Scott Colom, the Democratic candidate for Senate, who picked up 74 votes after Wilkinson County reported its tally at around 12:30 p.m. Eastern. He won a batch of votes from Bolivar County by 123 votes. In total, Colom’s statewide margin over the Republican incumbent, Cindy Hyde-Smith, now stands at 2,010 votes.

Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed, Democrat of Michigan, has formed a leadership PAC, which will allow him to raise money to give away to other Democrats. He is naming it Habibi PAC. “Habibi” is an Arabic term of affection — and one that El-Sayed had used to mock Republicans at times on the campaign trail.

“JD, habibi — there is this delicious irony in the fact that you’re constitutionally obligated to swear me in in January,” El-Sayed said in a victory speech, referring to Vice President JD Vance.

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Democrats are now claiming their victories include a majority of all statehouse seats across the country.

More than 500 seats in state legislatures were flipped blue in Tuesday’s midterms, according to the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, the arm of the party focused on state-level races.

Democrats have new trifectas — control of the governor’s office and both statehouse chambers — in at least Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. That puts the party in a powerful position to pass state laws.

In three closely watched Arab American communities in Wayne County, Mich., support for Abdul El-Sayed shifted sharply to the left, outperforming past Democratic performance — not just compared with Kamala Harris’s numbers in 2024, but even against the margins received by Joe Biden in 2020.

These communities were among the places where the uncommitted vote performed particularly well in the 2024 Democratic presidential primary in Michigan, reflecting anger over the Biden administration’s handling of Gaza and Israel.

In Dearborn and Dearborn Heights, both of which President Trump carried in 2024, El-Sayed’s margins were more than 25 percentage points higher than Biden’s margins from 2020. In Hamtramck, which Harris narrowly won in 2024, El-Sayed’s margin was 85 percentage points — a 13-percentage-point increase from Biden’s margin in 2020.

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Lauren Boebert is locked in an unexpectedly close race in Colorado.

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Representative Lauren Boebert, a right-wing firebrand who has been in and out of favor with President Trump, was fighting for her seat in an unexpectedly tight race in Colorado. She trailed her Democratic opponent by a few thousand votes as of Friday morning.

Election analysts had favored Ms. Boebert over her challenger, Eileen Laubacher, a retired rear admiral in the Navy, in Colorado’s Fourth Congressional District, long considered one of the state’s safest Republican seats.

That the race has yet to be called three days after the election offered yet another sign of how dissatisfaction with Mr. Trump’s policies has hurt Republicans in the midterms.

The district encompasses a mix of rural farming and ranching communities on the Great Plains and in the suburban hubs east of Denver.

Ms. Laubacher, who served on the National Security Council in the Biden administration, was leading in the district’s more populous, suburban counties. She campaigned on ending Mr. Trump’s tariffs, enacting tax cuts for the middle class, strengthening rural hospitals, and fighting corruption.

Ms. Boebert initially gained political fame in 2020 as a hard-right gun activist, unseating a more moderate five-term Republican, Scott Tipton, in Colorado’s Third District, which is speckled with progressive upscale ski towns but dominated by conservative ranching and working-class communities. She joined the conservative Freedom Caucus that year and later helped lead the Second Amendment Caucus.

Before being elected to Congress, she had owned a gun-themed restaurant called Shooters Grill in Colorado’s ranch country, where she encouraged her wait staff to carry loaded firearms while serving customers.

In Washington, she boasted about carrying her Glock handgun and clashed with Democrats from time to time, drawing attention for her fiery statements. Shortly after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, she triggered an alarm while passing through a newly installed metal detector and refusing to allow guards to search her handbag.

After she won a close re-election in the Third District in 2022, she switched to the state’s more reliably conservative Fourth District for her 2024 campaign and won by about 12 points that year.

Ms. Boebert had been an ardent Trump supporter, but she fell out of his favor last year over her support for the release of the Epstein files. This year, Mr. Trump had criticized her as “weak,” but then he endorsed her just before the election, calling her a ”MAGA warrior.”

A Trump-backed candidate keeps a House seat in New York under Republican control.

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Anthony Constantino, a 44-year old sticker mogul who put his loyalty to President Trump at the heart of his campaign, narrowly won a House race to succeed Representative Elise Stefanik, keeping the seat in New York’s North Country under Republican control, according to The Associated Press.

A first-time candidate who spent roughly $17 million into his self-funded campaign, Mr. Constantino seemed to delight in eschewing political decorum, much like his mentor, Mr. Trump.

With the race still too close to call on election night, Mr. Constantino nonetheless delivered a 25-minute acceptance speech that was indignant and pugilistic. He told one Republican opponent to “go hide in a hole” and described reporters as “scumbags” and “evil.”

He closed by pledging to give each of his roughly 1,200 employees a $1,000 bonus, and called upon the leaders of other major companies to do the same.

It was Mr. Constantino’s penchant for grandiose gestures that gave him visibility in Mr. Trump’s circle. He mounted a 100-foot-wide “VOTE FOR TRUMP” sign atop the headquarters of his company, Sticker Mule, in Amsterdam, N.Y. He later gave the president a life-size bronze statue, and recorded a rap album that he entitled “Thank You President Trump.”

Democrats and some Republicans saw his political antics and his close ties to the president as a liability, bolstering the hopes of his Democratic opponent, Blake Gendebien, a dairy farmer who hoped to attract enough voters in a district that favored President Trump by 20 points just two years ago.

Mr. Gendebien, 49, who served as the former vice chairman of the cooperative that produces Cabot cheese, focused on local and economic issues, including expanding rural health care and bringing down the price of diesel for farmers.

He earned the endorsements of some of the state’s most powerful unions, including the A.F.L.-C.I.O., Teamsters, teachers’ union and Police Conference of New York. And he was careful to distance himself from Democrats on key issues like energy policy (despite the fact that the party showered him with significant financial and operational support).

It appeared Mr. Gendebien had some momentum, even slightly surpassing Mr. Constantino in one late-stage poll. But Mr. Constantino prevailed by two percentage points, with The Associated Press calling the race on Friday.

Mr. Constantino spent much of his campaign attacking his opponent, Mr. Gendebien, sometimes going to unusual lengths. He acknowledged paying private investigators to fly a drone above Mr. Gendebien’s farm to gather what he claimed was evidence that his rival was polluting, showing aerial video footage to reporters. (Mr. Constantino asserted that Mr. Gendebien was under investigation for pollution; state officials said there was no open inquiry.)

The over-the-top accusation followed a pattern of behavior. Mr. Constantino feuded publicly with those who should have been political allies, from local party officials to the head of the Conservative Party, Gerard Kassar. Mr. Constantino claimed that Mr. Kassar had made a threat to kill him; Mr. Kassar sued for defamation.

During the primary, Mr. Constantino was so disruptive during a candidates’ forum held by the St. Lawrence County Republican Party that he was removed by the sheriff.

Mr. Trump nonetheless endorsed Mr. Constantino in the primary, helping him to defeat Robert Smullen, a state assemblyman and former Marine who was the choice of the state Republican Party.

In the final push, Mr. Trump sent his son and his vice president to Rome, N.Y., for a last-minute rally for Mr. Constantino. In a video message, he called Mr. Constantino “a phenomenal person” and “a winner.”

Jane Gottlieb contributed reporting.

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State Senator Scott Wiener, a California Democrat, will replace Representative Nancy Pelosi in the 11th Congressional District, according to The Associated Press. Wiener had long eyed the San Francisco seat that Pelosi, the former House speaker, has held for 39 years.

But Pelosi instead endorsed his opponent, Connie Chan, a San Francisco supervisor. Both Wiener and Chan are liberal Democrats, but they split on housing and transit policy. Wiener will become the first openly gay person to represent San Francisco in the House.

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Representative Jeff Hurd, a Republican, defeated his Democratic challenger, Dwayne Romero, in Colorado’s sprawling Third Congressional District, according to The Associated Press. Facing headwinds, Hurd told voters during the campaign that he would put the interests of the district — which spreads across almost the entirety of Colorado’s western half — ahead of party loyalty.

In February, Hurd was one of six House Republicans who joined most Democrats in supporting a largely symbolic measure to rescind tariffs that President Trump had imposed on Canada last year. Romero, a decorated military veteran as well as a former state and local official, emphasized Hurd’s overall support for Trump policies.

The Democrat in the Mississippi Senate race maintains his lead after the latest reporting of votes.

An unlikely battle in Mississippi’s Senate race remained tight on Friday, after the latest tranche of votes reported showed Scott Colom, a Democratic prosecutor, leading Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, the Republican incumbent, by over 2,500 votes.

Mr. Colom’s lead grew by 76 votes over Ms. Hyde-Smith after more counties reported votes Friday evening, bringing his statewide lead to 2,574 votes, according to The Associated Press. In all, roughly 1,600 votes have been reported statewide today, increasing Mr. Colom’s margin by more than 700 votes. Several of the state’s more populous counties, such as Harrison and Hinds, have not updated their tallies since election night.

Mississippi’s elections are administered at the county level, and small numbers of votes have steadily trickled in over the last few days. These reported votes consist of a combination of absentee mail and provisional ballots. Mail-in ballots can continue to arrive, and provisional ballots can continue to be verified, until Tuesday, and counties have until Nov. 13 to certify their election results to the state.

In the other uncalled Senate race, in Alaska, the vote count has remained unchanged since Wednesday. Mary Peltola, the Democratic nominee, leads Senator Dan S. Sullivan, the Republican incumbent, in that race, with the candidates separated by less than one percentage point. A New York Times analysis of the ranked-choice ballots suggests that Ms. Peltola is on track to eventually prevail in the race, even if it advances to ranked-choice tabulation.

While some votes in Alaska may be reported in the coming days, the next substantial updates are expected to come on Monday and Tuesday, when more early in-person votes will be reported. The remaining mail-in ballots have until Nov. 18 to be counted.