It still may be hours – or days – before enough ballots are counted in Arizona and Nevada to determine who won the Senate and gubernatorial races in both states. There are also still many key congressional races uncalled in California and Colorado that will determine what the House looks like when the new Congress is seated in January.
The unofficial results – and lingering uncertainty about who will control Congress next year – hasn’t prevented Republican apprehension about the election results, where an expected GOP wave never materialized. The results have raised new questions about House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy’s path to the speakership and added a new layer to a potentially looming 2024 feud between former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Here’s what you should know as the counting continues:
What is taking so long to count ballots in key states? The biggest reason it’s taking so long is the way that each state handles the ballots outside of those cast at polling places on Election Day, including both early votes and mail-in ballots.
In Arizona, for instance, CNN estimates there are roughly 540,000 ballots to be counted. The majority of those, about 350,000 ballots, are in Maricopa County, the state’s most populous county that includes Phoenix.
Of those ballots, about 290,000 were dropped off at vote centers on Election Day. A top official told CNN late Thursday that the county expects to start releasing the first results from those outstanding ballots Friday evening.
“We should start to see those tomorrow, I believe – we’ll start seeing those come in,” said Bill Gates, chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors.
Those ballots have to be processed before they can be counted, leading to a lag time in tabulating. The mail-in ballots dropped off were “a record” for the county, Gates said.
Nevada mail-in ballots still arriving: In Nevada, the state law allows mail-in ballots to be received through Saturday, as long as they were postmarked by Election Day, meaning counties are still receiving ballots to be counted.
As of Thursday evening, CNN’s Decision Desk estimates approximately 95,000 votes remain outstanding.
In Clark County, the state’s largest that includes Las Vegas, there are more than 50,000 ballots still to be counted, Clark County registrar Joe Gloria said Thursday.
Trump vs. DeSantis: The lackluster performance of several Trump-endorsed candidates in battleground states has cast new doubts on Trump’s potential 2024 campaign launch that’s expected at an event scheduled for Tuesday.
At the same time, DeSantis’ resounding reelection victory in Florida is fueling calls for him to capitalize on his momentum and challenge Trump for the 2024 nomination.
After “red wave” washes out, McCarthy faces tougher path: McCarthy is moving swiftly to lock down votes needed to claim the speaker’s gavel in the next Congress, as Republicans still appear to be closing in on a majority in the House even after Democrats had a better-than-expected night on Tuesday. CNN has not yet projected a Republican takeover of the chamber.
McCarthy privately spoke to his closest advisers and confidantes in a Wednesday morning phone call. The California Republican tapped a group of members to be on his whip team that will help him secure the votes to win the speakership in January, with GOP lawmakers on the call promising to “work hard to get him elected,” according to a source familiar with the matter.
