Make New York Post a Preferred Source A week after the polls closed, 16 US congressional races remain without a winner — held up by recounts, late-arriving mail, ranked-choice arithmetic and several thousand provisional ballots of the kind that seldom matter and this year do.
Whatever the stragglers yield, the matter of who runs Congress is closed. Democrats have already secured 254 House seats to Republicans’ 163 and at least 54 seats in the Senate, according to the Associated Press.
What remains to be settled as of Tuesday afternoon are 14 House races and two US Senate races that will decide the size of those majorities — and the fate of several of the best-known Republicans in Washington.
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) trails Democrat Eileen Laubacher, a retired Navy admiral, by just over 3,000 votes in a district she carried by about 11 points two years ago.
Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), 83 and a member of the House since 2005, is 99 votes behind her Democratic challenger.
Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC), in Congress since 2001, leads his challenger by fewer than 3,000.
In the Senate, Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) trails her Democratic opponent by less than half a point, and Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) by about one.
Below is what’s holding up each count, and when the states expect to finish.
Democrat Mary Peltola, the state’s former congresswoman, leads Sullivan by just over 600 votes, with roughly a quarter of the ballots still to be tallied.
Neither has a majority, and under Alaska’s ranked-choice system, that sends the race to a second round.
State law forbids that round from starting until the last ballots are in, on the 15th day after the election. This year that is Nov. 18.
The delay is built into Alaska’s calendar — a ballot mailed from within the country may come in as late as Friday, and one from abroad as late as Nov. 18, provided it was postmarked by Election Day.
And much of the vote must arrive by plane or boat, from villages with no road access, entirely at the mercy of the weather.
Once tabulation begins, the last-place candidate is struck and his ballots pass to each voter’s next choice, round by round, until someone clears 50%.
The outcome may lie with the voters who backed neither frontrunner. About 2.2% chose Gerald Heikes, a Republican from Palmer.
Another 1.7% chose Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. — a retired teacher from Petersburg dubbed “Decoy Dan” who shares no relation in anything but name to the senator he’s running against.
The Justice Department thought the resemblance serious enough to sue before the election, asking a court to stop Alaska from certifying any result affected by confusion over the two Sullivans. A federal judge tossed the case Nov. 1, and the DOJ has since appealed.
The state’s lone House seat waits on the same schedule; Rep. Nick Begich (R-Alaska) leads independent Bill Hill by over 18,000 votes but sits at 49.2%, a hair short of rendering a second round unnecessary.
The Division of Elections is expected to add tens of thousands of ballots to the tally Tuesday and aims to certify results Nov. 25, according to the Alaska Beacon.
Democrat Scott Colom, a district attorney, leads Hyde-Smith by just over 2,500 votes, with about 97% of the vote counted, according to the AP — a margin of 0.3%.
Two batches of ballots remain: the first is absentee mail, which counts if postmarked by Election Day and received by Tuesday. The second is the affidavit ballot, Mississippi’s term for a provisional ballot — cast by voters who lacked an accepted photo ID at the polls or whose names were marked as inactive on the rolls.
In an ordinary cycle, such ballots are too scarce to matter for a statewide race. Colom’s campaign says about 15,000 were cast this time. Voters who cast one without an ID have until 5 p.m. Tuesday to produce it, then counties must certify their results by Friday.
Secretary of State Michael Watson said Monday that counties had processed 15,547 affidavit ballots, accepted 76%, and that some 2,577 absentee ballots were still out.
Mississippi is the only state with no formal recount process; a candidate who doubts the results would have to sue for one.
Hyde-Smith’s lawyers have already written to state officials demanding that every affidavit ballot be set apart and preserved for exactly that reason, The New York Times reported.
State Republican Party chairman Mike Hurst said lawyers aligned with the senator “will be ready, if necessary, to avail ourselves of every legal option at our disposal, if there is evidence that the law has been violated.”
“Where is Cindy Hyde-Smith? Why can’t she speak for herself? What is her path to victory?” he asked reporters Friday. “She doesn’t have one.”
Hyde-Smith, unseen in public for nearly a week, returned to the Capitol on Monday, telling reporters “they are counting votes.” She took no further questions, insisting “I don’t do hallway interviews.”
Four Republican-held House seats in North Carolina are uncalled, and all four will be decided on the same date.
County election boards meet at 11 a.m. Friday to finalize their results, having spent the previous 10 days since the election deciding which provisional ballots to count.
A trailing candidate within 1% may then demand a recount. The request is due by 5 p.m. Monday.
Closest of the four is the 5th District, where Democrat Chuck Hubbard leads Foxx by a handful of votes, with the two virtually tied at 48.7% to 48.7%.
As many as 3,117 provisional ballots were cast in the district’s counties, though an unknown share of those from Guilford County fall outside its borders.
Foxx beat Hubbard by 19 points in 2024. She has not conceded.
“There were more than 1,000 provisional ballots cast in this contest two years ago, and Republicans netted a total that would eclipse the current margin,” she said.
The congresswoman has also asked that observers working under the House Administration Committee be posted across the district while the count continues.
In the coastal 3rd District, Rep. Greg Murphy (R-NC) leads Democrat Raymond Smith by barely 200 votes with as many as 2,996 provisional ballots unresolved, according to The Assembly.
Murphy has declared victory, while Smith is raising money for a recount.
Reps. David Rouzer (R-NC) and Pat Harrigan (R-NC) hold wider leads in the 7th and 10th districts.
Rouzer has likewise claimed victory. Harrigan, surveying his party’s losses across the state, referred to the election as a “reckoning” for the Old North State.
Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.) leads Democrat Eliott Rodriguez — like Salazar, a former television anchor — by just over 1,000 votes in the Miami-based 27th District.
The margin is roughly 0.4% — inside the half-point margin at which Florida law requires a machine recount.
Miami-Dade workers began feeding nearly 250,000 ballots back through the machines Monday, and the new results are due by 3 p.m. Thursday.
Should the gap stand at a quarter-point or less, a hand recount follows.
Salazar has already claimed victory. And Rodriguez has complained to a federal court, seeking to remove Miami-Dade Supervisor of Elections Alina Garcia, a Republican, from the board overseeing the recount.
His campaign argued that Garcia’s son-in-law is one of the lawyers representing Salazar. A judge denied the request Monday.
“We are obviously disappointed,” a lawyer for Rodriguez told CBS News.
Florida’s counties file official results by noon Monday, and the state certifies the following day.
California sends nearly every voter a ballot by mail and counts any postmarked by Election Day that arrives within a week — a window that closes Tuesday.
The state does not certify its results until Dec. 11.
Three California races are unresolved, but just one involves a Republican.
Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.) leads Democrat Tessa Hofge 50.8% to 48.6% — some 3,000 votes — in the 23rd District.
Two other races lack a winner but don’t affect the final majority totals, because both finalists belong to the same party.
In the 4th District, Rep. Mike Thompson (D-Calif.), 75, trails fellow Democrat Eric Jones, 36, by 52.3% to 47.7%.
In the 7th District, Democratic incumbent Rep. Doris Matsui, 82, leads with 55.8% of the vote over fellow Democrat Mai Vang, 41.
Colorado’s counties have until Friday to finish counting in the 4th District, where Boebert’s deficit is significantly higher than the roughly 900 votes that would trigger an automatic recount.
In the Centennial State, a campaign may pay for one itself — and hers signaled it might.
“We are investigating some very unusual voting patterns and expect this election to head to a recount, one way or another,” a campaign lawyer for Boebert said. He did not specify what voting patterns the campaign found unusual.
Two other Republican incumbents are behind by a few hundred votes.
Rep. Brad Finstad (R-Minn.) trails Democrat Jake Johnson by 321 and has asked for a recount. Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.), who won by more than 40 points two years ago, trails Democrat Victoria Broderick by 280.
One other Republican incumbent clings to a lead: Wilson, up by some 3,000 votes — 0.99 points — in South Carolina, where a margin of 1% or less forces a recount.
In Maine’s 2nd District, former Gov. Paul LePage, 78, is roughly 5,400 votes ahead of Democrat Matt Dunlap, who conceded Nov. 5. LePage stands at 49.9%, so the state must run a ranked-choice tabulation regardless.
The last two seats will take the longest. Louisiana’s 5th and 6th districts each go to a Dec. 12 runoff between a Democrat and a Republican — three weeks before the new Congress is sworn in Jan. 3.
