00:00The midterm elections in the United States. Let's head straight over to Philadelphia,
00:04where elections expert and former Euronews head of polling, Boyd Wagner, is standing by for us.
00:10Good morning, Boyd. You've been following the whole thing throughout the night.
00:13What's the latest? What can you tell us?
00:16Well, we'll start with the House, where the AP now says that the Democrats have control
00:20of the lower body of Congress. They needed a net gain of just three seats. They are at 220 now,
00:27which gives them the majority per the AP. However, there are some projections, including
00:33NBC News, which is projecting them as many as 252. That would be the largest House majority
00:39in nearly two decades. And that's not even mentioned in the Senate yet.
00:43Well, let's talk about the Senate then. This was probably the biggest surprise, right?
00:48Yeah, this was going to be the dogfight and where Republicans thought that they could
00:52continue to keep control. The Democrats needed four seats, three to get to 50, and then plus
00:58one to bypass any advance swing vote there that would happen from the vice president.
01:05That number got blown away, though. We are now looking at 55, maybe 56 seats for the Democrats
01:12in this upcoming term in the Senate.
01:17So what is striking here, talking about the Senate, at the beginning of the cycle,
01:22nobody had the Senate on the map because most races took place in deeply red states.
01:30Tell us about the inroads that Democrats made here.
01:34Well, they did run a few very good candidates, including in Telerico and Texas, where they
01:40flipped deep red Texas. They ran a pastor, a conservative-leaning pastor as a Democratic candidate,
01:46and Kansas, which they flipped to Republican for the first time since 1932, nearly 100 years.
01:53We now have our eyeballs looking at the state of Mississippi, which is even deeper red than
01:58those other two states. And this, per the latest numbers that we saw, is now a 29 vote, 29 people,
02:0729 voters lead for the Democrats right now. That one's going to go on much longer. But
02:11you're looking at many, many deep red states that have flipped to the Democrats in this election.
02:18And there, of course, is Maine, not a deep red state, because Maine votes Democrat in every
02:24presidential election, almost. But Susan Collins, the long-term Republican senator, lost. Tell us about
02:32this briefly.
02:34Yeah, Susan Collins has always been able to overcome polling deficiencies, we'll say.
02:40Three terms in the Senate. This time, it did not come out that way. She finally got taken down by
02:46the Democrats in this one. Another very close race. She did exceed expectations with polling.
02:52However, she will be unseated this time around.
02:58And I'll see you next time around.
