Republicans have been largely silent so far after Senator Catherine Cortez Masto was projected to defeat her Republican challenger Adam Laxalt.

US media have been citing a letter circulated by three Republican senators calling for the postponement of party leadership elections. They're currently scheduled to take place in the middle of next week.

"We are all disappointed that a Red Wave failed to materialize, and there are multiple reasons it did not," the letter said.

"We need to have serious discussions within our conference as to why and what we can do to improve our chances in 2024," it added.

Meanwhile, Republican Senator from Missouri Josh Hawley tweeted, external calling for the party to "build something new."

"The old party is dead. Time to bury it."

The Democrats have kept control of the US Senate after holding the state of Nevada.

In a tight race, their candidate, Catherine Cortez Masto, defeated the Republican Adam Laxalt who had been endorsed by Donald Trump.

The Democrats now have 50 seats, while the Republicans have 49 in the 100-seat upper house.

The remaining seat, Georgia, is going to a run-off in December.

In the event of the Senate being divided equally between the two parties, Vice-President Kamala Harris has the casting vote.

Republicans could still take control of the US House of Representatives as votes continue to be tallied from a handful of districts after Tuesday's elections.

Anthony Zurcher
BBC North America correspondent

Image source, Getty Images

The Republican midterm flameout is now official. Democrats have retained control of the US Senate, which will pave the way for Joe Biden to spend two more years filling the federal courts with his nominees and staffing his administration largely the way he sees fit.

The Georgia Senate run-off is no longer a pivotal contest to determine control of the chamber, although a victory for Democrats there would make holding the majority in two years easier, when the party will have more at-risk seats to defend.

There is still a likelihood, although not certainty, that the Republicans will control a slim majority in the House of Representatives, bringing a variety of headaches for the president.

His legislative agenda is dead, and more aggressive Republican oversight is in store, but even that has a silver lining - if his political opponents are unable to effectively govern due to internal discord.

The consequences of this history-defying midterm election result are still being revealed.

Donald Trump’s political future has been damaged, although how enduringly remains to be seen. Joe Biden’s standing within his party has been bolstered. The political world in the US looks considerably different than it did just a week ago.

We are back to bring you the latest on what is happening in US politics after Tuesday's midterm elections.

Last night, we found out the Democrats had retained control of the US Senate after winning a pivotal race in the state of Nevada.

Senator Catherine Cortez Masto was projected to beat Republican challenger Adam Laxalt, who was backed by former President Donald Trump.

Those results amount to the best midterm performance for a sitting party in 20 years.

Stay with us for reaction from both sides of the political divide this morning.

Thanks for joining us for today's developments, which will resonate through US politics in the months and years to come.

We're pausing our live page now, but will be up and running again on Sunday morning, Washington DC time - when you can expect both parties to start getting their messaging out on the Sunday politics shows.

Bye for now!

Mike Wendling
US disinformation reporter

Some of the losing candidates in this year's midterms may not go quietly.

Mark Finchem, the Republican nominee for Arizona secretary of state, took to Twitter today to repeatedly attack “fake news”, external after media outlets called the race for his opponent.

He also retweeted a conspiratorial message about a “Soros orchestrated psychological operation” – a reference to billionaire Democratic donor George Soros, a frequent bugbear of the far right.

Finchem, who told the BBC before the vote that he doesn’t believe a Democrat could ever win in Arizona, is part of a group of candidates who aimed to transform elections at the state level.

But the America First Secretary of State coalition – seven candidates who made false claims of widespread fraud the centre of their campaigns – did not do very well.

In addition to Finchem, four others lost. One did win – Diego Morales in Indiana – and one member is still awaiting a result: Kari Lake, the Republican nominee for Arizona governor.

More broadly it’s been a mixed bag for candidates who insist, despite the evidence, that Donald Trump really won the 2020 election.

At least 125 election deniers have been elected to Congress or governor seats, according to a BBC analysis.

But many of the most hardcore fans of Donald Trump’s debunked theories were hurt by majoring on election denial. Some fared worse than other Republican candidates in victory – or simply lost outright.

Image source, Getty Images

After days waiting for votes to be counted in Nevada, we've just had a dramatic couple of hours - and one hugely significant result.

The Democratic win ensures Joe Biden's party will retain control of the US Senate for the next two years. Here's why that's important:

• The party with a majority in the upper chamber can fill the federal courts with judges nominated by the president. That also applies to the US Supreme Court should one of the nine seats become vacant
• Mr Biden will also be able to get people he wants in his administration approved more easily
• The run-off race in Georgia for the final Senate seat is no longer decisive because in the event of a 50-50 deadlock, Vice-President Kamala Harris can cast the tie-breaking vote
• But Democrats will want to make it 51-49 to give them a cushion - and to avoid the current power-sharing deal where both parties have equal numbers on committees. “It’s just simply better,” Mr Biden said tonight

Of course, Republicans may still eke out a narrow majority in the House of Representatives - and that would put an end to Mr Biden's legislative ambitions.

Image source, EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock

Biden made congratulatory calls from Phnom Penh, Cambodia to Senator Catherine Cortez Masto - whose projected victory in Nevada secured control of the Senate - and to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

“I feel good and I’m looking forward to the next couple years,” he told journalists.

He said that his government will try to get as much done as possible, but he expected it to be slow over the next two months during the 'lame-duck' session. This is the period between an election and the beginning of the next Congress, when only urgent matters are dealt with. The new Congress will begin on 3 January, 2023.

A bit more from the president, who clearly hasn't given up hope of a sizeable upset in the House of Representatives.

He said he was closely watching the remaining House races and didn't rule out the possibility that Democrats could still win a majority - but admitted - "it's a stretch, where everything has to fall our way".

Biden's party is projected to win a minimum of 210 seats, but Republicans appear on course to win the majority with 214 seats already in the bag. They need four more seats to retake control of the House.

Any majority they win would be slender. Toss-ups have been breaking for Democrats, and tonight we projected that they flipped Washington’s third congressional district - a striking gain in a seat Republicans were favoured to hold.

Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez was projected to defeat Joe Kent, a far-right Republican endorsed by former US President Donald Trump. Her win is set to turn the district blue for the first time in 12 years.

Image source, Reuters

President Joe Biden has now weighed in from Cambodia, where he's travelled for a summit. He said he was incredibly pleased with the US election turnout, and that the Republican Party would now need to decide "who they are".

He added that his focus now is the Georgia Senate race - which will go to a run-off on 6 December.

While the Democrats have control of the Senate, a win in Georgia would give them the required majority without a tie-breaking vote from Vice-President Kamala Harris.

Republican Senator Josh Hawley is among those reacting to tonight's projected Senate win for the Democrats.

Hawley - who represents Missouri - posted a short tweet, saying the old party was "dead" and it was time for something new:

Democrats are calling each other in joy and relief tonight, according to party members.

“Elation is an understatement,” Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut told CBS News. “Calling, texting, it started just minutes ago. Such a sigh of relief. What a moment.”

White House Chief of Staff Ronald Klain tweeted that Democrats had made history in various races in these midterm elections.

However, Republicans still appear on course to win a narrow majority in the House of Representatives.

David Willis
BBC News, Washington

Image source, EPA

This is a remarkable achievement by Joe Biden’s party, not only given his low approval rating but also the fact that inflation in this country is currently at a more than 40-year high.

Projections suggest that Catherine Cortez Masto – who six years ago became the first Latina to be elected to the US Senate – has defeated the Donald Trump-endorsed Republican candidate Adam Laxalt in the tightly-fought seat of Nevada, to retain her party’s slender majority in the upper house.

Even more remarkable, it appears, is the Democrats' performance in elections to the House of Representatives.

Republicans still appear on course to gain the majority there – albeit by a considerably reduced margin than many had previously predicted.

Given that midterm elections in America traditionally favour the party in opposition, this amounts to the best performance of its kind in 20 years – since George W Bush’s Republican party achieved gains in both chambers of Congress back in 2002.

The Nevada Senate race was called after Clark County - Nevada's largest which includes Las Vegas - released an updated ballot tally.

According to the local Nevada Independent news outlet,, external in the latest batch of 23,200 ballots counted in Clark County, incumbent Catherine Cortez Masto received 14,100, or about 60.4%, while her rival Adam Laxalt received 8,200 votes, or 35.4%.

You can explore how each candidate did across the state on our Nevada results page.

Cortez Masto had a simple message for her state tonight:

Chuck Schumer, who is the Senate majority leader and a senator for New York, also welcomed the Democratic newcomers who will soon be joining the chamber's ranks.

"Thank you to our senators who ran great campaigns and welcome to Peter Welch and John Fetterman, who will be our new senators. I know I'm confident in Georgia that Reverend Warnock will be re-elected and back in the Senate. He's done so many good things already."

Georgia will hold a run-off race on 6 December as neither candidate in the Senate race there reached the necessary 50% of the vote.

Image source, Reuters

Chuck Schumer has just spoken about tonight's Senate victory for Democrats, and says:

"I feel good for the country because so many people worried - I did - about this democracy. With all the negativity and all the threats, and even some people doing violence. Not the party leaders, but some of the people in the Republican party didn't seem to condemn it very hard.

"America showed that we believed in our democracy and that the roots are strong and it will prevail as long as we fight for it."

Addressing the rancorous mood which characterised many election races this time around, he appealed to Republicans to help heal divisions, saying:

"The American people are not happy with the leaders who condoned and even supported this nasty, poisonous rhetoric. And I'm making a plea to my Republican colleagues, we can disagree on so many issues, that's fair. But let's not have this kind of divisive negativity. Let's not have the condemnation of viciousness and even violence against poll workers against so many others. Let us try to come together, finally."

Now we're getting a projected result in the race to be Nevada's secretary of state: It's a win for Democratic candidate Cisco Aguilar.

The defeated candidate is Jim Marchant, an election denier who opposed the certification of President Joe Biden's election victory in the state in 2020.

Nevada's secretary of state does not have the power to certify election results, but can set election rules.

Top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer is among those celebrating the news that his party will retain control of the upper house of Congress - a feat that was far from guaranteed in these midterms.

Sam Cabral
BBC News in Washington

Image source, Getty Images

Senator Catherine Cortez Masto has won re-election in Nevada in a victory that guarantees the Senate will be controlled by Democrats in 2023.

Cortez Masto, 58, cuts a reserved figure on the campaign trail and on the job.

Even her backers admit that some voters don't know her full name and just call her "la senadora" instead.

Her father Manny was a back-slapping Nevada politician who worked his way up from parking valet, to lawyer, to president of the powerful government agency that promotes the state's all-important tourism industry.

He was friends with the long-serving Nevada Democratic senator Harry Reid, who hand-picked Cortez Masto, a former prosecutor and two-term state attorney general, as his replacement.

Reid spent years building Democratic strength in the state, and his backing is widely credited with delivering victories like her 2016 win.

She lost 16 of Nevada's 17 counties but dominated in Clark County, where more than 70% of the state's population lives, including the service workers who keep the lights running in Las Vegas.

She has been outspoken in support of legalised abortion and gun control. She voted to convict Trump of incitement of insurrection in the wake of the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol.

Latinos are historically a Democratic-leaning bloc and were particularly energised to vote against Republicans by Donald Trump's immigration platform in that election.

This time around, Cortez Masto was neck-and-neck with her challenger Adam Laxalt throughout.

The Republican gained notoriety two years ago for championing defeated President Trump's false claims of election fraud. One recent poll had him inching ahead with Latinos, who make up one in five eligible voters in Nevada.

But she managed to secure victory, and the Democrats now control 50 Senate seats.

Anthony Zurcher
BBC North America correspondent

Image source, Getty Images

The Republican midterm flameout is now official. Democrats have retained control of the US Senate, which will pave the way for Joe Biden to spend two more years filling the federal courts with his nominees and staffing his administration largely the way he sees fit.

The Georgia Senate run-off is no longer a pivotal contest to determine control of the chamber, although a victory for Democrats there would make holding the majority in two years easier, when the party will have more at-risk seats to defend.

There is still a likelihood, although not certainty, that the Republicans will control a slim majority in the House of Representatives, bringing a variety of headaches for the president.

His legislative agenda is dead, and more aggressive Republican oversight is in store, but even that has a silver lining - if his political opponents are unable to effectively govern due to internal discord.

The consequences of this history-defying midterm election result are still being revealed.

Donald Trump’s political future has been damaged, although how enduringly remains to be seen. Joe Biden’s standing within his party has been bolstered. The political world in the US looks considerably different than it did just a week ago.