America’s midterm elections, which left control of the Congress in doubt with several House and Senate seats still to be decided after a full day of ballot-counting, nevertheless marked a good day for democracy, President Joe Biden said Wednesday.
“Our democracy has been tested in recent years, but with their votes, the American people have spoken and proven once again that democracy is who we are,” Biden told reporters during a wide-ranging 53-minute news conference at the White House.
The president characterized his Democratic Party as having done better than expected against the Republicans and announced he will invite leaders of both parties to the White House after he returns from the G-20 meetings in Indonesia to discuss how to work together on economic and national security priorities.
U.S. political fortunes were still in limbo Wednesday, with control of both chambers in Congress uncertain pending vote counting that could extend for days in too-close-to-call contests.
Before Tuesday’s nationwide elections, most pollsters predicted opposition Republicans would claim control of the House and possibly the Senate, leaving Republican officials confident they would be able to thwart Biden’s policy aspirations for the second half of his four-year term in the White House.
The Senate now is divided 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans. But in Tuesday’s midterm elections, Democrats flipped control of the Republican-held seat in the eastern state of Pennsylvania, while the outcome remained uncertain in three other states – Arizona and Nevada in the western part of the United States, and Georgia in the South.
Thirty-five of the Senate’s 100 seats were at stake.
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