Nevada and Arizona, home to election sceptics, controls US Senate

• Nevada and Arizona could determine which party controls the US Senate. Georgia, a third Democratic-held state, will likely go to a runoff in December.
• It’s too early to predict the outcome of those two western states, which are often contests in presidential years.

Nevada and Arizona, two states where GOP victories could elevate some of the nation’s most prominent election deniers even after other nominees who had amplified former President Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election were rejected by voters in Tuesday’s midterm elections, could determine which party controls the US Senate.

As of early Thursday morning, it was still too early to predict the outcome of those two western states, which are often contests in presidential years, while media anticipates that Georgia, a third Democratic-held state, will move on to a runoff in December.

Two Democratic seats must be lost for Republicans to take the majority. Republicans appear to be gradually approaching the 218 seats necessary to win a majority in the House of Representatives, but a much narrower one than they had hoped for as votes continue to be tabulated across the nation.

But there are still many unanswered questions in the race for the Senate, including whether it will all come down to Georgia again after the Peach State gave the Democrats the majority in 2021 with victory in two runoff elections.

The importance of Georgia will be determined by Nevada and Arizona.

As of early Thursday morning, Democratic Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona continued to lead Republican Senator Blake Masters, while Democratic Senator Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada lagged behind Laxalt.

Late on Wednesday, Media reported that 160,000 ballots in Nevada and roughly 600,000 votes in the Grand Canyon State still needed to be counted.

Laxalt, Nevada’s former attorney general, was a co-chairman of Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign in the state and filed lawsuits attempting to overturn Nevada’s results in that election, which he said was “rigged.”

Cortez Masto had argued that the lies and election conspiracies theories embraced by Trump and allies like Laxalt led to the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Masters, a venture capitalist and first-time candidate, released a campaign video as he was competing for the GOP nomination in which he said he believed Trump had won the 2020 election. Masters, like Laxalt, clinched Trump’s endorsement.

Masters briefly seemed to back off some of that aggressive rhetoric after winning the Arizona Senate primary, for example, removing language from his website that implied that the election had been rigged.

He also acknowledged in a debate with Kelly that he had not seen proof of fraud that could have altered the election’s result. But after receiving a phone call from Trump asking him to “go stronger” on election skepticism, a conversation that was recorded for a Fox programme, the Republican contender appeared to change course.

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