2022 midterm election results

As Democrats brace for midterm losses, the intra-party blame is game set to boil over in the weeks ahead, prompting the White House to separate President Joe Biden and his agenda from the list of targets. 

The White House circulated an Election Day memo to allies underscoring that more than two dozen individual poll results demonstrate the popularity of the key individual elements of Biden’s agenda, ranging from his cornerstone legislative achievements to his actions on student loans, marijuana and his administration’s response to Covid-19.

“Before all the votes have even been cast, pundits are declaring that these midterms have been a referendum on the President’s agenda – nothing could be further from the truth,” the memo, which was obtained by CNN, says in its introduction.

Yet even Biden has acknowledged that his agenda, no matter how it polls in isolation, hasn’t translated to an American public that has taken a largely negative view on the direction of the country. “We’ve passed so many good things ... people haven’t realized how good they are yet,” he said at a fundraising event last week.

The effort to get in front of expected losses comes after months of frontline Democratic candidates actively seeking to separate themselves from Biden. It’s a reality advisors say Biden doesn’t take personally. After 36 years in the Senate, Biden’s view has long been that the candidates know what’s best for their state or district. But as Biden’s approval ratings started to inch up in the last few months, White House officials have bristled at the view that he was a singular drag on Democrats. 

Instead, they have pointed to the combination of history and economic headwinds. Nearly all of Biden’s recent predecessors that one-party control of Washington faced major midterm losses. The fact Americans have faced persistent inflation near four-decade highs only compounds the political difficulty. 

Election Day voting in Wisconsin is going smoothly, without any significant problems, said Wisconsin’s top election official Tuesday.

“As of this afternoon, there are no major issues that have been reported,” Meagan Wolfe, the nonpartisan administrator of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, said at a press conference. “Election Day in Wisconsin is going smoothly.”

The commission had received some “very minor reports earlier today of lines at the polling places around the state,” as well as “routine calls and questions,” Wolfe added.

Polls in the state close at 8 p.m. central time, and those waiting in line at the time can still vote, Wolfe reminded voters.  

As of Tuesday morning, voters had requested about 815,000 absentee ballots and returned about 742,000 of them, including about 318,000 in-person absentee ballots, she noted.

Acknowledging that some jurisdictions could take until Wednesday morning to complete their tallies of absentee ballots, Wolfe said, “election officials are always going to value accuracy over speed.”

“There are observers in that same room until the very last ballot is counted,” Wolfe said. “There really is no part of the election administration process that’s done behind a locked door.”

A video of an election official explaining a problem with vote tabulations outside a polling location in Maricopa County, Arizona, earlier Tuesday morning is spreading on social media, clocking up millions of views. The video, which was posted by a Republican activist, has already been viewed more than 2.5 million times on Twitter.

The clip is largely being amplified by right-wing personalities, some of whom are claiming — without evidence — that the machine issues are a sign of fraud. 

“We’ve anticipated legitimate mistakes and issues with election infrastructure being reframed as fraud," Kate Starbird, an associate professor at the University of Washington who studies the spread of disinformation, told CNN. 

The video shows an election worker in the Phoenix suburb of Anthem explaining a problem with tabulation machines rejecting ballots. 

Election officials quickly responded, saying they were working on the issue and that voters whose ballots were not being accepted by a tabulation machine could put their ballot in a secure box and they would be counted after the polls close. 

“No one is being disenfranchised. And none of this indicates any fraud or anything of that sort. This is a technical issue,” said Bill Gates, chairman of the county’s Board of Supervisors and a Republican himself. 

A county spokeswoman added that the poll worker in the viral video did what they were supposed to. “That poll worker at Anthem was doing their job, providing voters the information they need to participate in this election, and the options they have. He was calm and transparent,” said Megan Gilbertson of the county’s election department. 

CNN's Bob Ortega contributed to this reporting

Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff stopped at John O’Groats restaurant on Election Day, joining Los Angeles mayoral candidate Rep. Karen Bass to greet diners inside. 

“Today’s Election Day, so please do vote,” the vice president said to a table.

“Oh you voted, thank you for voting,” she said to another table.

At one point, when the vice president entered the second room of the restaurant, a woman stood up and pointed to an “I voted” sticker on her chest, prompting Harris to cheer.

“Remind everybody you know about the stakes,” Harris said. “Lots at stake.” 

Harris and Emhoff went around taking photos with diners, and Emhoff was overheard telling one diner to “get the pancakes.”

The vice president ordered two dozen biscuits, saying, “I am not playing around with biscuits” and joking that Emhoff could have only one. She got butter and jam on the side before going into the kitchen to thank the cooks.

The voting hours at two precincts in Cobb County, Georgia, were extended by a state court judge after the election sites opened later than expected Tuesday morning.

One precinct will be open until 7:06 p.m. ET and another will be open to 7:45 p.m. ET, according to the Cobb County government website, which said the hours were extended by Superior Court Judge Gregory Poole.

Poll workers across Michigan are reporting higher voter turnout than expected, said Michigan Department of State spokesperson Jake Rollow. 

Rollow said he still expects all ballots will be counted by 8 p.m. local time on Wednesday, which is within 24 hours of polls closing. 

As of 11:30 a.m. local time today, 2,018,929 absentee ballots had been requested in Michigan, and 1,758,987 had been submitted, according to Rollow. As of 12:30 p.m. today, there were 3,666 same-day registrations across the state, he said. 

A mother and son were removed as poll workers in Johns Creek, Georgia, minutes before polls opened this morning, after a social media post surfaced showing them attending the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol. 

“I am aware that it occurred. That really is a Fulton County internal issue. They have to mitigate the risk the way they see fit given that information,” said Gabriel Sterling, chief operating officer for the Georgia Secretary of State’s office, when asked about it by CNN’s Erin Burnett Tuesday. 

“I think it would have been better if they found out earlier potentially and worked with the people, but since it was so last minute and it came to light so late, I leave it to Fulton County. But yes, that did happen earlier this morning,” Sterling said. 

The social media post is under “investigation for concern,” Nadine Williams, Fulton County interim director of registration and elections, said at a press conference earlier on Tuesday. 

“We decided to remove them until we could complete the investigation,” Williams said. 

“We just want to make sure the election is secure,” she added. 

Social media posts and a comment made during a poll worker event was brought to the Fulton County board’s attention by a peer. Williams said the secretary of state’s office was consulted on the matter, and the state office agreed that there was a concern. 

Williams said she was not at liberty to comment on the nature of the social media post when asked by a reporter, but she confirmed that it included a threat about election security.

“There were some things in there that were not allowed. You cannot take videos or photos in the election. That’s what brought it to our attention,” Williams said. 

In eight US states, voters are sent a mail-in ballot automatically. Across the US, more than half of states require that mail-in ballots be received by Election Day. In 19 states, ballots can be counted if they are postmarked on or before Election Day.

The five most expensive Senate races of 2022 have seen nearly $1.3 billion in spending across the primary and general elections, according to OpenSecrets, a staggering sum that speaks to the massive amounts of money flooding the political system.

Leading the way is the Pennsylvania Senate race, where Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz are squaring off in the general election. All told, nearly $375 million has been spent on the race this cycle, OpenSecrets found. 

Here's how the other races in the top five stack up in terms of total spending: 

Pennsylvania was also the most expensive Senate race of the 2016 cycle, when Republican Pat Toomey was running for reelection. Total spending in that race was around $179 million, according to OpenSecrets — less than half the amount spent on the 2022 contest.

What numbers like these suggest is that attempts — earlier this century — to lessen the impact of money in politics have failed utterly. There is more money than ever before, and it's difficult to track where some of the money, spent by nonprofit groups that aren't required to disclose their donors, comes from.