2022 midterm election results

Former President Donald Trump confirmed Tuesday that he voted for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, predicting a "great night" for Republicans. 

"Yes, I did," Trump told reporters when asked if he cast a ballot for DeSantis outside a polling location in Palm Beach where he voted. 

"I think we're going to have a very great night and it's exciting," he added. 

Trump cast his ballot shortly after 11:30 a.m. ET at the Morton and Barbara Mandel Recreation Center in Palm Beach, just minutes away from his Mar-a-Lago estate where he plans to watch election returns this evening with dozens of aides, allies, and local Republicans. He arrived with former first lady Melania Trump and briefly took questions outside after voting indoors.  

The former president's political future may largely depend on Tuesday's midterm outcomes, as he looks for his handpicked and endorsed candidates in key federal and statewide races to prevail. Major losses for Trump-backed candidates could create obstacles for his 2024 presidential campaign, which Trump is eyeing to announce one week from today. 

At a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, Trump referred to the Florida governor as “Ron DeSanctimonious.”

Attorney Lin Wood tells CNN he will appear before the special grand jury that is investigating efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia as a material witness tomorrow morning. 

The Special Purpose Grand Jury that is being led by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis returns tomorrow after taking a roughly one-month hiatus around the election.

Wood, a staunch Trump supporter, is a veteran defense attorney who focused on civil litigation and has worked on high-profile cases in the Atlanta-area.

He pushed a series of cases after the 2020 Presidential election that were rapidly dismissed by the courts, and described as disinformation by state election officials.   

Investigators are also interested in hearing from Wood about a meeting he held at his South Carolina home with other supporters of the former president working on election challenges after the 2020 election.  

CNN has reached out to the Fulton County DA for comment.

You might hear that word — "wave" — thrown around this week if Republicans take some power from Democrats on Election Day. They'll argue they have been given a mandate from American voters.

Republicans could seriously underperform their potential, considering President Biden's approval rating and the historical precedent, and still pick up five seats and the House majority.

Is that a wave? Power will have changed dramatically. But it feels closer to a course correction than a major change in government. Here's a full list of House majority changessince the start of the modern party system just before the Civil War.

Sean Trende of RealClearPolitics and the American Enterprise Institute argued back in 2018, just before Democrats reclaimed the House from Republicans, that it's a wave election if there is "a sharp, unusually large shift in the national balance of power, across multiple levels of government." You'd need GOP victories in multiple governor's races and a Senate majority to make the change in power be reflected across multiple levels of government. 

Trende added some statistical criteria to argue an election is a wave election if it is outside the shift in power during an election. It might be easier to put a round number as a baseline and argue a swing of 50 or more House seats is a wave.

By the 50-seat rule, the 2010 midterm election was certainly a Tea Party wave with a change of 64 seats in the House. The 1994 Republican revolution was a wave when the GOP gained 54 seats. 

The 2006 midterm where Democrats gained the majority with a 32-seat gain would not be a wave, even though it made Nancy Pelosi speaker of the House and gave Democrats a Senate majority. Trende argued 2006 could be viewed as a wave in conjunction with 2008, when Democrats gained an additional 21 seats in the House.

But the 2018 midterm, when there was a 42-seat change, would not have been a wave, even though it restored Pelosi as House speaker. In any event, with this year's election, Republicans seem poised to once again take back control of the House.

While the White House is bracing for possible Election Day loses, Vice President Kamala Harris woke up this morning in rainy Los Angeles after telling a groups of organizers Monday night that Democrats would “see victory.” 

Harris started Tuesday with her normal routine, a senior Harris adviser tells CNN, maintaining her daily morning workout and attending her normal meetings, which means receiving some form of the president’s daily briefing while in Los Angeles.

The vice president will receive regular updates on election news throughout the day from a host of staff in California, the Executive Building in DC, while aides stay connected with officials at the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and other Democratic Party officials who track midterms results closely.

Harris is scheduled to spend Election Day calling into radio stations for quick interviews meant to drive turnout at 11:00 a.m. ET and 4:30 p.m. ET while her husband, second gentleman Doug Emhoff, joins NARAL Pro-Choice America for a virtual political event on reproductive rights.

Aides are also actively discussing if and how Harris could make an in-person and public Election Day stop somewhere in L.A., but are cognizant of how the vice president’s large footprint could impede ground organizers during crucial voting hours. 

The vice president and second gentleman voted by filling out mail-in-ballots, which Emhoff said he would drop off after a rally on Monday.

In the evening, Harris will watch the returns come in, but her location to watch return remains in flux and aides would not disclose exactly what the options are.

Voting rights advocates in key states said the first hours of voting in Tuesday’s midterms appeared to be going smoothly with only isolated problems reported.

“What we are seeing are things that we usually see on Election Day,” said Susannah Goodman, director of election security at Common Cause. “Sometimes voters are going in and one of the voting machines isn’t working or lines are a little longer.”

The key battleground state of Pennsylvania is “not experiencing anything systemic,” Khalif Ali, executive director of Common Cause Pennsylvania, told reporters late Tuesday morning.

He said there were a handful of calls about polls opening late in eastern parts of the state and some isolated incidents of electioneering occurring too close to polling places in Allegheny County. He said poll workers quickly addressed the problem by moving the people farther away.

A key issue in Pennsylvania remains the thousands of mail-in ballots are risk of being rejected because of missing or incorrect dates on the return envelope. Ali said he does not know how many ballots are affected statewide.

In Florida, Common Cause’s Amy Keith said more than 15,000 mail-in ballots had been flagged across the Sunshine State for signature problems or other issues as late last week.

Under state law, voters have until 5 p.m. ET Thursday to fix problems with those ballots. But Keith encouraged voters to go online to track their ballots and quickly resolve any issues before potential disruptions from tropical storm Nicole, which is bearing down on the state.

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An election official in Philadelphia on Tuesday told CNN nearly 3,600 mail-in ballots risk being rejected because of incorrect information, missing dates or missing secrecy envelopes.

The increase of roughly 200 ballots was added over the weekend. Roughly 250 of the 3,600 mail-in ballots have been cured. People who weren’t able to cure their ballots at city hall can still vote provisionally today. 

On Saturday, election officials in Philadelphia said more than 3,400 mail-in ballots risked being rejected because of incorrect information, missing dates or missing secrecy envelopes.

Philadelphia City Commissioners’ Chairwoman Lisa Deeley released the affected voters’ names and urged them to take immediate steps to get replacement ballots.

The action by Deeley came after the state Supreme Court last week barred local election officials from counting ballots with missing or incorrect dates on the return envelope.   

Pennsylvania’s requirement that voters sign and provide a handwritten date on their ballot return envelope has been the subject of litigation for months. And on Friday, several Pennsylvania groups, including the state branches of the NAACP and the League of Women Voters, filed a lawsuit in federal court, challenging the state’s plan to not count undated ballots.

The lawsuit calls a missing or incorrect date “a meaningless technicality” and argues that throwing out a ballot on those grounds violates federal civil rights law.

As voters head to the polls on Election Day, more than 45 million pre-election ballots have already been cast across the 47 states where figures were available, according to data from elections officials, Edison Research and Catalist.

Pre-election voting has been ahead of the 2018 pace across the states where data is available for the last three cycles. However, it’s still too early to know if overall turnout will reach 2018 levels, as voting patterns may have changed in the last few years. 

Texas still has the most pre-election votes, with more than 5.4 million ballots cast. Florida has had more than 4.9 million ballots cast, and California has more than 4.7 million. Georgia, with more than 2.5 million ballots cast, and North Carolina, with more than 2.1 million, are the only other states with more than 2 million ballots cast so far. 

The number of ballots cast will continue to increase as more mail is delivered, voters drop off their ballots and election officials update their tallies. 

Some voter data comes from Catalist, a company that provides data, analytics and other services to Democrats, academics and nonprofit issue-advocacy organizations and is giving insights into who is voting before November.

Lavonne Cobb voted today with her economic future in mind – and that’s why she said she cast her ballot for Democratic candidates.

“Social Security is a big issue when it comes to voting,” said Cobb, 50, pausing to talk for a moment as she left the county civic center in Marietta, Georgia. “I came out to make sure that I put in my vote so that my generation will have some type of security in the future.”

For all the millions of dollars in TV ads – about a quarter billion in the Senate race alone during Georgia’s primary and general elections – Cobb expressed exhaustion and excitement at Election Day.

“It’s entertaining,” she said of the barrage of ads, “but I am so ready for it to be over.”

She supported Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, as she did two years ago.

“He hasn’t seemed to let me down,” Cobb said. “You know when you go to a restaurant, you stick with what you know, then you don’t have to worry about being disappointed? I stuck with what I know.” 

Watch here:

 Some check-in machines at voting centers in Bell County, Texas, are not working due to synchronization issues tied to Sunday’s time change, according to an official.

“Some of our check-in machines … did not automatically update to the time change and as a result, because of the security involved with these things, they were not allowed to come online because the computer detected there’s a synchronization issue,” Bell County Public Information Officer James Stafford told CNN Tuesday morning. “Out of security, they were not allowed to come online, so we weren’t able to check people in at those locations."

Stafford stressed that the issue only affected check-in machines and not any voting tablets or voting tabulators, he said. 

Check-in machines at eight of the county’s 42 voting centers were affected by this issue before polls opened, Stafford said. Two hours later, after polls opened, there are two voting centers still having this issue, he said.  

Voters in Bell County may vote in any of the 42 voting centers in the county. People who came to locations affected by the check-in machine issues were told about alternate locations nearby, Stafford said.  

CNN’s Caroll Alvarado contributed to this report.