Harris Picks Up One Crucial Electoral College Vote in Blow to Trump

Kamala Harris has secured victory in the integral blue dot of Nebraska, bringing her one step closer to her 270 to win. 

Harris won the single electoral vote from Nebraska’s 2nd congressional district, the Associated Press called Tuesday evening.

The blue dot was important to Harris’s campaign, and she now has 210 electoral college votes to Trump’s 230 votes, as both candidates race toward the 270 votes needed for victory. Trump has already pulled off a victory in the battleground states of North Carolina. Results in the other battleground states have yet to be announced. 

Omaha has been a pain in Republicans’ sides throughout the election cycle. Nebraska is one of only two states with a split electoral vote system, giving those living in the state’s largest city a special role in determining the presidential election. That’s why MAGA sought to change the state to a winner-take-all system earlier this year. 

While Harris and Tim Walz, who is from the state, won the district’s one electoral vote, Trump will take Nebraska’s remaining four.   

Democrats were perhaps buoyed to go to the polls thanks to Nebraska’s two abortion-related, and slightly confusingly worded, ballot questions. Also perhaps aiding in Harris’s victory, thousands of Nebraska’s former felons, many of whom live in or near Omaha, were enfranchised less than three weeks before the election. 

As results continue to trickle in, Walz should take a second to celebrate his home state win.

Republicans have taken control of the U.S. Senate, according to the Associated Press.

Republicans held 51 seats Tuesday night and Democrats held 42. There are still seven seats to be called.

The House majority has not yet been determined.

Ahead of the election, several GOP contenders found themselves struggling in states where the top of the ticket, Donald Trump, saw considerable enthusiasm.

Republican senators found themselves met by aggressive opponents. In Nebraska, Senator Deb Fischer found a tough contender in independent candidate Dan Osborn. Meanwhile, Texas Democratic candidate Colin Allred appeared to gain traction ahead of the election in his race against Republican Senator Ted Cruz.

Fischer and Cruz ultimately kept their seats.

And Republican challengers seemed to falter against Democratic incumbents. In Arizona, Kari Lake previously trailed Democratic Representative Rueben Gallego by multiple points, even as Kamala Harris and Trump found themselves tied. Ohio’s Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown held a lead against Bernie Moreno. And in Montana, Republican challenger Tim Sheehy held only a slim four-point lead over Senator John Tester, even though Trump led Harris by 17 points in the Treasure State.

Brown lost his seat. Gallego and Tester’s races have not yet been called.

Republican Senator Deb Fischer won her re-election Tuesday night, dashing Democratic votes that independent Dan Osborn would successfully oust her from office. 

Fischer won against the former leader 51.5-48.5 percent, with 72 percent reporting, according to the Associated Press.

Osborn, who led 500 workers at his Kellogg’s plant through a three-month strike to end a two-tiered benefits system and stop plant closings, led an impressive campaign against Fsicher, who has held the Senate seat since 2013. The Democratic Party did not field a candidate in the race, but given Osborn’s political views, his win was expected to be a serious setback for the GOP.

With Fischer’s victory, Republicans have secured control of the Senate. They currently have 51 seats to Democrats’ 42 seats, with seven seats still remaining to be called.

Osborn refused to seek an endorsement from any political party including the Democrats, citing his desire not to be beholden to the money or special interests behind them. “I want to be clear that I’m an independent,” Osborn told the Nebraska Examiner in May. “I want to stay true to who I am.”

Still, his pro-labor stances were expected to have him caucusing with the Democrats similar to Independent Senator Bernie Sanders.

“I hadn’t been a very political person until corporate greed came knocking on my door a few years ago, when I was president of my local union, and we went out on strike, at a time where the company was making record profits,” Osborn told Semafor in September.

With Fischer’s victory, Democrats’ hopes to retake the Senate comes to a sad end.

Missouri overturned a total abortion ban Tuesday, with the majority of the state voting to enshrine abortion protections in the state constitution.

Roughly 53.2 percent of the state voted in favor of Amendment 3, achieving the simple majority necessary to protect reproductive freedom in Missouri, including an individual’s decision to have an abortion up to the point of viability.

Fetal viability typically occurs during the second trimester, between 23 and 24 weeks of pregnancy, but the ballot measure has a different definition for the developmental stage. Instead, it describes fetal viability as “the point in pregnancy when, in the good faith judgment of a treating health care professional” there is a “significant likelihood of the fetus’s sustained survival outside the uterus without the application of extraordinary medical measures.”

The measure, called the Right to Reproductive Freedom Initiative, solidifies that the government has no role in a person’s “fundamental right to reproductive freedom,” including but not limited to prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, birth control, abortion care, miscarriage care, and respectful birthing conditions. It undoes the Show-Me State’s total abortion ban, which took effect one hour after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.

“The right to reproductive freedom shall not be denied, interfered with, delayed, or otherwise restricted unless the Government demonstrates that such action is justified by a compelling governmental interest achieved by the least restrictive means,” the ballot measure read in part. “Any denial, interference, delay, or restriction of the right to reproductive freedom shall be presumed invalid.”

Governmental interest was specified as compelling only if it had the limited effect of “improving or maintaining the health of a person seeking care” and was consistent with “widely accepted” evidence-based medicine and does not “infringe on that person’s autonomous decision-making.”

Missouri is one of 10 states that have placed abortion on the ballot this year—the most to appear in a single year in U.S. history.

Democratic state Senator John Mannion has defeated Republican Representative Brandon Williams, marking an important victory for New York Democrats in the states 22nd congressional district.

Mannion earned 53.9 percent of the vote with 84 percent reporting.

For months ahead of the election, Williams was the only House Republican whose seat “leaned Democrat,” according to Cook Political Report, making it an essential marker for Democrats as they attempted to retake the House. Williams narrowly won the seat by fewer than 3,000 votes during the 2022 midterm elections, when Republicans flipped four seats across the state.

Like many pro-Trump Republicans, Williams has attempted to paint his opponent as weak on crime, spending nearly $3 million on attack ads with help from the National Republican Congressional Committee and the Congressional Leadership Fund, according to The New York Times.

Despite Republican spending, Mannion appeared to have a sizable lead ahead of Election Day. One Democratic PAC called the 314 Action Fund canceled a $600,000 ad and mailer blitz effort for Mannion because he didn’t appear to need the extra boost, according to Syracuse.com.