Control of the US House of Representatives still pending after very close results

Control of the two Houses of Parliament in the United States is still pending and is likely to remain so for the next few days, after a very tight mid-term election in which the Democratic Party did not perform as badly as expected, nor did the Republican wave that conservatives had hoped for sweep the country.

In a country where there is no central electoral authority and where the shadow of doubt has been one of the protagonists of the campaign, the electoral verdict is likely to take days to be confirmed, especially given the narrow results.

In the Senate, according to projections, the Republicans appear with a slight lead of 48 seats to the Democrats' 47, but there are still five races to be decided, those of Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and Alaska.

According to media projections, Alaska, Nevada and Wisconsin would have Republican representatives and Arizona a Democrat, while in Georgia the candidates will probably have to go to a run-off election after none of them obtained the necessary 50% of the vote (there is a third candidate).

Thus, if these results are confirmed when the count progresses, the Republican Party would not win the majority in the Upper House and Americans would have to wait for the results of the run-off in Georgia to see if Joe Biden's party loses its majority in the Senate, which it currently holds thanks to the tie-breaking vote of Vice-President Kamala Harris.

As for the lower house, the House of Representatives, it is not yet known which party will control it for the next two years.

According to projections by the main US media, the Republicans are assured of 197 seats, to 172 for the Democrats, but both are still far from the 218 needed to secure a majority.

Although there are still days, or even weeks, to go before we have a complete picture of the composition of the US Congress for the next two years, one of the certainties of election night is that the predicted Republican wave did not exist and that Joe Biden will not do as badly as the Democrats feared.

Moreover, in the gubernatorial elections, the Democratic Party has managed to wrest two governorships from the Republican Party, Massachusetts and Maryland.

Although both states are progressive-leaning, they had been governed by Republicans for the past few years, and will now return to Democratic control.