Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.

* As Wednesday morning has progressed, Democrats have continued to receive some good news about highly competitive races, including Nevada’s gubernatorial contest, which state Attorney General Aaron Ford has won, defeating incumbent Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo.

* On a related note, the Democratic Party will now control a majority of the nation’s governor’s offices for the first time in nearly two decades.

* Democrats also scored a series of important state legislative victories in the midterms, flipping 12 state legislative chambers, according to a tally from the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee.

* In Texas, Democrats won five of the state’s most powerful elected offices for the first time since 1961. That list includes Jon Rosenthal defeating Bo French in the race for railroad commissioner, which is a powerful position that regulates the state’s oil and gas industry.

* There were all kinds of important ballot measures worth watching in the midterm cycle, including four focused on abortion rights. As MS NOW reported, sizable majorities in Virginia and Nevada backed constitutional amendments to protect reproductive rights, and in Missouri, 55% of voters opposed reinstating an abortion ban that voters struck down through a ballot measure in 2024.

The exception was in Idaho, where an abortion rights measure was defeated.

* In Ohio’s U.S. Senate race, Democratic Sen.-elect Sherrod Brown is returning to Capitol Hill, just two years after losing a re-election bid. His race was technically a special election, and unlike other Senate winners from the midterms, Brown will take office in December, during the lame-duck session, narrowing the Republican majority to 52-48 in the current Congress’ remaining months.

* As things stand, Democrats have already flipped seven U.S. Senate seats in the midterms, but an eighth might soon follow: In Mississippi, Democrat Scott Colom currently leads Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith by 43 votes with 96% of ballots tallied. On Wednesday morning, the local prosecutor told reporters that when the ballots are all counted, he’s confident he will be Mississippi’s next senator.

* And as the dust settles on the election cycle, it’s also worth celebrating a series of historic breakthroughs that happened this year, including the election of the first Muslim American U.S. senator (Democrat Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan), the first Black woman to be elected governor (Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms of Georgia), the first Native woman to be elected governor (Democrat Deb Haaland of New Mexico), the first Native woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate (Peggy Flanagan of Minnesota), and the election of the first openly gay man to the U.S. Senate (Chris Pappas of New Hampshire).

Relatedly, voters in Illinois elected Juliana Stratton to the Senate, which means three Black women will serve in the upper chamber simultaneously for the first time in American history.

The post Wednesday’s Campaign Round-Up, 11.4.26: Late results point to additional Democratic wins appeared first on MS NOW.

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From MS Now.