Two days after Americans went to the polls, the political world remained on edge yesterday, with both chambers of the US Congress still up for grabs as election officials meticulously counted hundreds of thousands of votes in a process that could take days to conclude.

Edison Research projects that Republicans have secured at least 211 seats in the House of Representatives, just seven short of the 218 needed to seize control from Democrats and end President Joe Biden's legislative ambitions.

However, thirty races remain undecided, including 19 of the most competitive, according to a Reuters compilation of the top nonpartisan forecasters.

In the meantime, the fate of the Senate hinges on three hotly contested states. In Nevada and Arizona, where the counting of late-arriving ballots is anticipated to take several more days, either party can win a majority by sweeping the races.

If these races do not produce a majority for either party, Georgia will hold a runoff election for the second time in two years to determine Senate control. The incumbent Democrat Raphael Warnock and the challenger Republican Herschel Walker will face off in a one-on-one matchup on December 6, as neither candidate received the required majority of votes on Tuesday.

Even though the Republicans were still favored to win the House, their performance on Tuesday was deemed unimpressive. Some Republicans blamed former President Donald Trump for the defeat of his endorsed candidates, including Pennsylvania celebrity surgeon Mehmet Oz.

Trump's diminished brand could encourage Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, following his resounding reelection victory on Tuesday.

Trump aimed at his would-be rival in a statement yesterday, dubbing him "Ron DeSanctimonious" for the second time in recent days and claiming credit for his political rise. The former president was expected to announce his third run for the White House on Tuesday, but the unpredictable Trump could still alter course.

Even with a small House majority, Republicans would be able to block Biden's priorities and launch investigations into his administration, setting the stage for bruising battles over pressing issues such as raising the national debt ceiling.

A Republican Senate would influence Biden's judicial nominations, including potential Supreme Court vacancies.

Vote-counting chugging along

As votes were counted, Democrats expressed cautious optimism regarding both the Nevada and Arizona Senate elections.

In Nevada, Republican challenger Adam Laxalt, the state attorney general, held a lead of less than 2 percentage points over Democratic incumbent Catherine Cortez Masto. However, as ballots from Clark County, which includes Las Vegas, are counted, Laxalt's advantage over Cortez Masto has shrunk.

Since Tuesday, Democratic incumbent Mark Kelly's margin over Republican challenger Blake Masters has shrunk, but he still leads by more than 5 percentage points in Arizona.

Bill Gates, chair of the board of supervisors in Maricopa County, by far the most populous county in Arizona and home to Phoenix, stated on Thursday that counting the backlog of more than 400,000 ballots would likely take until next week.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, who has echoed Trump's false claims about voter fraud and whose race against Democrat Katie Hobbs is too close to call, has accused Maricopa officials of deliberately dragging their feet, an accusation that Gates deemed offensive.

"Everyone needs to calm down a bit and tone down the rhetoric," said Republican Gates.

Despite deep voter frustration over high inflation and Biden's low approval ratings, Democrats avoided the historic wipeout losses suffered by the party in power in the first midterm election of a new president.

This was partially due to outrage over the Supreme Court's decision to eliminate a nationwide right to abortion, which led to more than a dozen state bans supported by Republicans.

"Women in America made their voices heard, man," Biden said at a Washington political event.

Hundreds of Republican candidates supported Trump's false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen when the president framed the election as a test of American democracy.