US midterm elections Who won, who lost and what it means

Four years ago, Ron DeSantis won the governorship of Florida by a fraction of a percent over Democrat Andrew Gillum. After four years of his conservative leadership, where he leaned into hot-button cultural issues like transgender rights and "critical race theory", railed against coronavirus pandemic restrictions, and became a fixture on conservative news outlets, he has won re-election in a walk.

How he did it is particularly remarkable.

In 2018, he lost the Democratic stronghold of Miami-Dade county by 20%. This year, he is on track to be the first Republican governor candidate to win in the majority-Hispanic area since Jeb Bush in 2002. He may even do so by a double-digit percentage.

Mr DeSantis's move to overrule his state legislature and redraw the state's congressional district lines to heavily favour Republican candidates has also paid national dividends. It has netted his party at least two of the five seats they need to win control of the House of Representatives.

These successes will go a long way toward providing the Florida governor with a springboard from which to launch a presidential campaign, if he so chooses.

As if to emphasise this, the crowd at Mr DeSantis's victory rally on Tuesday night chanted "two more years" - a tacit acknowledgement that if their man decided to run for president he'd have to resign as governor halfway through his four-year term.

Of course, if Mr DeSantis wants to win the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, he may have to go through his state's most prominent Republican resident - former President Donald Trump - to do so.

Thanks to their surprisingly strong performance in the 2020 elections, Republicans were only a handful of seats away from a majority in the House of Representatives coming in to the 2022 midterms. And they started these elections with a built-in advantage after redrawing some new congressional district lines in conservative states.

Now, even with Democrats winning some toss-up races, it appears Republicans are on track for a majority. The question, however, is how big a majority it will be.

It only takes one vote more than Democrats in the chamber to make Republican Kevin McCarthy speaker of the House. However, he will have to exercise incredible tactical and strategic skill to hold his party together on major votes if the margin is narrow.

With any form of majority, Republicans will be able to slam the door shut on the Democratic legislative agenda and ramp up investigations into the Biden administration. That is a win by any measure.

Beto O'Rourke in Texas and Stacey Abrams in Georgia may have both lost their statewide races in 2018, but they won Democratic hearts with the narrowness of their defeats. Their ability to raise millions of dollars in campaign funds and build impressive grass roots had many on the left tapping them as the future of the party.

Supporters hoped that they could climb the proverbial mountain when both ran for office in their home states again this year.

Both came up short.

Ms Abrams, who narrowly lost to Republican Matt Kemp four years ago, will finish well behind him this time. Mr O'Rourke lost his race to Republican Governor Greg Abbott by a larger margin than he lost to Senator Ted Cruz.

Democrats will have to go looking for new stars.