Early results boost GOP effort to hold Senate as voters cast midterm verdict
Rendering their verdict after a caustic season of anger and political recrimination, voters poured into polling places across the country on Tuesday in a midterm contest offering the first electoral judgment on the tumultuous presidency of Donald Trump.
Early results heartened both parties.
Republicans picked up a Senate seat in Indiana, with businessman and former state lawmaker Mike Braun - a staunch Trump supporter - defeating first-term incumbent Joe Donnelly. In Tennessee, GOP Rep. Marsha Blackburn defeated the state's former governor, moderate Democrat Phil Bredesen, to hang onto the seat of the retiring Republican incumbent, Bob Corker.
In West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin III, a prime target in a state Trump
