You should know these midterm election winners and losers

A week after the midterm elections, votes are still being counted in the United States. The final distribution of seats in the House of Representatives is still unclear, although the Republicans will now have a majority here. A by-election is due for the Senate, which is dominated by Democrats. Nevertheless, there are already clear winners and losers in these midterm elections. We present a few.

One of the big winners is definitely Ron DeSantis. In January, the 44-year-old wants to be sworn in as governor of Florida. At the midterms, he was elected to a four-year term for the second time in a landslide victory. He got 19 percentage points more than his Democratic challenger in the former swing state Florida.

Since then, at the latest, he has been considered a possible promising Republican candidate for the White House in 2024. He has not yet officially signaled his interest. According to the US media, a possible explanation in the spring of 2023 is expected in his environment.

But DeSantis is already being attacked by Donald Trump, who declared his candidacy on Tuesday. DeSantis is just an "average governor with great public relations." Shortly before the election, Trump attacked his fellow party member as "Ron Hypocritical".

Unlike Trump, DeSantis understands the business of government. He speaks in a structured manner and has been a professional politician for ten years. DeSantis studied at Yale and Harvard, served in the Navy.

During the election campaign, he raised a lot of money and spent little of it. Politically, this is currently being neglected in the debate, DeSantis and Trump tick in a similar way.

Democrat John Fetterman, 53, won the race for the Senate seat in Pennsylvania, capturing a previously Republican Senate seat. So he gave Trump's pupil Mehmet Oz a defeat.

The two-meter man Fetterman, who likes to appear in a hoodie and show off his tattoos, came up with 51 percent. He struggled in the election campaign after a stroke in May and contested the TV debate with considerable language difficulties.

In terms of content, he used this stroke of fate to point out the considerable deficits in the health system. “Who of you has a serious health impairment? Or who of you knows someone who suffers from it?” he asked again and again at election events. Many arms were raised.

Fetterman stands for middle-class politics. It is a departure from the elitist attitude that was once common among Democrats, such as Hillary Clinton.

Recently there has even been speculation about Fetterman's candidacy for the presidency. But that is premature given his health problems. The next step: At the beginning of January he will be sworn in as a senator.

Even the German Chancellor has read a book by J.D. Vance. Now the 38-year-old has been elected to the Senate as a Republican in Ohio. He got 53 percent and replaces his Republican predecessor Bob Portman, defeating Democrat Tim Ryan.

Vance is best known for the novel Hillbilly Elegy. It was about his childhood and adolescence in the American rust belt, was published in 2016 and was considered a key to understanding Donald Trump's election victory in the same year. At the time, Vance was a fierce critic of Trump, calling him “disgusting”, even a “Hitler of America”.

He has long since turned into a Trumpist, railing against "woke" ideology like his hero Trump. In the election campaign, the German-born tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel supported him with more than ten million dollars.

It took a while to count, but on Friday it was clear: Democratic Senator Mark Kelly, 58, from Arizona, has won a second term. The former Nasa astronaut got 51 percent and defeated the right-wing Republican challenger Blake Masters (46 percent).

Kelly was only elected to the Senate in a 2020 by-election following the death of Senator John McCain. With the victories of Kelly and his colleague Catherine Cortez Masto in the state of Nevada, the Democrats defended their majority in the Senate.

They could win an additional 51st seat in a runoff in Georgia on December 6th. Kelly is a moderate Democrat, winning many moderate and independent voters.

Republican Kari Lake already saw herself as a winner in the election campaign - and lost. The 53-year-old failed in the election as head of state of Arizona, the Democrat Katie Hobbs won.

Lake symbolizes a number of Republicans who had been supported by Trump, prevailed in the party's internal primaries, but failed in the popular vote.

The Republican minority leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, had therefore diagnosed months ago a lack of "candidate quality".

The rhetorically adept former TV host Lake disputed Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 presidential election. "Anyone who was involved in this corrupt, shady, seedy 2020 election -- lock him up!" Lake demanded at a rally with Trump.

The incumbent governor, Republican Doug Ducey, resisted calls from the Trump camp to refuse to certify the election result. Lake, on the other hand, threatened during the election campaign: "What happened in 2020 will not happen in 2024 with Kari Lake as governor." Now, however, there will be no Kari Lake governor in 2024.

The 58-year-old ran for governor in Swing State Pennsylvania, but lost to Democrat Josh Shapiro. Mastriano is a right-wing Republican, Trumpist, conspiracy theorist. On January 6, 2021, he marched to the Capitol with the violent pro-Trump mob.

His defeat is politically relevant because the Pennsylvania leader is unusually powerful. Like all governors, he is not only responsible for transmitting the nomination of the electorate of the victorious presidential candidate to Washington.

The governor also appoints the secretary of state, who approves the results and oversees the elections in general. Both offices now remain in democratic hands. The Trumpists would have loved to take it, possibly use it to their advantage in 2024.

Background: Trump called for the count to end in Pennsylvania the day after the 2020 election, when he was rapidly losing his lead there. Now Pennsylvania voters have handed Trump's Republicans a heavy defeat only in Arizona.

Republican Blake Masters, 36, wanted to become Arizona Senator, replacing Democrat Mark Kelly. But he found himself on the losing side, only getting 46 percent. Masters, without any political experience, was supported by Trump and received generous donations from right-wing entrepreneur and tech billionaire Peter Thiel.

Masters is convinced that "Trump won 2020". During the election campaign, he avoided constantly talking about this topic. According to two longtime Masters employees, it was not until 2021 that Masters privately admitted that Biden won the 2020 election.

But Masters believed he had to call the election fraudulent in order to win Trump's support. The Masters campaign team denied the employees' allegations.

After Kelly's victory, Masters called the previous and future senator and said he congratulated him. There were "problems" with the election, but he sees no way to win the candidacy, Masters said. Trump has so far refrained from making a corresponding statement about the 2020 election - and his defeat.