These are Biden's challenges after the midterm elections 1:52
(CNN) --
Democrats will maintain their narrow majority in the US Senate for the next two years, CNN projects, after victories in close races in Nevada and Arizona.
The party bucked the historical trend of midterm elections breaking the dominance of the ruling party and overcame anxiety about high inflation, winning a majority as voters rejected Republican candidates who had allied themselves with former President Donald Trump. and in many cases they repeated their lies about widespread electoral fraud.
Retaining control of the Senate is a huge boost for President Joe Biden for the remaining two years of his first term in the White House.
It means Democrats will have the ability to confirm Biden's judicial nominees, avoiding scenarios like the one former President Barack Obama faced in 2016, when then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to hold a vote on his Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland.
It also means that Senate Democrats can reject bills passed by the House and can set their own agenda.
Victory in the Senate is followed by control by the House, where Republicans were widely expected to win a majority but are still up for grabs.
Votes are still being counted in key districts in some states, including California, Arizona and Oregon, with a large proportion of mail-in ballots.
Even if Democrats don't retain control of the House, they could leave the GOP with a slim majority.
Independent voters, the key to the elections?
1:24
The road to the Democrats' surprisingly strong showing in the midterms was one in which they defied political gravity.
CNN exit polling showed that 49% of voters who said they somewhat disapproved of Biden voted Democrat, while 45% backed Republican;
of the 38% of voters who said the condition of the economy is “not that good,” 62% voted for the Democrats compared to 35% for the Republican Party.
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After CNN projected Democratic victories in Arizona on Friday and Nevada on Saturday, Democrats now hold 50 Senate seats to Republicans' 49 seats.
The Georgia race between Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker heads to a December runoff after neither candidate passed the 50% threshold on Tuesday.
US Midterm Election 2022 Results Map: Where Do Democrats and Republicans Win?
However, even if Republicans win the Georgia runoff, Vice President Kamala Harris would continue to cast the tie-breaking vote in an evenly divided Senate to guarantee the Democratic majority.
Only one Senate seat has changed hands so far in the 2022 midterm elections: Pennsylvania, where Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who campaigned while recovering from a stroke in May, defeated Republican Mehmet Oz, the celebrity doctor. endorsed by former President Donald Trump.
Republicans successfully defended seats in close races in Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin, while Democrats held seats in competitive races in Arizona, Colorado, Nevada and New Hampshire.
Ultimately, the battle for control of the Senate came down to Arizona and Nevada, states with a high proportion of mail-in ballots and rules that can slow down the processing of those ballots.
In Arizona, CNN projects Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, a former astronaut and husband of former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, will defeat Republican Blake Masters, a Trump-backed venture capitalist backed by tech mogul and emerging Republican mega-donor Peter Thiel.
US Senator Catherine Cortez Masto speaks at a campaign rally for Nevada Democrats at Cheyenne High School on November 1, 2022 in North Las Vegas, Nevada.
Credit: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
In Nevada, CNN projects that Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, a former district attorney and state attorney, will defeat Republican Adam Laxalt, her successor as state attorney and the son and grandson of former senators.
Both Masters and Laxalt at times accepted and repeated Trump's lies about widespread 2020 voter fraud.
Laxalt was a co-chairman of Trump's 2020 Nevada presidential campaign and played a leading role in legal attempts to reverse the results of that election, which he said was "rigged."
Cortez Masto argued that lies and electoral conspiracy theories espoused by Trump and allies like Laxalt led to the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Masters released a campaign video while running for the Republican nomination in which he said he believed Trump had won the 2020 election.
After winning the Senate primary, Masters appeared to briefly walk away from some of that extreme rhetoric, cleaning his website, for example, of language that included the false claim that the election was stolen.
In a debate with Kelly, he also admitted that he had seen no evidence of fraud that would have changed the outcome of the election.
However, the Republican candidate appeared to change course after receiving a phone call from Trump urging him to "be stronger" in denying the election, a conversation that was captured in a Fox documentary.
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