good to have you with us this morning, i'm frances rivera >> i'm phillip mena. welcome to a special edition of "early today." votes continue to roll in, voters making their voices heard about who should control congress 218 seats are needed to claim control of the house and right now, nbc's projection

for the house is still too close to call. both party neck and neck in the senate as well >> we could be left waiting to know who has won the georgia senate seat. neither rafael warnock nor herschel walker has met the 50% necessary to win the election in that state >> nbc has projected that democrat john fetterman has won in pa ennsylvania, defeating mehmet oz. fetterman overcame a stroke in may to ultimately flip this battleground state for the democrats the. >> this campaign has always been about fighting for everyone who's ever been knocked down that ever got back up. >> in ohio, nbc news projects that republican j.d. a advance,

tad vance defeats tim ryan >> marco rubio defeats val demings. >>and ron johnson is facing a challenge from mandela barnes. that race is too close to call >> we're also watching arizona where the race between mark kelly and republican blake masters is still too early to call >> and we are starting to see results from nevada. the race between incumbent catherine cortez masto and adam laxalt is too early to call. >> a judge denied cortez masto's request for the polls to stay open an extra two hours. it came after some precincts ran out of paper to print ballots earlier in the day >> we have ground breakers making their mark on congress. vermont is finally set to end its streak as the last state in the country to send a female representative to congress nbc news is projecting that democrat becca balint will

defeat the republican to be the first el lgbtq person to represent the state. >> garcia, who is gay immigrated from peru is the first lgbtq elected to congress. >> and in california, this seat was open >> and in illinois, democrat ni nikki bud sinski is expected to win. >> joining us, jonathan allen, natasha carecchi and matthew sanderson. jonathan, i want to start but.

what do you think explains why republicans were not able to pick up more house seats, given they are the party that's out of power, and traditionally they would be picking up more >> it was surprise to most of house do this for a living we were watching polls, talking to source. both parties think this was going to and bigger wave for republicans. wasn't much after wave at all. maybe a moving puddle. i think what we're basically seeing here is that despite some inflation worries and biden's approval ratings, voters decided democrats were less scary than some of the republican nominees. there are plenty of places on the map where if republicans had nominated someone who was more mainstream they would have won the race we saw a lot of extreme republican candidates.

a lot of election deniers and people who took positions way outside the mainstream >> talking about calling some of these races, pennsylvania this early on, when we were expecting to wait, you know, into the night, into the week for that. latasha i want to ask you about sean patrick maloney, in charge of presenting the house majority it's locked in a race against lawler what will it mean if republicans take out maloney here? >> that's pretty symbolic, and it's something else when you look at the bigger map, and you look at the gains that republicans thought they were going to have, and what they're actually, what it's looking like it's going to actually happen. but the irony here is that democrats could lose sean patrick maloney. that's pretty significant. and a hit to the party symbolically and otherwise >> matthew, do you expect these, let's call them less than excellent results for r

republicans, do you think it will lead to more claims of voter fraud? >> it's certainly a possibility. they've been preparing the ground for exactly those types of claims in the post-election period and mobilizing people and preparing their voters to, you know, be activated after the election so wel'll see. i am relieved that up until election day where we've had a relatively smooth process, but i'm realistic to know that we may have a recurrence of the post 2020 election period again. >> i want to bring you back in and talk about the what-ifs. if the republicans win a house majority, we've been talking about that and the mischief that could be stirred, a little rockin' the boat leer and talking about possible impeachment against president biden. i know some are still watching

somehow that looking at this point? >> you would think with almost any margin, republicans would move pretty quickly to impeachment joe biden, but the election results may have a message. the message is that voters aren't as upset at joe biden as they said they were. they're going to think about whether they're going to be able to win reelection if they impeach joe biden. and before any of that happens, the republicans have to organize the house. kevin mccarthy's going to have to try to become the speaker of the house if republicans have the majority and there are a ton of republicans that want to cause mischief on their own side, not just for the democrats there's a lot of steps before we get to that impeachment. >> natasha, how do you think a slim majority to impact the potential speaker mccarthy and his ability to rein in the more,

treatment extreme members of his party >> this wasn't what he was looking at we're going to see some of these, you know, marjorie taylor green and so forth making mischief here, trying to make a name for themselves. trying to make sure that he knows who does have power here in the party, who's representative here. so this is going to be a really fascinating power struggle that we're watching with the republican party that's really trying to find its identity right now after coming to terms with these results that are very different than what they expected >> picking up on that, when it comes to mccarthy, shoo-in for speaker? >> not at all a shoo-in for speaker. to went the speaker of the house race you have to get 218 votes on the floor >> it's interesting when it comes to threats to democracy,

what the democrats are fighting for, crime, the economy front and center, so i know we'll delve into that. because it may be a very long night and day into the days to come thank you all of you appreciate the time. want to go live to philadelphia. we were talking about john fetterman who won his race, flipping the state for the democrats. we got those numbers in earlier than we anticipated. >> reporter: so much earlier either way you cut it, there was little expectation that this race would be called tonight we anticipating several days here in pennsylvania but fetterman was able to take quite a big lead in terms of pennsylvania elections, coming out with more than 136,000 votes ahead of his republican opponent, dr. mehmet oz, and that's without a bulk of the philadelphia votes where i am still in philadelphia taking a little longer to count those mail-in

ballots, but this is something that republicans were feeling quite confident about honestly in this race, even though it was a very tight race leading up to today but fetterman took the stage about two hours ago at his victory party with a big grin on his face, thanking his supporter, saying that he felt humbled. >> i'm proud of what we ran on protecting a woman's right to choose [cheers and applause raising our minimum wage fighting the union way of life health care is a fundamental human right. it saved my life, and it should all be there for you, when you ever should need it. >> and in talking to pennsylvania voters in recent days, democrats told me that that's exactly what they were looking for, preseotecting the

right to abortion an abortootecg democracy. we're also looking at this governor's race in pennsylvania. democrat josh shapiro won here by a much halarger margin. there were still republican counties in terms of the senate race so clearly the effort the fetterman campaign was making, they said they were fighting for anybody that ever felt like they got knocked down, making a reference to himself in his recent stroke. but fetterman and democrats obviously very thrilled in pennsylvania as this could play in to who take control of the senate nationwide. >> no doubt that this is the finish for that, considering his health struggles, his stroke, even the debate where we saw that big a challenge

thank you so much. >> a big night in pennsylvania for the democrats. let's go to our big story of the morning. tropical storm nicole bearing down on florida. michelle grossmann is tracking that storm for us. michelle, good morning >> good morning to you both. we're going to continue to track neck c nicole over the next couple days we do anticipate it to become a hurricane as early as today and make landfall on the east coast of florida as an earthquake had.