U.S. House, Senate control still hangs in balance with vote counting underway

WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 (Xinhua) -- The control of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate still hangs in the balance with vote counting underway for the 2022 midterm elections.

Major U.S. media outlets have not called at least five Senate races and dozens of others for the House as of early Wednesday morning.

"It's probably going to be election week in some states," University of Virginia political science professor Larry Sabato told CBS News Radio.

The outcome of the House, Sabato predicted, will likely be known soon, while it could take longer to know who will control the Senate in the next Congress.

In this year's midterms, 36 out of 50 states and three U.S. territories elected governors. Numerous other state and local elections were also contested.

According to an exit poll released Tuesday evening, inflation and abortion led the issues identified by American voters as mattering most to their ballots in the 2022 elections.

The NBC News Exit Poll found that nearly one third of voters named inflation and 27 percent named abortion when asked which issue mattered most this year.

Trailing these concerns were crime and gun policy -- each named by 12 percent of voters, followed by immigration, which stood at 10 percent.