New York

Perhaps the most striking result on Election Night wasn’t Zeldin’s performance, but instead the scope of Republican gains in the House of Representatives; Republicans flipped four congressional districts (NY-03 and NY-04 on Long Island, and NY-17 and NY-19 in the Hudson Valley), held NY-22 despite the retirement of John Katko, and substantially overperformed in two other high double-digit Biden seats (NY-20 in Albany and NY-25 in Rochester). The new crop of Republican Congressmen includes George Santos (likely the first openly gay Republican to be elected to Congress as a freshman) and Marc Molinaro, whose strong 2018 performance upstate in his own gubernatorial bid predated Zeldin’s improvements. The only Democratic survivor of this near-clean sweep of competitive seats, Pat Ryan, had previously won a special election earlier this year and could well have a strong future in state politics.