Image copyright EPA Image caption Kyrsten Sinema now becomes Arizona's first female senator

The US state of Arizona has elected its first female senator, after Democrat Kyrsten Sinema beat Republican Martha McSally in a tight race.

Ms Sinema is the south-western state's first Democratic senator since 1994.

The win narrows the Republican majority to four seats (51-47), with two more Senate races remaining unresolved.

In Florida, a recount has been ordered by law after unofficial results fell within a 0.5% margin. Mississippi will hold a run-off vote later this month.

What happened in Arizona?

With almost all the votes counted, Ms Sinema had a lead of 1.7% over her rival. She takes the seat vacated by Jeff Flake, a frequent critic of Mr Trump.

Ms Sinema, 42, later addressed her cheering supporters in Scottsdale, near Phoenix, speaking of the urgent need to heal the bitter political rancour dividing Americans.

She paid tribute to the memory of the late John McCain, who also represented Arizona in the Senate until his death earlier this year, saying he had set a shining example of how to put national interests above party political ones.

"Senator McCain is irreplaceable," she said, "but his example will guide our next steps forward. He taught us to always assume the best in others, to seek compromise instead of sowing division, and to always put country ahead of party."

Republican Ms McSally, a 52-year-old former combat fighter pilot, conceded defeat.

In a video message posted on Twitter, she said: "I just called Kyrsten Sinema and congratulated her on becoming Arizona's first female senator after a hard-fought battle."

Who is Kyrsten Sinema?

42 years old, born in Tucson, Arizona

Faced homelessness and poverty as a child

Former social worker who became a lawyer

Entered politics as a Green Party candidate

Elected to House of Representatives as a Democrat in 2012

Openly bisexual, she has campaigned for same-sex marriage

Read more on women's mid-term gains:

More women than ever before won seats in Congress in the 2018 mid-terms.

What does it mean for Congress - and America?

Which other races are still undecided?

Votes are being recounted in the Florida senate race, which pits incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson against the state's Republican Governor Rick Scott.

Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner has ordered that all 67 of the state's counties complete machine recounts for the Senate by 15:00 local time (20:00 GMT) on Thursday.

In Georgia's gubernatorial election, Democrat Stacey Abrams is refusing to concede in her race against Republican Brian Kemp.

Mr Kemp declared victory on Wednesday with a narrow lead but campaign officials for Ms Abrams have started a legal challenge to ensure all votes are counted.

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Stacey Abrams has not yet conceded in Georgia

Her supporters have claimed that issues such as ballot machines supplied without power cables and four-hour queues unfairly helped Mr Kemp.

An ongoing tally has whittled Mr Kemp's lead slightly to under 60,000 votes, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported on Sunday.

But Ms Abrams still needs another 22,000 votes to trigger a run-off election next month, and it is unclear how many ballots remain outstanding.

Meanwhile, in Mississippi, Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith faces Democrat Mike Espy in a run-off vote after neither managed to reach 50% in the first round, winning 41.5% and 40.6% respectively.

The vote will take place on 27 November.

Anthony Zurcher, BBC News, Washington

Last Wednesday Donald Trump boasted that Republicans could end up with one of the party's largest Senate majorities in the last 100 years. A week and two Democratic victories later, and those hopes have been dashed.

Pending the outcome of the Florida recount and a Mississippi run-off, Republicans are up only one seat in the Senate. Given that Democrats were defending 10 incumbents in states Mr Trump won in 2016, the results for Republicans reveal an enormous missed opportunity.

The raw numbers don't tell the whole story. Last week there were Senate contests in eight key presidential battleground states - Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida and Virginia. Democrats have won every one except Florida.

And the significance of the Arizona victory is also notable. Of the five seats that have changed hands, Arizona is the only one that flipped away from the party that carried it in 2016.

Time will tell whether the 2018 results indicate a new baseline for Democrats or a high-water mark. By limiting the damage in what could have been a devastating election for its Senate contingent, however, the party is much better positioned to challenge for control of the chamber in the coming years.</s>Democrat Kyrsten Sinema defeats Republican Martha McSally in the Arizona race for U.S. Senate

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrat Kyrsten Sinema defeats Republican Martha McSally in the Arizona race for U.S. Senate.</s>Democrat Kyrsten Sinema has defeated Republican Martha McSally to win the Arizona Senate race, the Associated Press projected Monday evening.

With Sinema's victory to flip the open seat of retiring GOP Sen. Jeff Flake, she becomes the first Democrat Arizona has elected to the Senate since 1988. She will not only be the state's first female senator, but she will also be the first openly bisexual senator in U.S. history.</s>WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrat Kyrsten Sinema defeats Republican Martha McSally in the Arizona race for U.S. Senate.</s>Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema is the apparent winner in the Arizona Senate race, narrowly defeating Republican Rep. Martha McSally, according to an NBC News projection.

Sinema is the first Democratic senator elected in Arizona in 30 years.

McSally conceded the race in a video statement on her Twitter account Monday evening.</s>(Reuters) - Democrat Kyrsten Sinema defeated Republican Martha McSally to win a close U.S. Senate race in Arizona after last Tuesday’s elections, in a Senate pickup for Democrats in a state that had not elected a Democratic U.S. senator for 30 years.

Despite the Arizona result, Republicans will keep control of the 100-member Senate, winning at least 51 seats to the Democrats’ 47. Results in Florida and Mississippi are still outstanding.

Sinema, 42, a U.S. representative and former social worker, will become Arizona’s first female senator. She will succeed Republican Jeff Flake, who did not seek re-election and has been a vocal critic of Republican President Donald Trump.

“It won’t be easy and it won’t happen overnight, but we can work together to meet the challenges our country faces,” Sinema told supporters on Monday night in Scottsdale, Arizona, after multiple media outlets called the election for her.

Referring to longtime Arizona U.S. Senator John McCain, a Republican who died in August, Sinema said: “We can do this differently. For our future, for Senator McCain and for each other, I think we must.”

Her opponent, McSally, 52, also a U.S. representative and a former Air Force fighter pilot, congratulated Sinema for winning the race.

“I wish her all success as she represents Arizona in the Senate,” McSally said in a video posted to social media.

In a tweet last Friday, Trump alleged “electoral corruption” in Arizona, without providing evidence, and seemed to call for holding a new election, even though all the votes had not yet been counted.</s>Democrat Kyrsten Sinema won Arizona's open U.S. Senate seat Monday in a race that was among the most closely watched in the nation, beating Republican Rep. Martha McSally in the battle to replace GOP Sen. Jeff Flake.

The three-term congresswoman won after a slow vote count that dragged on for nearly a week after voters went to the polls on Nov. 6. She becomes Arizona's first Democratic U.S. senator since 1994. Her win cemented Arizona as a swing state after years of Republican dominance.

Sinema portrayed herself as a moderate who works across the aisle to get things done.

McSally, a former Air Force pilot who embraced President Donald Trump after opposing him during the 2016 elections, had claimed that Sinema's anti-war protests 15 years ago disqualified her and said one protest amounted to what she called "treason."

Sinema and supporters rushed to a Scottsdale resort Monday night after the latest batch of ballots showed her lead to be insurmountable.

"Arizona rejected what has been far too common in our country - name calling, petty, personal attacks and doing and saying what it takes to get elected," Sinema said as scores of backers waved her purple-and-yellow campaign sign. "But Arizona proved that there is a better way forward."

McSally posted a video message to twitter. "I just called Kyrsten Sinema and congratulated her on becoming Arizona's first female senator after a hard-fought battle," McSally said in the video, her pet golden retriever by her side. "I wish her all success as she represents Arizona in the Senate."

During her six years in Congress, Sinema built one of most centrist records in the Democratic caucus, and she voted for bills backed by Trump more than 60 percent of the time. She backed legislation increasing penalties against people in the country illegally who commit crimes.

McSally's attacks on Sinema reached back more than 15 years, when Sinema was a Green Party spokeswoman and liberal activist.

McSally backed Trump's tax cut, border security and the Affordable Care Act repeal agenda as she survived a three-way GOP primary in August, defeating two conservative challengers who claimed her support for Trump was fake. McSally also campaigned on her military record and support for the Armed Forces.

Sinema attacked McSally's leadership of last year's failed Affordable Care Act repeal effort as a sign that she would not protect Arizona residents with preexisting medical conditions. McSally argued that she would protect patients, despite her vote on the bill that would have removed many of those protections.

The contest drew more than $90 million in spending, including more than $58 million by outside groups, according to Federal Election Commission reports. Attack ads by both sides clogged the airwaves for months.

Sinema, 42, has a law degree, worked as a social worker and was a political activist in her 20s, running as an independent Green Party candidate for the Arizona House. She then became a Democrat and served several terms in the state Legislature. Sinema started as an overt liberal but developed a reputation for compromise among her Republican peers, laying the groundwork to tack to the center.

When the 9th Congressional District was created after the 2010 Census, Sinema ran for the Phoenix-area seat as a centrist and won the 2012 election.

McSally, 52, was the first female Air Force pilot to fly in combat, flying A-10 attack jets. She also was the first woman to command a fighter squadron, again in A-10s.

McSally lost her first race in Arizona's 2nd congressional district in 2012, when she was narrowly defeated by Democratic Rep. Ron Barber, who replaced Rep. Gabby Giffords after she was wounded in a 2011 assassination attempt. But McSally came back to win the 2014 election, beating Barber by a narrow margin. She was re-elected in 2016.

There's still a chance McSally becomes a senator soon. One of her political mentors, Jon Kyl, was appointed in September to fill John McCain's seat after Arizona's senior senator died following a struggle against brain cancer.

Kyl said he'd only serve through Jan. 3, which would mean the state's Republican governor, Doug Ducey, would get to select another senator. That person would run for re-election in 2020. Ducey campaigned with McSally often last month.

Flake was an outspoken critic of Trump and announced in 2017 that he would not seek re-election, acknowledging he could not win a GOP primary in the current political climate. His support of the president's initiatives, however, was mixed. He strongly backed last year's tax cut bill but criticized Trump's positions on free trade.</s>Democrat Kyrsten Sinema is the apparent winner of Arizona Senate race, according to NBC News.

Republican Martha McSally conceded defeat, bringing an end to the long-fought battle over the seat held by retiring GOP Sen. Jeff Flake.

While most of the hundreds of midterm races produced clear winners and losers by Tuesday night, NBC News still considered the Arizona contest too close to call until Monday night. Sinema eventually developed a lead that grew as days wore on.

She is the first woman ever elected to the U.S. Senate from the state of Arizona and the first Democrat that the state elected to the Senate in 30 years.

As the votes trickled in, Republicans launched a lawsuit challenging a mail-in ballot-counting practice in two Arizona counties that allowed voters to fix issues for up to five days after Election Day.

The tug-of-war over the remaining ballots came amid another roiling in controversy over vote totals in Broward County, Florida. President Donald Trump weighed in on both races in tweets Friday.

The Sinema-McSally race was widely viewed as one of the Democrats' best opportunities to gain seats in an unfavorable Senate election map. Democrats were defending 26 Senate seats in the midterms, while Republicans were defending nine.

And with Flake, an outspoken Trump critic, choosing not to run for re-election, Republicans lost the incumbent advantage that might otherwise have shielded them from a serious Democratic challenge.

Instead, analysts forecasted a neck-and-neck race that appeared to break in Sinema's favor in the final days before the election,according to an NBC News/Marist poll. Analyses from RealClearPolitics and Sabato's Crystal Ball called the race a toss-up, while FiveThirtyEight gave Sinema a slight edge.

Sinema, who tried to run as a moderate, came under fire in October after Republican and conservative organizations released video clips of the Democrat from years earlier appearing to make fun of her state and its residents.</s>PHOENIX -- Democrat Kyrsten Sinema won Arizona's open U.S. Senate seat Monday in a race that was among the most closely watched in the nation, beating Republican Rep. Martha McSally in the battle to replace GOP Sen. Jeff Flake.

The three-term congresswoman won after a slow vote count that dragged on for nearly a week after voters went to the polls on Nov. 6. She becomes Arizona's first Democratic U.S. senator since 1994. Her win cemented Arizona as a swing state after years of Republican dominance.

Sinema portrayed herself as a moderate who works across the aisle to get things done.

McSally, a former Air Force pilot who embraced President Donald Trump after opposing him during the 2016 elections, had claimed that Sinema's anti-war protests 15 years ago disqualified her and said one protest amounted to what she called "treason."

But during her six years in Congress, Sinema built one of most centrist records in the Democratic caucus, and she voted for bills backed by Trump more than 60 per cent of the time. She backed legislation increasing penalties against people in the country illegally who commit crimes.

McSally's attacks on Sinema reached back more than 15 years, when Sinema was a Green Party spokeswoman and liberal activist.

McSally backed Trump's tax cut, border security and the Affordable Care Act repeal agenda as she survived a three-way GOP primary in August, defeating two conservative challengers who claimed her support for Trump was fake. McSally also campaigned on her military record and support for the Armed Forces.

Sinema attacked McSally's leadership of last year's failed Affordable Care Act repeal effort as a sign that she would not protect Arizona residents with preexisting medical conditions. McSally argued that she would protect patients, despite her vote on the bill that would have removed many of those protections.

The contest drew more than $90 million in spending, including more than $58 million by outside groups, according to Federal Election Commission reports. Attack ads by both sides clogged the airwaves for months.

Sinema, 42, has a law degree, worked as a social worker and was a political activist in her 20s, running as an independent Green Party candidate for the Arizona House. She then became a Democrat and served several terms in the state Legislature. Sinema started as an overt liberal but developed a reputation for compromise among her Republican peers, laying the groundwork to tack to the centre.

When the 9th Congressional District was created after the 2010 Census, Sinema ran for the Phoenix-area seat as a centrist and won the 2012 election.

McSally, 52, was the first female Air Force pilot to fly in combat, flying A-10 attack jets. She also was the first woman to command a fighter squadron, again in A-10s.

McSally lost her first race in Arizona's 2nd congressional district in 2012, when she was narrowly defeated by Democratic Rep. Ron Barber, who replaced Rep. Gabby Giffords after she was wounded in a 2011 assassination attempt. But McSally came back to win the 2014 election, beating Barber by a narrow margin. She was re-elected in 2016.

Flake was an outspoken critic of Trump and announced in 2017 that he would not seek re-election, acknowledging he could not win a GOP primary in the current political climate. His support of the president's initiatives, however, was mixed. He strongly backed last year's tax cut bill but criticized Trump's positions on free trade.</s>(Reuters) - Democrat Kyrsten Sinema defeated Republican Martha McSally to win a close U.S. Senate race in Arizona following last Tuesday’s congressional elections, according to multiple media outlets.

Sinema’s victory means a Senate pickup for Democrats, although Republicans will keep control of the chamber. She will succeed Republican Jeff Flake, who did not seek re-election.

Sinema, a U.S. representative, thanked Arizona for electing her in a statement posted to social media and pledged to “be an independent voice for all Arizonans.”

Her opponent, McSally, also a U.S. representative, congratulated Sinema for becoming Arizona’s first female senator. “I wish her all success as she represents Arizona in the Senate,” McSally said in a video posted to social media.
A week after the election, which was initially too close to call, Democratic Party candidate Kyrsten Sinema is elected to the United States Senate, defeating GOP candidate Martha McSally. Sinema is the first woman elected to represent Arizona in the Senate and first Democrat to win a Senate election in the state since 1988.