UPDATE:

Embarrassing error. We incorrectly entered a YouGov poll that was actually Georgia as a Florida poll. That is corrected now and the map regenerated. Very sorry.

Live Blogging Will Begin this Evening around 6:30 PM EST

We are going to attempt to live blog the election starting around 6:30 PM EST, when the first results (other than Dixville Notch) start coming in. To avoid interfering with the Nov. 8 Web page, we will cut over to Nov. 9 then, but you can still see Nov. 8 by using the "Previous report" button. At that time, the map will go white and change color as results come in. It is important to realize that the order in which results come in can give some strange effects. For example, if Austin is the first city in Texas to report, Texas will be bright blue for a while.

We will also track the Senate. When the starting gun goes off, the Democrats will have 36 Senate seats (including the two independents who caucus with them) and the Republicans will have 30. These are the senators not up for reelection.

We hope the server can handle the load, but we won't know until later today. For people who know about Web servers, we are running lighttpd rather than Apache, in large part due to its extremely high performance, but everything has its limits.

The poll closing times are given in this table. States with an asterisk span multiple time zones and not all polls in the state close at the same time. All times here are Eastern Standard Time. (V)

Time	States
6:00 pm	Indiana*, Kentucky*
7:00 pm	Florida*, Georgia, Indiana*, Kentucky*, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Vermont, Virginia
7:30 pm	North Carolina, Ohio, West Virginia
8:00 pm	Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, DC, Florida*, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan*, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, North Dakota*, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota*, Tennessee, Texas*
8:30 pm	Arkansas
9:00 pm	Michigan* New York, Minnesota, South Dakota*, North Dakota*, Colorado, Louisiana, New Mexico, Texas, Arizona, Wisconsin, Wyoming
10:00 pm	Iowa, Idaho*, Utah, Nevada, Montana
11:00 pm	California, Idaho*, Oregon, Washington, Hawaii
12:00 am	Alaska*
1:00 am	Alaska*

Our Prediction: Clinton Will Win

Our algorithm predicts that Hillary Clinton will get 317 electoral votes and be elected the 45th President of the United States. Donald Trump will come in second with 215 electoral votes. Nevada has had conflicting polls of late, and the algorithm has it tied. Our own expectation is that Clinton will win it.

We have four Nevada polls with some data collection in November. Clinton won three of them, but an Opinion Research poll taken Oct. 27 to Nov. 01 gives Trump a 6-point lead. The most recent Nevada poll is by Emerson College, taken Nov. 4-5. Our rule is that all polls whose midpoint is within a week of the most recent poll are counted, and the Opinion Research poll falls just within the window. But given the data on early voting and the fact that the last three polls in Nevada show Clinton ahead, we think she will take the Silver State and end with 323 electoral votes. This is just slightly less than Obama's haul of 332 in 2012, although the composition is different. He won Iowa and Ohio but lost North Carolina. This year it could be the other way around.

All that said, we have 12 states today that are within the margin of error (the ones with a white center in the map). Furthermore, polling this year is worse than it has ever been. To start with, many small colleges and unknown pollsters are in the game for the first time this year and don't have a track record. They may or may not know what they are doing. Second, response rates to pollsters are below 10% and with such unpopular candidates, it is hard for pollsters to find enough people willing to take the survey. Very low response rates may bias the sample in ways as yet unknown. Third, due to low response rates, more and more pollsters are polling over the Internet (e.g., SurveyMonkey, YouGov, Ipsos). Getting a random sample here is all but impossible, so the corrections applied later are absolutely critical. Polling has become like photography: the first 1/125 sec isn't so important. It is the next hour with Photoshop that determines what the photo looks like. All this means that, unfortunately, we may be in for quite a few surprises tonight. (V)

Clinton Leads in Eight of Nine New National Polls

Nine new national polls were released yesterday. Hillary Clinton led Donald Trump in eight of them, as follows:

Sponsor	Pollster	Clinton	Trump	Johnson	Stein
ABC/WaPo	Abt-SRBI	47%	43%	4%	1%
Bloomberg	Selzer	44%	41%	4%	2%
CBS	SSRS	45%	41%	5%	2%
Economist	YouGov	45%	41%	5%	2%
Fox News	Anderson Robbins + Shaw	48%	44%	3%	2%
Investor's Business Daily	TechnoMetrica	41%	43%	6%	2%
Monmouth U.	Monmouth U.	50%	44%	4%	1%
NBC News	SurveyMonkey	47%	41%	6%	3%
Rasmussen	Rasmussen	45%	43%	4%	1%
Average		45.8%	42.3%	4.6%	1.8%

Clinton's average lead was 3.5%, about the same as yesterday, so it seems stable. If she indeed wins nationally by 3.5%, she is almost certain to win the Electoral College, as we are predicting as well. (V)

Latino Vote Is Surging

While black voters may not turn out for Hillary Clinton in the same numbers as they did for Barack Obama, Latino voters are turning out in much larger numbers than they did in 2012, in no small part due to Donald Trump's calling Mexicans criminals, drug dealers, and rapists. How much this will affect the election depends to a large extent where the surge occurs. If the number of Latino voters doubles in California or Texas, it makes no difference at all, but if it goes up by 25% in Florida, that is huge. Early voting data suggest that it has indeed increased by 25% in Florida. And it isn't just a matter of Latinos who normally vote on election day jumping the gun and voting early. Fully 36% of the Latinos who have voted early in Florida didn't vote at all in 2012. So Clinton is clearly pulling in large numbers of new voters.

This has major consequences for the polling. Every pollster has a model of the electorate, and the sample is normalized to fit it. Very simply, if a pollster expects 16% of the electorate to be Latino and in the sample, only 14% are, then each Latino is weighted as 16/14 = 1.142. If the actual electorate contains 18% Latinos, then the poll will underweight them and the people they vote for (overwhelmingly Democrats), will do better than the polls predicted. On the other hand, Latinos voted very heavily for Obama in 2012, and aren't quite as enthusiastic about Clinton as they were for Obama. In other words, while more Latinos are expect to vote this time than in 2012, Clinton may get a smaller percentage of their votes than Obama did.

The only states where Latinos could be decisive are Arizona, Colorado, Florida, and Nevada. There are few Latinos in states like Iowa, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Still, if Latinos push Clinton over the top in Florida, the show is over. There is no way Trump can lose Florida and still become president. (V)

Justice Department to Monitor Polls in 28 States

Donald Trump's exhortation to his supporters to monitor polls in "certain areas" may have attracted interest among some of his supporters, but it also has attracted the interest of the U.S. Justice Dept. More than 500 poll monitors will be in place to make sure no laws are broken and no one's right to vote is threatened. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said: "As always, our personnel will perform these duties impartially, with one goal in mind: to see to it that every eligible voter can participate in our elections to the full extent that federal law provides." Since a number of white nationalist groups have said they plan to watch polling places in predominantly black areas, the Justice Dept. is also sending personnel to 67 jurisdictions to look for potential civil rights violations. Are clashes possible? Hopefully they won't happen, but they can't be ruled out. (V)

Candidates' Final Day Is Hectic

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton campaigned like crazy on the final day of this crazy campaign. Clinton and a large number of surrogates, including President Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and stars including Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi spread out over the country delivering an upbeat message. Clinton campaigned in Pittsburgh, in Allendale, MI, and in Philadelphia. Her message was: "I will pledge to you that I will exercise the greatest care and responsibility and all of the powers invested of the presidency."

Trump got rid of the teleprompter and was vintage Trump. Despite Sunday's news that the FBI would not seek charges against Clinton, in Sarasota, FL, he continued to say she was guilty and asked the voters to "deliver justice at the ballot box." In the end, we have a competition between hope and fear, and soon we will know which is stronger. (V)

Democrats Vote Early

Early voters this year have skewed Democratic, with 45% of early voters identifying as Democrats, 32% identifying as Republicans, and 23% saying they were independents. The key question, of course, is whether Democrats decided to vote early or whether Democrats are more motivated to vote this year, possibly to defeat Donald Trump rather than to support Hillary Clinton. The Clinton campaign has emphasized early voting, whereas the Trump campaign has not, so that could account for part of the difference. Still, Clinton has large leads in a number of key states, and it is always better to be ahead than to be behind. (V)

Americans Don't Think the Election Is Rigged

Despite Donald Trump's claims that the election is rigged, most voters aren't buying it. A new poll shows that 92% of likely voters who think Trump will win today think he will do it fair and square. Only 4% of these voters think that he will benefit from a rigged system. Of those voters who think Hillary Clinton will win, 84% think she will prevail in a fair process, while 11% believe a Clinton victory will be the result of a rigged system.

These numbers are important if Clinton wins and Trump refuses to concede, claiming he was cheated. If relatively few people believe him, then his claims will be brushed off and largely ignored by the media and the public. If more people had lost their faith in the system, his refusing to concede would have a bigger impact. (V)

Supreme Court Declines to Overturn Appeals Court on Voter Intimidation Order in Ohio

On Friday, U.S. District Court Judge James Gwin imposed an injunction on the campaign of Donald Trump and some of his allies, forbidding them from intimidating voters in Ohio. This was a win for the Democratic Party, which had requested the injunction. On Sunday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th circuit stayed the lower-court ruling, meaning that Trump volunteers could photograph voters and do other things prohibited by the injunction. This was a victory for the Republicans. Yesterday, the full U.S. Supreme Court refused to restore the injunction, another victory for the Republicans. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that the injunction was not needed because Ohio law already makes it a crime to interfere with a voter. (V)

Obama Campaigns in Michigan for Clinton

Some polls have shown Michigan to be closer than expected, so President Obama campaigned there yesterday, even though the last time Michigan supported the Republican was in 1988. Obama is much more popular in the state than Clinton, so he framed the election as a vote on whether to keep his achievements or repeal them. He reminded people of the 2009 bailout of the auto industry and how Donald Trump has said that car production should move from Michigan to lower-wage areas, not something blue-collar workers in Michigan are likely to approve of.

Will voters in Michigan listen to Obama? They might. His approval rating now stands at 56%, his highest since 2012. A popular president means that calls to "throw the bums out" don't resonate so much with the voters when they like the "bums." (V)

Stock Market Zooms Up

On the final day of trading before election day, investors were pleased to hear that the FBI does not want to charge Hillary Clinton with a crime. They drove the Dow Jones index up 371 points on the assumption that Clinton will be elected president today. It is perhaps ironic that when it looked like a successful businessman might be elected president, the market dropped sharply, but when it looked like he would lose, the market shot up. (V)

Clinton Draws First Blood

The tiny town of Dixville Notch, in New Hampshire, gets its moment in the sun once every four years, as they cast the very first election day ballots. 2016's ballots were in as of 12:01 a.m. EST, and it was a landslide for Hillary Clinton. She took 4 votes to 2 for Donald Trump, 1 for Gary Johnson, and a write-in vote for Mitt Romney.

What does this mean? Nothing, of course. Since they have assumed this role, the Dixville Notchers have not been much more accurate than a coin flip would be. So, we're probably going to have to let the other 85 million people vote today to determine a winner. (Z)

Final Senate Update

We've posted our final update on the Senate races, including our predictions for most races. We're committing to 14 seats for the Democrats and 17 for the Republicans, with two tossups (New Hampshire and Indiana) and the special case of Louisiana (which is almost certainly headed for a December runoff, which the GOP will win). If our guesses prove to be correct, that would leave the Democrats with 50 seats and the GOP with 47, with three still to go (yes, that slightly disagrees with the pure poll-driven numbers at the top of this page). Our biggest gamble is Jason Kander in Missouri, who appears to have taken a very slight lead in late polling. However, even if we miss on him, the blue team just has to win one of the two remaining coin flips to still get to 50, which would mean that if Hillary Clinton wins (making Tim Kaine the tiebreaker), she'll have a Senate willing to do her bidding for 2 years. The 2018 map is a tough one for the Democrats, so unless they get 53 or so seats today, they will lose control in 2018. (Z)

Will Republicans Really Obstruct SCOTUS Nominee?

There has been much big talk from Republicans, particularly those running for re-election (like Sens. John McCain, R-AZ, and Richard Burr, R-NC), that they might just choose to obstruct Merrick Garland or any other Supreme Court nominee from a Democrat for as long as is necessary. One year? How about 5 years? Or 10? Or 20?

Or, maybe not. The evidence is mounting that this is just election-year talk, and that the notion of semi-permanent obstruction does not have the support of most GOP Senators. Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) has been particularly clear on this point, telling the New York Times that, "You just can't do that. You shouldn't and you can't. People expect to have a full court." Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME), Jim Inhofe (R-OK), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), and David Perdue (R-GA) have all seconded the sentiment.

Of course, this all assumes that Hillary Clinton wins the White House, and that the Democrats either (1) fail to win the Senate, or (2) win it but decide not to eliminate the filibuster once and for all. Absent those conditions, the debate is academic. (Z)

Will Trump's Movement Outlast Him?

NBC News wonders whether the movement that Donald Trump has built will survive, once his day-to-day involvement with it comes to an end (whether in a week, or a month, or 10 years from now). Trump, of course, thinks he is absolutely essential. "Do not let this opportunity slip away, folks, it's never going to happen again. Four years from now? Never going to happen again." His followers don't necessarily agree. "That energy is a fire, and it's not going away, and I don't think it's contained just within the Republican Party," says one, while another opines that, "I don't think anything will be the same after Tuesday."

NBC hedges its bets on answering the question it posed, quite correctly observing that it's just too soon to tell. However, history would appear to be on the side of The Donald's interpretation. Consider the last, say, dozen presidential aspirants who never did make it into the White House: Mitt Romney (2012), John McCain (2008), Secretary of State John Kerry (2004), Al Gore (2000), Bob Dole (1996), Michael Dukakis (1988), Walter Mondale (1984), George McGovern (1972), Hubert H. Humphrey (1968), Barry Goldwater (1964), and Adlai Stevenson (1956). None of them created a "movement" within their parties that outlived their candidacies (some, like Goldwater, took temporary leadership of existing movements/factions). Even if we consider the man who, in many ways, was the most Trump-like candidate in history—William Jennings Bryan, a populist who ran on the force of his personality—the movement did not survive beyond Bryan's electoral defeats. (Of course, none of these fellows created a television network to promote their vision of America, while for Trump, that's still an open question.)

There is one way in which Trump's legacy is definitely going to be felt, however: funding (or lack thereof). Thanks to his moneysaving techniques of using both social media (free!) and the many TV stations and newspapers willing to give him coverage (also free!), he ran a relatively low-cost campaign, with the result that 2016 will be the first election in a while that does not set a new record for total outlays. We can expect future White House aspirants to follow his lead, in much the same way that Bryan taught the professionals that it's better to take the show on the road than it is to run a front porch campaign. (Z)

Today's Presidential Polls

We have three polls of Florida today. Two have Clinton ahead and one has Trump ahead. Based on previous recent polls, we think Clinton will eke out a win in Florida, also in Nevada, New Hampshire, and North Carolina. Virginia has ceased to be a swing state. Might as well rename it South Maryland. (V)

State	Clinton	Trump	Johnson	Start	End	Pollster
Florida	46%	45%	2%	Nov 03	Nov 06	Quinnipiac U.
Florida	48%	46%	3%	Nov 05	Nov 06	Opinion Savvy
Arizona	42%	44%	4%	Oct 26	Oct 28	YouGov
North Carolina	47%	45%	3%	Nov 03	Nov 06	Quinnipiac U.
Georgia	43%	49%	4%	Nov 03	Nov 05	YouGov
Pennsylvania	45%	43%	4%	Nov 03	Nov 05	YouGov
Utah	23%	40%	7%	Nov 03	Nov 05	YouGov
Ohio	39%	46%	7%	Nov 04	Nov 05	Emerson Coll.
Nevada	47%	46%	4%	Nov 04	Nov 05	Emerson Coll.
Missouri	41%	47%	7%	Nov 04	Nov 05	Emerson Coll.
New Hampshire	45%	44%	5%	Nov 04	Nov 05	Emerson Coll.
North Carolina	44%	44%	3%	Nov 04	Nov 06	Siena Coll.
Virginia	48%	42%	3%	Nov 01	Nov 06	Christopher Newport U.
Ohio	43%	40%	8%	Oct 31	Nov 03	TargetSmart/William + Mary

Today's Senate Polls

We have polls in Missouri, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, and Pennsylvania today, and it is clear all of them are going right down to the wire. All could go either way, and there might be recounts in some of them. Control of the Senate will hinge on these states plus Indiana. (V)

State	Democrat	D %	Republican	R %	Start	End	Pollster
Florida	Patrick Murphy	43%	Marco Rubio*	50%	Nov 03	Nov 06	Quinnipiac U.
Georgia	Jim Barksdale	41%	Johnny Isakson*	48%	Nov 03	Nov 05	YouGov
Missouri	Jason Kander	46%	Roy Blunt*	45%	Nov 04	Nov 05	Emerson Coll.
North Carolina	Deborah Ross	45%	Richard Burr*	46%	Nov 04	Nov 06	Siena Coll.
North Carolina	Deborah Ross	47%	Richard Burr*	47%	Nov 03	Nov 06	Quinnipiac U.
New Hampshire	Maggie Hassan	46%	Kelly Ayotte*	49%	Nov 04	Nov 05	Emerson Coll.
Nevada	Catherine Cortez-Masto	48%	Joe Heck	47%	Nov 04	Nov 05	Emerson Coll.
Ohio	Ted Strickland	28%	Rob Portman*	49%	Nov 04	Nov 05	Emerson Coll.
Pennsylvania	Katie McGinty	47%	Pat Toomey*	46%	Nov 03	Nov 05	YouGov
Utah	Misty Snow	23%	Mike Lee*	69%	Nov 03	Nov 05	YouGov

* Denotes incumbent

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---The Votemaster and Zenger