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Dem pickups: PA
GOP pickups: NV
We'll start liveblogging the election results around 6:00 p.m. EST tonight. We'll also run some brief reader comments as part of that, so if you have thoughts about how things are unfolding, or a particular experience to share, send them along.
Let the Shenanigans Begin...
There was a time, way back in the distant past, when political parties spent the election cycle presenting their political program to voters, with the idea that the party with the best program would win the election and would then have a basis for the next 2 years of governance.
The modern Republican Party has effectively abandoned this quaint model. Their primary message these days is "vote for us because we are not the evil Democrats, with their critical race theory, socialism, open borders, hatred of cops, etc." That message is not quite enough to get it done, and so icing on this rather rotten cake is anti-democratic crap designed to undermine the voting process. And yes, we are editorializing here, but we've never made a secret that the #1 concern of this site is that every vote should be counted. Any person or party who stands in opposition to that proposal is going to be a target of our ire.
This cycle, a big part of the Republican plan is lawsuits. They have already filed a bunch of them, including several yesterday, meant to disqualify many thousands of ballots. The stated justification, of course, is to "prevent voter fraud." But every reader of this site knows that is nonsense, that voter fraud is almost nonexistent, and that the real purpose is to deny the franchise to groups of people who skew Democratic.
The situation in Pennsylvania is illustrative. As readers will recall, there is a fight going on there over undated ballots. For reasons that are unclear (but might be designed to suppress votes), the Pennsylvania legislature requires someone to sign and correctly date an absentee ballot for it to be valid. Nobody objects to the signature requirement, but the date requirement is dumb. If a ballot arrives in time, then it clearly must have been cast before the deadline, dated or not, unless the voter happens to have a DeLorean and 1.21 gigawatts of electricity laying around.
State election officials, backed by the state courts, decided that they would count undated ballots. But then the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in and said "no." In response, some state election officials began taking steps to allow voters to "cure" undated ballots. Republicans quickly realized that the curing was much more common in blue municipalities and counties, and sued to stop it. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled yesterday that curing was permissible, which will lead the Republicans to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court today. Meanwhile, Democratic groups, with the campaign of Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D-PA) taking the lead, have filed suit arguing that SCOTUS erred, and that all ballots should be counted.
In short, we have all sorts of lawsuits flying back and forth in the Keystone State, meaning that if the Senate election is as close as expected, it may not be resolved for weeks or more until the lawsuits get straightened out. Meanwhile, folks in Philadelphia and other cities waited in line for up to 2 hours yesterday to fix ballots they had already cast. These folks are very cranky, and they blame the Republican Party for their headaches, with good reason. Pissing off voters in a swing state is not usually a winning strategy, in our experience. Obviously, someone who is just curing a ballot isn't likely to change their vote due to their irritation (although they could if they destroy the absentee ballot and vote in person). However, such folks have friends and family, not to mention potentially long memories that could last to 2024.
In total across the whole country, the Republican Party has already filed at least 120 lawsuits. And bushels more are certainly coming. Harmeet Dhillon is a member of the of the Republican National Lawyers Association, and she appeared on the show of popular Fox entertainer Tucker Carlson yesterday. During that appearance, Dhillon bragged that the RNC has already sent 38 veteran lawyers to 19 states, with more on the way. "So every battleground state is saturated with lawyers," she crowed. "I'm here in Arizona and you can't swing a cat without hitting a lawyer."
Of course, there were also a lot of Republican lawsuits after the 2020 election. And those largely did not go anywhere, in part because they were built on a foundation of legal gobbledygook, and in part because they simply did not appear to the public to be legitimate. The RNC is going to try to improve on the former part of that, if they can, and they are definitely going to try to improve on the latter.
This would be conspiratorial, nearly at tinfoil-hat level, if Republican operatives weren't openly admitting to the plan. What the GOP is doing is encouraging its voters to hold off on casting ballots until Election Day, ideally until as late as is possible. The general idea is to delay the election results until as late as is possible, perhaps even until Wednesday or Thursday. This will then be used as prima facie evidence that something is rotten and the election results are phony.
That's a pretty sleazy plan. It's also quite risky; if Republican voters hold off until the last minute, some of them ultimately won't make it at all due to being tired at the end of the day, or having a flat tire, or going to the wrong polling place, or having to feed the kiddies, or whatever. When so many races are neck-and-neck, this would seem to be an unacceptable risk. But the Republican Party has clearly decided this is the best (and only?) way for them to win. More on this below. (Z)
...And the Quiet End
For two years, Donald Trump has been a retired politician and a non-user of Twitter. That has given us all a blissful respite from the most tiring elements of his public career, even if it was still necessary to pay some attention to his ongoing legal issues.
The respite will soon come to an end, it would seem. Trump held one of his rallies in Ohio last night. And given his desire for attention (and in particular his desire to steal some of Gov. Ron DeSantis', R-FL, thunder upon winning his reelection bid), there was some thought that the former president might announce his 2024 presidential bid then and there. Trump did not do that, which caused GOP leadership to issue forth with a collective sigh of relief. But he did say: "I'm going to be making a very big announcement on Tuesday, November 15."
The obvious inference here, and the one that absolutely everyone is making, is that next Tuesday is when he'll make it official and throw his hat into the 2024 ring. The tease is so obvious that if it's anything else, the MAGA faithful will be deeply disappointed. Trump is undoubtedly used to disappointing his romantic partners, but he doesn't like to let the MAGA crowd down.
Alternatively, though we've not seen any coverage that suggests this is the case, Trump might be announcing his return to Twitter that day. That would get him a bunch of headlines, and would get Elon Musk a bunch of headlines, and would allow The Donald to keep his largest and shiniest bullet in the chamber, for deployment later in search of even more headlines.
It could also be the case that this is a giant put-on, for the amusement of team Trump, and that what he's really going to announce is something dumb, like a new Trump-branded BBQ sauce, or a new grift/super PAC, or a line of Trump-endorsed adult undergarments. But we doubt it.
No, in the next week, he's almost certainly going to become a presidential candidate again, or a Twitter user again, or both. And so, two years of relative peace and quiet will come to an end. You might want to order an industrial-sized bottle of aspirin from Amazon right now, and avoid the rush. Or a case of bourbon,
This also gives AG Merrick Garland a fairly clear deadline if he believes it's important to file charges before Trump is a presidential candidate. The Hill had a piece yesterday in which several legal experts agreed with us (and with the readers), and said that appointing a special counsel is a meaningless gesture that will not serve to depoliticize the situation in any meaningful way. We assume the AG will reach the same conclusion, if he hasn't already. If so, he would seem to have only three options left on the table: (1) file charges quickly, (2) file charges against an active presidential candidate, and (3) don't file charges at all. (Z)
Election Workers in Arizona Threatened
Election Workers in Maricopa County have faced over 100 violent threats in the run-up to today's midterms. Most are based on wild conspiracy theories concocted by Donald Trump and his allies. The workers have gotten menacing e-mails. There have been threats on social media. People have threatened to circulate personal information about the workers. Unknown people have photographed election office employees when they showed up for work. Reuters has obtained almost 1,600 pages of records and correspondence about threats to workers from just this one county. And it is very unlikely that the threats are limited to just Maricopa.
Between July 11 and Aug. 22, for example, there were at least 140 documented threats to Maricopa election workers, for example: "You will all be executed" and "wire around their limbs and tied & dragged by a car." Some of the threatening messages cited long-debunked claims about fake ballots, rigged voting machines, and corrupt election officials.
The threats have unnerved the workers, some of whom have quit. After the Aug. 2 primary, a stranger photographed one employee who broke down in tears, left work early, and never returned. The county recorder said that she wasn't political, she just wanted a job. On Aug. 3, people in tactical gear who called themselves "First Amendment Auditors" circled the elections office and photographed employees and their license plates. The Maricopa elections director, Scott Jarrett, said: "It feels very much like predatory behavior and that we are being stalked." Election officials asked the FBI for help, but a Bureau spokesman said the FBI investigates only federal crimes, not state crimes.
Since the 2020 election, Reuters has documented over 1,000 intimidating messages to election officials around the country. According to legal experts, at least 120 are criminal and could warrant prosecution. Some election officials had hoped the harassment would wane after the 2020 election, but it has instead waxed, fueled by right-wing media figures. For example, on July 31, the Gateway Pundit, a right-wing website with a history of publishing false stories, had an item about how a Maricopa County staff technician had deleted election data that was set to be audited. In the comments section, one reader wrote: "Until we start hanging these evil doers nothing will change." Another wrote: "Hang that crook from (the) closest tree so people can see what happens to traitors." In reality, all that the technician had done is shut down a server so it could be delivered to the state Senate in response to a subpoena. There are many other examples.
It has gotten so bad that some election offices have taken having drills simulating violence in the office to train employees what to do. (V)
Reports From the Front Lines
Presumably, readers of this site don't need this reminder. But just in case, if you are voting today, be sure to be nice to the poll workers. The great majority of them are public-minded citizens who are just trying to do their civic duty.
And on that point, two of our readers (and regular mailbag contributors) have signed up to be poll workers this cycle. They've submitted reports explaining their thought process, and their experience getting ready. Those appear below. Later this week, we'll have reports from them about their experiences on Election Day.
B.J.L. in Ann Arbor, MI: In Michigan we have probably thousands of municipal polling sites to cover local elections. Money flows from the state to municipalities to manage the hiring of daily staff for Election Day and the hope is that there is enough training. Our city put out the request for workers in July and they have been IDing potential temporary workers available for both training and Election Day. I applied and somehow they picked me. I consider myself a dime-store anthropologist so resolving who is doing this is interesting to me given what we've been through.
What makes someone want to sign up to be a poll worker (at least, in my mind)? Three major things:
- Civic Pride: Local groups, like the League of Women Voters, seem to fill this key need in addition to groups supporting libraries, schools and the arts. Poll workers are older; the average poll worker age is likely 50+. A few students in high school or college can also populate the poll-worker ranks.
- Pay: I think people get $16.75/hr. It's not something I need, but for those older ones who are retired, the notion of a little bread might help seal the deal.
- Obligation: The prevailing fear that if I don't apply, they'll hire some yokel not ready for prime time and its better it's me than someone else.
What are the requirements? Workers need to be registered voters, or age 16 or 17. Since many polling places are schools, they're all closed. High schoolers are also not in school. You can't have a felony record to work the polls. The dress code is dark pants and a white shirt. If you are doing absentee ballot counting, your cell phone needs to be off from 8:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., and the group is isolated to count.
What is my assignment? I think I can be posted anywhere in our county. We get 3-4 hrs of training depending on job function. It seems each polling site is kind of like an army regiment. The regiment includes greeters who lack computer and database experience to track voter details (the privates), those who have more experience and training and are willing to do that also (the NCOs), and platoon leaders who will sign on behalf of precincts. A separate group is training on how to count absentee ballots.
After attending the poll worker training, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was among the oldest people undergoing training. I would estimate the average age among new workers was about 35 and it was clear that there were some collegians among the mix. I suspect the LWV-veteran types don't have to go through the basic training over and over again.
E.W. in Skaneateles, NY: This year, I finally did it. I signed up to become a poll worker, and I wanted to tell the E-V.com readership a bit more about what that process looks like, at least in my central NY county (Onondaga County, home to Syracuse). I indicated my interest when I voted in the primary and quickly received a welcome packet in the mail. From there, I had to attend one of the 3-hour classes, whose sessions started at 9 a.m., 1 p.m., and 5 p.m. Mondays through Fridays, with one Saturday session. I did well in the first class, so they asked me to come back at similar class times to complete a second certification to become a Voting Systems Specialist (VSS), which I did. If I had wanted to become a polling site manager, I would have needed a third class. I will be paid for the training in addition to the pay I'll get for working the election, but it's really more of a nice bonus rather than a job for me. I am fortunately in a position this semester where I can make those class times, but I can see why a working professional with children might have a hard time with that schedule and why it's mostly retirees who work the polls. For election day itself, the hours usually run from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m.!
In both classes, I lowered the average age of the poll workers by at least a decade; I'm under 40 and the instructor stated that the average age of poll workers in the county was above 70. Even though a few of the poll workers had worked before, everyone has to retake the class every year because of changes to policies and procedures. Throughout the first class, there was a first-time participant who kept challenging the instructor about how to keep "illegals" from voting, but the instructor had great answers to all of her loaded questions. He kept emphasizing that the board has the twin goals of making sure only eligible voters vote and that no eligible voter gets disenfranchised. I think the lady came away relatively mollified, or at least less defiant and suspicious.
Two other points that the first instructor emphasized were: (1) making sure that voters' privacy is maintained, as some nervous poll workers tend to hover near the machines; and (2) that absolutely everything is overseen and signed off by at least one Democrat and one Republican. The latter requirement can be tricky because Onondaga County has around 35,000 more registered Democrats than registered Republicans, so in some cases, an independent or Conservative Party voter gets appointed to serve as the Republicans' representative.
Most of the two classes had to deal with the 1% to 10% of "edge cases," i.e., all of the exceptions and strange situations that could crop up. Normally, voters simply come in with a driver's license or another form of ID (though we are prohibited from asking for one). They also might have the mailer that the county mailed to every registered voter in the county. If they have one of those things, then they can just simply scan them on the polling pad, sign off that their name is correct, and go vote on the optical scanning machine. If not, then they just tell us their name and address, they sign, we verify their signature, and they go vote.
If a voter shows up at the wrong polling site, the system will flag it and tell us their correct site, and we can even push a button to print them or text them driving, walking, or transit directions to their correct polling location. If they changed addresses recently, or they didn't provide ID when registering initially, or they asked for an absentee ballot and changed their mind, then they have to vote via affidavit ballot, which doubles as an updated voter registration form. If they are dead set on voting via the machine, they can go down to the elections board and convince a judge to give them a court order to vote. The instructor said most voters just do the affidavit ballot, but you might get some stubborn person who wants a court order.
Voters getting challenged (by another voter, a poll watcher, or a poll worker) is rare. The instructor said it had maybe happened a dozen times in the last decade. In that case, the challenger and voter both have to sign oaths stating that they believe that the voter is ineligible or swear that they are eligible, respectively. If the voter signs the oath then they can vote, but all challenges get investigated thoroughly. The instructor said that most of the time the challenger declines to provide their name or swear the oath. We are supposed to intervene if someone is only challenging certain groups of people (e.g., voters of color) but that is extremely rare.
As for the second class, much of it reviewed the edge cases from before because it turns out that the VSS is also a backup polling-site manager (gulp!). The last part of the VSS class was a practical exam on setting up the machine properly using the step-by-step manual. We even fed pretend ballots (about which ice cream flavor was the best) through the machines to see how it worked. I came away highly impressed with the security of the Dominion Voting machines that I will be working with. Every part of the machine is sealed with tamper-evident seals, and all of the seals are signed off by a Democrat and a Republican. Here again, there were complicated edge cases—in this case, helping a voter who needs ADA accommodations for marking their ballot—but the technology that allows a person with low-vision or low-mobility to do this was quite impressive.
Despite all this, I do think that the whole system relies to some extent on trust. For instance, if someone swiped a voter's mailer from their mailbox, they could attempt to impersonate that voter, since the mailer does not have a photo of the voter on it. If a voter messes up their signature, we are supposed to show the voter their actual signature and have them try again, which seems like it relies on some trust. (Most instances of a mismatch are because an aged or infirm voter's signature changed.) If voter gets checked in erroneously and we don't catch it somehow before they vote, then it sounds like there's nothing we could do. Absentee ballots simply get dropped in a turquoise suitcase so someone could steal a bunch of absentees, fill them out, and dump them in without me knowing about it. Someone could even try to take and destroy the suitcase if they thought it contained ballots for their nonpreferred candidate. Someone could attempt to provide an altered memory card to the memory card runner; there are fortunately backup paper ballots, but the resulting confusion would be a mess. You also have to trust that the people who take these classes and the people who work at the elections board aren't somehow cooking the books. However, I want to emphasize that I do not think that any of these scenarios are at all likely because the risk involved for the participants is huge and the likelihood of actually affecting an election is extremely small. I believe that every election denier should take these classes because at least some of them would stop bellyaching when their candidate loses (*cough cough* Trump *cough cough*).
Finally, the elections administration workers are definitely sensitive to the optics of how elections are run. As an example, there is a secure emergency ballot box in case a machine goes down, so voters can drop their ballots in there to be run through the machine later in case they don't want to wait for the machine to be fixed. The second instructor told us to wait until the end of the night to run those ballots through and to always make sure that there is one Democrat and one Republican present. Can you imagine the brouhaha that would occur on Faux "News" if two Democrats were caught running ballot after ballot through a machine in the middle of the day with no voters present? Yikes!
We look forward to your post-election reports! (V & Z)
The Root of All Evil
The most expensive Senate race in U.S. history was the 2020 North Carolina race, which witnessed the expenditure of $298,910,541. And, of course, if someone had just spent another buck on a zipper that locked properly, it might have had a different outcome.
That record has now fallen, courtesy of this year's race in Pennsylvania, where the John Fetterman-Mehmet Oz (R) tilt is the new king of the spent-money hill. Here are the 10 most expensive Senate races this cycle:
| State | Candidate Spending | Outside Spending | Total Spending |
| Pennsylvania | $89,993,585 | $222,137,618 | $312,131,203 |
| Georgia | $108,023,518 | $146,645,096 | $254,668,614 |
| Arizona | $83,013,976 | $119,318,562 | $202,332,538 |
| Nevada | $59,003,215 | $127,747,515 | $186,750,730 |
| Wisconsin | $60,128,308 | $125,682,758 | $185,811,066 |
| North Carolina | $43,384,984 | $94,130,007 | $137,514,991 |
| Ohio | $53,600,845 | $76,770,535 | $130,371,380 |
| Florida | $110,917,510 | $10,400,975 | $121,318,485 |
| New Hampshire | $38,118,711 | $47,018,928 | $85,137,639 |
| Washington | $35,359,041 | $19,961,430 | $55,320,471 |
To conceptualize how crazy these kinds of outlays are, consider the last six Pennsylvania U.S. Senate races:
| Year | Dem % | Rep % | Total Votes |
| 2018 | 56% | 43% | 4,927,285 |
| 2016 | 48% | 49% | 5,816,714 |
| 2012 | 54% | 45% | 5,530,496 |
| 2010 | 49% | 51% | 3,977,661 |
| 2006 | 59% | 41% | 4,077,762 |
| 2004 | 42% | 53% | 5,259,206 |
The absolute floor for either party appears to be about 40%. Oz, for example, could turn out to be an elitist snob who is a snake oil salesman, has little use for Pennsylvania, and kills puppies, and he's still going to get at least 40% of the vote. Same for Fetterman. So, at most, 20% of the votes are actually gettable. And roughly 5,000,000 people will vote in this election; 20% of that is 1,000,000. In other words, we've seen an outlay of roughly $300 for each gettable vote. And if you assume that, in the current hyperpartisan moment, the real floor for each party is more like 45%, then it jumps to $600 per gettable vote.
The spending isn't going away, of course, especially in a world that features Citizens United, as well as a Senate where one seat could mean the whole ball of wax. With 2024 being a presidential year, we could very well see a $350 million Senate race, perhaps in Ohio, where Sherrod Brown (D) will be playing defense. (Z)
Bellwether House Races
Everyone knows about which Senate races to watch. Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) won her last election by a fraction of a percent of the vote, and that was up against an opponent who wasn't, to be frank, kind of a nutter. The voting in her race should give us a sense of how the Democrats are going to perform, relative to 2020, 2018 and 2016. The same is true of the Senate races in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Wisconsin and the other states above where the center of the state, or the whole state, is white. We will be following all of those races closely during our live-blogging tonight.
That said, many (and perhaps most) of the Senate races won't achieve clarity until later in the night (or later in the week). Undoubtedly, folks will want some insight as early as is possible. House races involve fewer ballots, of course, and so may well become clear much earlier. That being the case, here are 17 races that are worth paying attention to as the returns roll in tonight. We've emphasized mostly districts in the eastern time zone, since, of course, those will be announced the earliest. Asterisks indicate incumbents.
Swingy Districts
There are lots of swingy districts, of course, but here are five of them worth focusing upon:
- VA-07 (D+1); Abigail Spanberger* (D) vs. Yesli Vega (R): Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA), who
won an upset victory in the 2021 gubernatorial race, is barnstorming the state for Republican candidates. Spanberger's
district is ground zero. The district is partly in the D.C. suburbs but it extends down into more rural areas, making it
a good test. The district has been heavily redrawn and three-quarters of the voters are not currently represented by
Spanberger, making it a challenge for her to introduce herself. However, Joe Biden carried it by 6 points. The best
county to watch is Stafford. It is competitive and Youngkin won it by 11 points, but Biden also beat Trump there. One
big plus here is that Virginia is expected to complete its count early on Election Night, making this probably the best
bellwether of them all.
- PA-08 (R+4); Matt Cartwright* (D) vs. Jim Bognet (R) : Cartwright is a Democrat in an R+4
district that Trump won in 2020. But he managed to win then and is facing the same opponent in a less-friendly
environment this time. However, AG Josh Shapiro and John Fetterman could have coattails that help Cartwright. A county
to watch is Luzerne (Scranton), which Cartwright barely won at the same time Trump was winning by 14 points.
- IL-17 (D+2); Eric Sorensen (D) vs. Esther King (R): This is an open seat in northwest
Illinois. The Illinois legislature gerrymandered the district being vacated by Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-IL) to make it one
Biden would have carried by 8 points (vs. the old one Trump carried by 2 points), but that still might not be enough.
The Democrat is a television meteorologist; the Republican is a JAG officer in the Army. The district covers the Quad
Cities on the east bank of the Mississippi River, but also a good piece of rural Illinois. King ran against Bustos and
lost in 2020, but she's back. Sorensen has to win Rock Island County big time, getting at least 57% of the vote to carry
the district.
- NE-2 (EVEN); Tony Vargas (D) vs. Don Bacon* (R): Bacon has survived the past few cycles,
even as Omaha has drifted leftward, but he has struggled. He twice voted against impeaching Trump but he also voted for
a commission to investigate the Jan. 6 coup attempt. This prompted Trump to ask if someone could please primary him.
That didn't work. Vargas, a state senator, is running on a platform of cutting middle-class taxes. This will be Bacon's
toughest race ever.
- OR-06 (D+4); Andrea Salinas (D) vs. Mike Erickson (R): Biden would have won this new district by 14 points, but the open-seat House race appears to be close. Republicans are making a big effort in light-blue districts like this one Oregon, California, New York, and elsewhere, running on fighting crime and inflation. The county to watch is Yamhill, where Trump beat Biden by 4 points.
The Black Vote
Will Black voters show up this cycle? These districts should give us a pretty good clue:
- GA-02 (D+6); Sanford Bishop* (D) vs. Chris West (R): There are currently 22 majority-Black
congressional districts in the U.S.; this one is the only one that's actually competitive. That is because of
gerrymandering that has diluted the Black population down to 51.6% of the district's overall population (it used to be
in the 70s). Bishop has won 15 elections before this, but he's going to need Black voters to show up in order to defeat
West, who has been running almost exclusively on the state of the economy.
- NC-01 (D+3); Donald Davis (D) vs. Sandy Smith (R): This used to be a safe Democratic
district, but that ended with this year's round of redistricting. So, long-serving Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D), who is
Black, threw in the towel. It's therefore an open seat, one being contested by a Black Democrat and a white Republican.
The district now has almost equal populations of white and Black voters (47% to 42%), so if Davis has a good night, it
suggests that Black voters are fired up.
- NC-13 (R+2); Wiley Nickel (D) vs. Bo Hines (R): Like NC-01, this district is pretty even from a partisan standpoint, and is an open seat (it's the one vacated by Ted Budd so he could run for the Senate). Unlike NC-01, Black voters are outnumbered by white voters 2-to-1, and both candidates are white. If there is massive Black turnout, that could carry both Nickel in this district and Davis in NC-01. If there is brisk, but not massive, Black turnout, Davis could win while Nickel goes down to defeat.
The Latino Vote
Same question as above, but with Latino voters. The additional question is how far the Latinos' drift towards the Republicans has really gone. The strongly Latino districts in the east are all Cuban-dominated districts in Florida, which don't really speak to the mostly Mexican-American vote in the west. Everyone knows the Cuban-Americans are going to break Republican as they vote for Ron DeSantis and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL). So, our exemplars here are not from the eastern time zone:
- TX-34 (D+5); Vicente Gonzalez Jr. (D) vs. Mayra Flores* (R): This is a wacky one. Two
Latino candidates, obviously; Flores holds the seat after winning an all-hands-on-deck special election. Gonzalez is
also an incumbent, but is moving over from TX-15. It's also the second-most Latino district in the country, at 84.5%
(trailing only CA-40, which is basically East L.A.). Turnout here should give some sense of Latino enthusiasm, and
also of their partisan drift (or lack thereof).
- NV-01 (D+12); Dina Titus* (D) vs. Mark Robertson (R): This one's not majority-Latino
but it is plurality-Latino (44.6%). Given the lean of the district and Titus' incumbency, she should win pretty easily.
If it's close, however, it suggests many Latinos like what the Republican Party is selling.
- NM-02 (R+8); Gabriel Vasquez (D) vs. Yvette Herrell* (R): Herrell is not Latina (she's Native American). Vasquez, on the other hand, is a Latino, and this is a majority-Latino district (53.6%). Big Latino enthusiasm could allow him to recapture the only New Mexico U.S. House seat currently held by a Republican. Without that, he's probably toast.
The Youth Vote
Are the young folks fired up by Dobbs and/or student-loan forgiveness? Hopefully, these districts will tell us:
- FL-27 (D+4); Annette Taddeo (D) vs. Maria Elvira Salazar* (R): You've got a Republican
incumbent in a slightly Democratic-leaning district, so it could be a barnburner. And the 17,000+ students at the
University of Miami, which is located within the district, could decide it.
- NH-01 (EVEN); Chris Pappas* (D) vs. Karoline Leavitt (R): In this case, the school is
the University of New Hampshire, which is the largest in the state, with nearly 15,000 students.
- NC-04 (D+16); Valerie Foushee (D) vs. Courtney Geels (R): Given the partisan lean of this district, it shouldn't be close, even with incumbent Rep. David Price (D) retiring. However, this district is home to both Duke and UNC, with 35,000 students between them. If Foushee runs up the score, it will be in part due to student votes.
Abortion
The biggest question of the night is whether there will be a repeat of what happened in Kansas. These districts may give an early answer:
- KS-03 (D+1); Sharice Davids* (D) vs. Amanda Adkins (R): Returning to the scene of the
crime, as it were. Kansans will not be voting on abortion again, at least not right now. But this is the Sunflower
State's only competitive district, and if the pro-choice folks there decide they must have someone in Washington
advocating for them, they could send Davids to a big victory.
- MI-03 (R+3); Hillary Scholten (D) vs. John Gibbs (R): Rep. Peter Meijer (R) is retiring,
and so it's an open seat. Unlike Kansas, Michigan does have an abortion initiative on the ballot. Scholten is very
pro-choice, as you might imagine, and Gibbs is very anti-choice. So, if this is a landslide, that will be
instructive.
- MI-08 (R+4); Dan Kildee (D) vs. Paul Junge (R): This one is open because Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D) decamped to MI-07 after redistricting. That said, Dan Kildee is an incumbent, since he's shifting over from MI-05. There are abortion propositions on the ballot in a few other states, but Kentucky and Vermont have no competitive CDs, California is way out west, and Montana's is only sort of an abortion measure. So, we're probably best off monitoring the tight districts in Michigan, and this is definitely one of them.
It's almost time to get this party started. (V & Z)
The Wisdom of the Crowd
The results are in! According to the readers, when the dust settles from this election, the Republicans will have 50 seats in the Senate (more precisely, 49.52) and 223 seats in the House (more precisely, 223.47). That, of course, would mean continued Democratic control of the Senate (with Kamala Harris' tiebreaking vote) and razor-thin Republican control of the House.
Here are some more numbers for your amusement (remember, all numbers refer to seats held by the Republican Party):
| Senate Seats | House Seats | |
| High Reader Guess | 56 | 288 |
| Low Reader Guess | 40 | 192 |
| Median Reader Guess | 49 | 223 |
| Most Common Reader Guess (Mode) | 49 | 225 |
| FiveThirtyEight's Guess | 51 | 227 |
| (V)'s Guess | 50 | 230 |
| (Z)'s Guess | 49 | 223 |
Looks like it's gonna be close. Who knew?
If House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) does capture the Speaker's gavel, he's got big plans, of course. But he's already warning that those plans probably don't include a Joe Biden impeachment. Here's what he said to CNN's Melanie Zanona yesterday:
One thing I've known about the land of America, it's the rule of law. And we will hold the rule of law and we won't play politics with this. We'll never use impeachment for political purposes. That doesn't mean if something rises to the occasion it would not be used. At any other time, it wouldn't matter if it's Democrats or Republicans. But the idea of what Democrats have done, what Adam Schiff has done, is treacherous... We're better than that. We need to get our nation back on track. That's what the Commitment to America does.
Yes, Republicans would never deign to use an impeachment for crass political purposes. Someone should make sure to explain that to Bill Clinton.
Of course, McCarthy is not much of a leader; he basically goes where Donald Trump tells him to go and does what Fox tells him to do. And if he finds himself herding a bunch of cats, some of whom are far-right MAGA types, he might have no choice but to give in and pursue an impeachment, even knowing it would be a farce. Alternatively, he might follow the same path as the last two Republican Speakers, and chuck the whole thing in frustration. (Z)
Today's Senate Polls
Val Demings seemed like she might make a contest out of it, but not so much. Assuming she and Charlie Crist get crushed tonight, as the polls suggest they will, then Florida is officially a red state.
Our map shows that Nevada and Pennsylvania have flipped, canceling each other out. But Georgia is a tie. It is very likely to go to a runoff on Dec. 6 which will determine control of the Senate. Can you imagine $1 billion spent on a single election? We can.
On the other hand, if veteran Nevada political reporter Jon Ralston has it right and Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) holds serve, then the Senate score when today's votes (and the absentee ballots) are counted would be 50D, 49R. This will greatly reduce spending in the Georgia runoff since it won't really matter. (Z)
| State | Democrat | D % | Republican | R % | Start | End | Pollster |
| Arizona | Mark Kelly* | 51% | Blake Masters | 47% | Nov 04 | Nov 06 | Research Co. |
| California | Alex Padilla* | 53% | Mark Meuser | 37% | Nov 04 | Nov 06 | Research Co. |
| Florida | Val Demings | 44% | Marco Rubio* | 54% | Nov 04 | Nov 06 | Research Co. |
| Georgia | Raphael Warnock* | 47% | Herschel Walker | 49% | Nov 06 | Nov 06 | InsiderAdvantage |
| Georgia | Raphael Warnock* | 49% | Herschel Walker | 49% | Nov 02 | Nov 05 | East Carolina U. |
| Georgia | Raphael Warnock* | 49% | Herschel Walker | 49% | Nov 04 | Nov 06 | Research Co. |
| Illinois | Tammy Duckworth* | 58% | Kathy Salvi | 40% | Nov 04 | Nov 06 | Research Co. |
| Indiana | Thomas McDermott | 38% | Todd Young* | 49% | Nov 04 | Nov 07 | Civiqs |
| Missouri | Trudy Valentine | 40% | Eric Schmitt | 55% | Nov 04 | Nov 07 | Civiqs |
| New Hampshire | Maggie Hassan* | 48% | Don Bolduc | 45% | Nov 05 | Nov 06 | Phillips Academy |
| Nevada | Catherine Cortez_Masto* | 48% | Adam Laxalt | 49% | Nov 04 | Nov 06 | Research Co. |
| New York | Chuck Schumer* | 59% | Joe Pinion | 39% | Nov 04 | Nov 06 | Research Co. |
| Ohio | Tim Ryan | 46% | J.D. Vance | 51% | Nov 04 | Nov 07 | Civiqs |
| Ohio | Tim Ryan | 46% | J.D. Vance | 54% | Nov 04 | Nov 06 | Research Co. |
| Pennsylvania | John Fetterman | 49% | Mehmet Oz | 48% | Nov 04 | Nov 06 | Research Co. |
| Wisconsin | Mandela Barnes | 47% | Ron Johnson* | 53% | Nov 04 | Nov 06 | Research Co. |
| Wisconsin | Mandela Barnes | 49% | Ron Johnson* | 50% | Nov 04 | Nov 07 | Civiqs |
* Denotes incumbent
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