2016 Election Night

Despite a broad decline in its use nationwide, the death penalty may be bolstered in a few states after tonight’s vote. According to pre-election polling, California, Nebraska and Oklahoma looked poised to retain, reinstate and reinforce capital punishment, respectively. And now some real results are starting to roll in. In Oklahoma — the state with the highest per-capita execution rate since 1976 — the “yes” votes on State Question 776 currently have a 66-34 lead, with 11 percent reporting. A “yes” vote would amend the state’s constitution, affirming the state’s right to execute and choose the method of execution.

We’re in something of a state of suspended animation right now. The results so far are pretty well in line with pre-election polls, which showed a close race in many swing states and Clinton more often having the lead. But the problem with having a lot of narrow leads is that you don’t always convert them to wins, and so far no major states have fallen to Clinton.

While the state of Colorado has already legalized recreational marijuana and statewide ballots there don’t feature any questions about marijuana legalization, the ballot in the county of Pueblo sure does. Voters are weighing two marijuana issues there today. If issue 300 passes, voters will ban recreational marijuana sales in the city of Pueblo. If issue 200 passes, all marijuana facilities across the county will be shut down by Oct. 31, 2017.

Here’s a potential sign of a shift: Barack Obama won the township of Bradley, Maine — in the largely rural, 2nd Congressional District — by 12 points in 2012. Trump just won it by 10 points tonight. Maine splits its electoral votes by congressional district, so more results like that would put Trump on his way to winning one electoral vote there.

It’s possible that Clinton will win Ohio while losing Florida, which might seem like a huge surprise given the narrative of the race, but the fact is that the two states weren’t polling all that far apart. Clinton trailed Trump in Ohio by only 1.9 points in our pre-election forecast and led him in Florida by only 0.6 points.

We have arrived at the third and final video in our “New Bellwethers” series. Throughout Election Day, FiveThirtyEight’s senior political writer Clare Malone has been exploring counties in key states where Clinton and Trump are polling very close to how they are nationally. Our last stop: Maricopa County, Arizona. If you’re just joining us, the second episode of “The New Bellwethers” video series — Berks County, Pennsylvania — can be viewed here.

Trump and Clinton are neck and neck in Florida. The issue of immigration is a crucial — and divisive — issue in the state. No surprise, exit polls indicate that the candidates’ voters have radically different views on the impact that immigrants have on the country today: 50 percent of Trump voters believe immigrants hurt the country, while a whopping 83 percent of Clinton voters say the opposite, that immigrants help.

Nine states are deciding on marijuana legalization ballot initiatives today. We’re spotlighting each during the course of the day. Arizona’s polls close at 9 p.m. Eastern. If the ballot measure in Arizona passes, adults age 21 and older will be able to grow up to six marijuana plants in their residence, possess up to 1 ounce of marijuana and consume it privately. Medical marijuana is already legal in Arizona, and the existing pot industry could adapt to fill the recreational market. The retail industry would be capped at 10 percent of the number of liquor store licenses in the state. A 15 percent sales tax would cover implementation and regulation costs; any extra would benefit schools and the state health service, and cities would be allowed to pass their own restrictions. According to the seven state polls we’ve seen in 2016, it looks like a toss-up. Three polls say the measure has a slight chance of winning, and four say the reverse.

Oh-me-oh, oh-my-oh, what’s up with Ohio? Rob Portman is projected to win the Senate race, which we expected, and right now our live forecast is showing Trump with a 68 percent chance of winning the state. A quick dive into the state’s exit polls tells us that a plurality of voters there, 42 percent, said that being able to bring needed change was the most important attribute they looked for in a candidate. This would seem to favor Trump, not Clinton. Clinton also appears to be struggling with union households in the state; she and Trump are splitting that vote, whereas President Obama won that group by 23 points in 2012.

The question remaining in Florida is how much vote is left in the southeastern part of the state. Trump is ahead right now by a little over 100,000 votes. That is a lot of votes to make up, though it is possible for her to do it.

Betting markets — and The Upshot’s statistical model — now show Trump as slightly more likely than not to win Florida, expecting that he may pick up just enough votes in the Florida Panhandle and southwestern Florida to make up for what will be further Clinton gains in Broward County and Miami-Dade County.

What we’re waiting for in Virginia is results from the northern part of the state to come in. Right now, Trump is leading in the state by about 5 percentage points. There probably are enough votes left in the north for her to make up that deficit, but this race is definitely far closer than Clinton wanted it to be.

Political parties, partisan groups and nonpartisan organizations have sent election observers around the nation. One of them is Richard Burns, a New York nonprofit management consultant who has a law degree. He volunteered as a legal observer today — his fourth election doing so — in Pennsylvania as part of the Clinton Victory Counsel. Compared with the reports of problems in Pennsylvania, including reports from some voters that the machines changed Trump votes to Clinton ones, Burns found the Friends Meeting House in Lancaster calm. “There were a number of recently naturalized citizens, middle-aged adults, beaming and saying this was their first time voting,” Burns said in an interview earlier today from the polling location. Lancaster is in Amish Country, a region that has seen a massive growth in the Latino population, which outstripped the Amish as of the 2010 Census.

https://twitter.com/rickklein/status/796164648517201921

One thing seems fairly clear, as we wait for the first swing state dominoes to fall: If Trump wins the Electoral College tonight, and it remains something of a long shot, it’s going to be with narrow wins in a large number of swing states instead of something more emphatic. And it’s going to be a very long night, possibly including an Electoral College-popular vote split.

As I told Clare in our video chat a few minutes ago, all the exit poll data so far has made me really despondent about the state of our politics. The gulfs are widening along gender, education, class, and urban/rural divides. This is, of course, nothing new — we’ve been talking about it for months — but I suppose Election Day is turning into a big, clarifying, heartbreaking reminder.

In Vermont, Republican Phil Scott is currently beating Sue Minter by 14 percentage points with 15 percent of the vote in. The race hasn’t been called, and with few votes in from heavily Democratic Burlington yet, that makes sense. But should Scott hold on to win, that victory wouldn’t be as surprising. Yes, gubernatorial elections are increasingly tracking trends in presidential elections. But paradoxically, on-cycle elections for governor have actually been less nationalized than gubernatorial elections held in midterm years. Maybe that’s because on-cycle elections attract more voters, including more moderate voters. That could be good news for some gubernatorial candidates today, including Montana Democrat Steve Bullock and Missouri Democrat Chris Koster.

NBC News has projected that Republicans will retain a majority in the House of Representatives.

Republican Todd Young has won the U.S. Senate race in Indiana. Our model now gives Republicans a 69 percent chance of retaining control of the Senate.

Clinton trailed Trump by 10 points in our Missouri presidential forecast — so we’ll be looking toward whether Democratic senate candidate Jason Kander can run 10 points better than Clinton tonight. So far, he’s toeing the line, outrunning Clinton by 9 points based on returns so far from Jackson County, which includes Kansas City, Missouri, and its suburbs.

Richard Shelby, the incumbent Republican senator from Alabama, will keep his seat. Our model now gives Republicans a 56 percent chance of retaining control of the Senate.

In ABC News’s preliminary exit polls, Clinton has a clear advantage over Trump in favorability ratings. In none of the states that were polled, however, did a majority of voters view either candidate favorably.

Preliminary exit poll: Favorability

	FAVORABLE RATINGS
	CLINTON	TRUMP	DIFFERENCE
New Hampshire	44%	32%	-12
Wisconsin	44	33	-11
Nevada	47	37	-10
Virginia	46	36	-10
Colorado	43	34	-9
North Carolina	45	37	-8
Florida	46	39	-7
Michigan	44	39	-5
Ohio	44	39	-5
Pennsylvania	45	40	-5
Iowa	41	39	-2
Arizona	40	39	-1
Georgia	43	42	-1
National	44	37	-7

Trump’s lead is climbing in Florida as more of the Panhandle is reporting. He’s now up by about 65,000 votes or 0.75 percentage points. This could end up coming down to the wire.

Trump wins Alabama. Our model now gives him a 24 percent chance of winning the election.

As we all stare intently at results from Florida — it’s essentially tied right now — here’s an interesting tidbit from the exit polls there: Voters who consider the economy the most important issue facing the country favor Clinton over Trump by a 50-43 margin. Voters who are most concerned about immigration, meanwhile, went for Trump by a whopping 38 points, 68-30.

Trump wins South Carolina and Tennessee. Our model now gives him a 24 percent chance of winning the election.

Polling by the firm Latino Decisions on election eve found that Florida’s Latino population had cast an early ballot for or planned to vote for Clinton over Trump 67-31. In 2012, Obama bested Romney among Florida Latinos by 58-40. The state has a large Cuban-American population that has trended Republican but that was dissatisfied with voting for Trump. Still, nationally, the firm shows Clinton winning the Latino vote 79-18, a significantly higher margin than in Florida. The Florida results also showed Senator Marco Rubio reaping a lower share of the Latino vote than his challenger, Patrick Murphy, in a 40-58 split, although Rubio led in statewide polls and has now won the race according to preliminary exit polls.

Nine states are deciding on marijuana legalization ballot initiatives today. We’re spotlighting each during the course of the day. Arkansas’s polls close at 8:30 p.m. Eastern. If the ballot measure in Arkansas passes, medical marijuana use for patients with qualifying conditions will become legal. A medical marijuana initiative was defeated in Arkansas in 2012. The marijuana would be taxed, with half the revenue going to vocational training and the other half divided among the general fund and other state programs. We’ve seen three state polls this year: One showed voters slightly in favor, one showed voters slightly against, and the third showed voters overwhelmingly in favor. So there’s a slight lean toward legalization, but nothing’s certain yet.

Marco Rubio, the incumbent Republican senator from Florida, will keep his seat. Our model now gives Republicans a 56 percent chance of retaining control of the Senate.

This is why it’s important to wait for the Panhandle to report in Florida. Trump has just jumped into the lead in Florida by 12,000 votes. Still a lot of votes to be counted in that state.

Clinton leads in the Electoral College 68-37 based on states called so far, and our live election night forecast is becoming slightly more confident in its predictions as the candidates bring in states from their respective bases. Clinton’s chances of winning are up to 78 percent in the forecast.

The marijuana ballot measure in Florida passed by a landslide, legalizing medical pot for specific debilitating diseases. With 76.9 percent in favor and 29.1 percent opposed, the results lined up with the polls we looked at.

As Nate mentioned, Mark Kirk just became the first incumbent senator to lose his bid for re-election. Kirk has long been a top Democratic target: In 2010, he won the seat formerly held by Barack Obama in deep-blue Illinois. Outside spending to save him was relatively limited. During his time in the Senate, Kirk has cut a relatively moderate profile: He received an “F” rating from the NRA, is pro-choice, and among the Senate’s most centrist Republicans. In that, Kirk fits a pattern. In recent years, the incumbent senators who have lost have been disproportionately moderates whose partisanship puts them at odds with their state. In 2012, the Democrats took out Republican moderates like Massachusetts’ Sen. Scott Brown — and Brown was the third most liberal Republican in the prior Congress. In 2014, Republicans returned the favor, beating moderate Democratic incumbents in Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana, and North Carolina. Alaska’s Mark Begich was the 39th most liberal Democratic Senator, and the other three incumbents were still more moderate. This replacement of moderates is one key driver of the polarization we see in the halls of Congress today: moderates whose partisanship doesn’t align with their state find it hard to keep their seats. (University of Pennsylvania students Jackson Gu, Max Kaufman, Thomas Munson, Owen O’Hare and Liz Sanchez helped with this post.)

We’ll also be updating our snake chart as the night progresses. Here’s each candidate’s remaining path to 270 electoral votes.

Perhaps the most shocking result so far is in Missouri. Democrat Jason Kander looks to be running very strongly in the exit polls. That would be a huge pickup for Democrats.

ABC News has called the Illinois Senate race for Tammy Duckworth, making this the first pickup for either party so far tonight. Republican Mark Kirk previously held the seat. The call isn’t a surprise — Duckworth was up 12 points in our forecast — but it’s something of an indignity for an incumbent senator to have a race called against him immediately after polls close. Kirk’s problems went from bad to worse following a debate where he mocked Duckworth’s heritage.

Democrat Tammy Duckworth has won the U.S. Senate race in Illinois. Our model now gives Democrats a 48 percent chance of winning control of the Senate.

In preliminary exit polling from ABC News, more voters said they were bothered a lot by Trump’s treatment of women than by Clinton’s emails. However, state by state, the numbers ranged widely, with more voters in Arizona and Texas bothered by the emails.

Preliminary exit poll: Are you bothered a lot by …

STATE	CLINTON’S EMAILS	TRUMP’S TREATMENT OF WOMEN	DIFFERENCE
Virginia	42%	53%	+11
New Mexico	44	54	+10
Florida	44	53	+9
Pennsylvania	44	53	+9
Iowa	44	51	+7
Michigan	43	50	+7
New Hampshire	46	53	+7
Wisonsin	45	52	+7
Ohio	46	48	+2
Nevada	46	47	+1
Arizona	49	48	-1
Texas	50	43	-7
National	45	51	+6

Clinton wins Delaware, Illinois, and Rhode Island. Our model now gives her a 78 percent chance of winning the election.

NBC News says that New Hampshire and Pennsylvania are too early to call. That is excellent news for Clinton. She is leading in both. Trump likely needs to win at least one of those two states if he wants to win.

According to exit polls from ABC, 36 percent of Pennsylvania voters say society gives more advantages to whites than to minorities. Thirty-one percent said society favors minorities more than whites, and the other third said neither group is favored. With Clinton holding her own among nonwhite voters and Trump prevailing with whites, this could add to the societal divide in the state.

James Lankford, the incumbent Republican senator from Oklahoma, will keep his seat. Our model now gives Republicans a 54 percent chance of retaining control of the Senate.

Democrats win Senate races in Connecticut and Maryland. Our model now gives Democrats a 46 percent chance of winning control of the Senate.

Right now, Clinton is up in Florida by more than 2 percentage points. The key counties look good for her. Keep in mind, though, that there are still plenty of votes to be counted in the Republican-leaning Panhandle.

Trump wins Mississippi and Oklahoma. Our model now gives him a 26 percent chance of winning the election.

New Jersey, which was just called for Clinton by ABC News, is the closest thing to a swing state that’s been called so far: Clinton had “only” a 96.9 percent chance of winning it, according to our pre-election forecast. Trump was a 97.5 percent favorite in Indiana, which was called earlier in the night. South Carolina — which other networks have called for Trump but ABC has not yet — is a little more competitive, however, as our forecast had put Trump’s odds at 89.7 percent there.

Clinton wins the District of Columbia, Maryland, Massachusetts, and New Jersey. Our model now gives her a 73 percent chance of winning the election.

If you’re puzzling at the results in Virginia — more than a fifth of precincts are reporting and Trump leads by more than 10 points — don’t expect an upset there just yet. There’s still a ton of the vote left to report in Northern Virginia, specifically the heavily Democratic Washington D.C. suburbs.