2016 Election Night

NBC News has called South Carolina for Trump. (Our partners at ABC News have not, yet.)

Indiana and West Virginia have both been called for Trump. This isn’t surprising, but it does warrant a moment of thought. Until 2004, West Virginia was one of the most reliably Democratic states in presidential elections. Indiana has tended to lean Republican in presidential contests, going back to about 1968 (with the notable exception of Obama’s victory there in 2008). But it’s also home to moderate Democrats like Evan Bayh, who is competing for a Senate seat and was once considered a rising star in the Democratic Party. West Virginia is still represented by conservative, pro-gun Democrat Joe Manchin in the Senate — who has run on his opposition to the president whose party label he shares. The easy calls in Indiana and West Virginia for Trump probably don’t signal anything big about tonight’s presidential contest — but they do signal the kinds of changes that have happened in the two parties over the past few decades.

Not a surprise, but Clinton is really overperforming a typical Democrat in wealthy, highly educated areas. She’s winning Loudoun County, Virginia, by 16 points, for example, when Obama won it by just 4 points four years ago. If anything, these demographic shifts look even more profound in the vote so far than they did in the pre-election polls.

I’m a little worried about relying too much on bellwether counties for projecting results in Florida because the vote patterns in the state may have changed a lot since 2012. Still, Clinton is up by 10 percentage points in early returns from Hillsborough County. That’s good for her, but again, we need to wait for more data.

Georgia is still too close to call. Our final forecast gave Trump a roughly 80 percent chance to win the deep-red state. But Georgia has been undergoing a major demographic shift, with a growing share of African-Americans and Hispanics. This change is apparent in the exit polls from today: 39 percent of Georgia’s electorate is nonwhite.

Nine states are deciding on marijuana legalization ballot initiatives today. We’re spotlighting each during the course of the day. Here’s the batch of states whose polls close or start to close at 8 p.m. Eastern:

Maine

If the ballot measure in Maine passes, adults age 21 and older will be allowed to possess up to 2.5 ounces of marijuana and consume it privately. Medical marijuana is already legal in the state. A 10 percent tax would be placed on marijuana sales. According to the three state polls we’ve seen, it looks like the vote will be close. All three have the measure favored to pass, but not by much.

Massachusetts

If the ballot measure in Massachusetts passes, adults age 21 and older will be able to possess up to 10 ounces of marijuana, grow up to six plants for personal use and consume marijuana privately. Its use would be regulated similar to how the state handles alcoholic beverages. Medical marijuana is already legal in the state. If the measure passes, the state will create the Cannabis Control Commission to oversee marijuana legalization. A 3.75 percent tax would be placed on marijuana sales. Revenue would be placed in a Marijuana Regulation Fund to pay for administrative costs. Cities and towns would be allowed to add a local tax of up to 2 percent. Of the nine state polls we’ve seen in 2016, nine have the measure passing and two have it failing.

North Dakota

A yes vote on the ballot measure in North Dakota is a vote to legalize medical marijuana to treat specific debilitating medical conditions. A similar measure failed to reach the North Dakota ballot in 2012 after thousands of fraudulent signatures were found. What’s the outlook? It’s not clear at all. No official poll has been done on marijuana legalization in the state in two years, and I haven’t found any polling on it.

One more note on education: Preliminary exit polls in Indiana indicate Clinton lost among voters without a college degree by 23 points. Among college graduates, however, she lost by just 4 points, and she won handily among voters with graduate degrees. Exact vote shares are different in other states that have reported, but the same basic pattern holds.

Democrat Evan Bayh, whose position tumbled in the polls of the U.S. Senate campaign in Indiana, is trailing Republican Todd Young by 15 points based on returns so far. The Democratic-leaning parts of Indiana haven’t reported much vote yet, so his position will improve. Still, Republican chances of winning the Senate will shoot up to 68 percent if Indiana is called for Young in our election night model.

According to ABC News exit polls, the state of West Virginia will lend its five electoral votes to Trump. This was expected, but it’s also an example of a state that was once blue becoming red. The state was a touchstone of speeches at both the Democratic and Republican national conventions. At the latter, West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito gave a speech blasting the president and the Democratic candidate. “President Obama has hurt the heart and soul of my state, the proud coal miners and the communities where they live … creating a cycle of pessimism and disgust,” she said. “West Virginia voters are the backbone of this economy. And Hillary Clinton is promising to put them out of work?” The state has lost jobs as the Environmental Protection Agency has regulated mining and fossil fuel prices have stagnated.

Rob Portman, the incumbent Republican senator from Ohio, will keep his seat. Our model now gives Republicans a 55 percent chance of retaining control of the Senate.

Trump wins West Virginia. Our model now gives him a 28 percent chance of winning the election.

We’re seeing some huge gender splits in the exit polls. In Ohio, for example, Trump leads by 15 points among men but is losing by 14 points among women. That 29-point spread is much bigger than the 18-point gender gap in Ohio in 2012.

Preliminary exit poll results suggest that we may see a record gender gap among voters in Virginia — a 19-point advantage for Clinton among women, 57-38 percent. It’s not too much of a leap to suggest that this might be connected to Trump’s treatment of women — 62 percent of women in the state said they were “bothered a lot by Trump’s treatment of women.” In North Carolina, Clinton appears to have won among women by 13 percentage points, which ABC News says appears to be another record. What’s interesting is that although there was a record gender gap nationally in 2012 — about 20 percent — it didn’t show up so much in these states. Obama won female voters in Virginia by 9 points and won that group by only 2 points in North Carolina. We are seeing something new.

Trump’s campaign slogan, as pretty much everyone knows by now, is “Make America Great Again.” Maybe it isn’t surprising, then, that Trump voters are pretty pessimistic about the direction the country is headed. According to preliminary exit polls, two-thirds of Trump voters (67 percent) think the country is headed in the wrong direction, and nearly as many (60 percent) think the next generation of Americans will be worse off than this one. Clinton’s voters are much more optimistic: 89 percent think the U.S. is “generally going in the right direction,” and 60 think the next generation will be better off than this one. As dark as this campaign has been, however, voters are generally more optimistic in 2016 than they were in the midterm election two years ago. Overall, 37 percent of voters think the next generation will be better off, up from 22 percent in 2014.

Even if he loses tonight, Trump is likely to have places where he significantly outperforms past Republican nominees. In Vigo County, Indiana, for example — home to Terre Haute — Trump is winning by 13 percentage points, whereas Barack Obama won the county by 1 point in 2012.

Trump’s win in Indiana is no surprise — FiveThirtyEight’s model gave him a 97.5 percent chance of winning there, despite the fact that Obama carried the state in 2008. Trump’s big margin in Indiana signals Clinton’s challenges with less-educated voters. Just 25 percent of Hoosiers ages 25 and up have a bachelor’s degree, one of the lowest shares of any state. Trump also won Kentucky, where even fewer residents have a college degree, while Clinton won Vermont, one of the most educated states in the country. Of course, those are far from the only factors separating those states.

I’m looking at returns from two major counties in Florida: Duval and Palm Beach. In the early vote, Clinton is doing better than the amount that Obama won by overall in those counties in 2012. In Palm Beach, she’s running 7 percentage points ahead. If that holds, it’s going to be a very long night for Trump.

In preliminary exit polls according to our partners at ABC News, voters were more scared by the thought of a Trump presidency than a Clinton one. Women, especially, expressed fear at the thought of President Trump. Overall, though, voters are expressing more fear than excitement over both a Trump and a Clinton win.

Preliminary exit polls: Would you be excited/scared if Trump or Clinton wins?

	EXCITED		SCARED
	CLINTON	TRUMP	CLINTON	TRUMP
All	17%	13%	29%	37%
Men	12	14	32	31
Women	22	12	26	43

If you’re looking for ticket splitting, look no further than Florida. In the initial returns from the Jacksonville area, Marco Rubio in the Senate race is running 8 points ahead of where Trump is running in the presidential race. That’s good news for Republicans looking to hold that Senate seat.

We’re getting reports that voting hours will be extended for anywhere from 20 to 60 minutes in a number of Durham, North Carolina, polling places. There were problems with voting machines in this area earlier today — computers broke down and some voting had to be done on paper — and polling officials are likely trying to account for this delay.

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

Trump wins Indiana. Our model now gives him a 28 percent chance of winning the election.

We’ll know soon enough how much of the electorate was made up of women. Early-voting numbers, though, show that women’s share of the electorate has surged — by several percentage points compared to 2012, according to Drew Brighton of the voting-data firm TargetSmart. According to the firm’s breakdown of 46.3 million early votes, 56 percent were cast by women — consistent with earlier reports of big turnout among women. And that proportion was about the same across just about every age group, as well as among both women who are newly registered and those who’ve been on the rolls for longer. If the final vote tallies are consistent with the early ones, that could provide a boost to Clinton, who led by big margins among women in polls but trailed among men.

Rachel Maddow earlier said on MSNBC that we’re looking at “class warfare” in American politics and that there’s a possibility that Clinton will win among college-educated white voters (or at least come close). These comments highlight the complex nature of what we mean when we talk about “class.” It’s often used interchangeably with “income” — which is an important factor in determining partisan identification. But in this election, we’ve also heard a lot about education. Although higher incomes tend to correlate with identifying as a Republican, the education variable means something different in 2016. Trump appears to be poised to do much better with voters with less education than those with more years of school under their belt. In other words, education is correlated with income but has different political implications. Being clear about these variables isn’t just an academic exercise; it’s important for politics. When partisanship becomes a function of several correlated, mutually reinforcing social identities, party divisions become cemented — and ripe for resentment.

Tim Scott, the incumbent Republican senator from South Carolina, will keep his seat. Our model now gives Republicans a 51 percent chance of retaining control of the Senate.

A local news station is reporting that two polling places are on lockdown near the Azusa shooting. The L.A. County Registrar tweeted out that, because of the lockdown, voters would be able to cast their ballots in other locations — voters should avoid the lockdown area.

Patrick Leahy, the incumbent Democratic senator from Vermont, will keep his seat. Our model now gives Democrats a 49 percent chance of winning control of the Senate.

Trump wins Kentucky. Our model now gives him a 27 percent chance of winning the election.

Clinton wins Vermont. Our model now gives her a 72 percent chance of winning the election.

In a bad early sign for Trump, exit polls in Georgia imply a close race there, with Trump leading only about 48-47 according to preliminary exit polls put out by CBS News.

We have our first calls of the evening. Trump has won Kentucky and Indiana, while Clinton has won Vermont, according to ABC News. On the Senate side, Republican Tim Scott has won re-election in South Carolina, as did Rand Paul in Kentucky. Democrat Patrick Leahy has won re-election in the state of Vermont. We’ll have new model odds shortly.

The story in Virginia is exactly what we thought it was. Clinton looks to be crushing Trump in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, while Trump is winning in the central and western parts of the state. The potential problem for Trump is that the regions he is winning make up a smaller percentage of the vote than the regions Clinton is winning.

With one of seven precincts reporting, Elliott County, Kentucky, is at 69 percent for Trump. If the result holds, this would break a historic streak: The county was formed in 1869, and the Democratic candidate has won it in every presidential election since then. This wouldn’t be as big of a shock as it sounds. A narrow victory for Obama in 2012 foretold Elliott going red, like most of the state.

How important is Florida? (Polls in the eastern part of the state close in a few minutes.) If Clinton wins it, her probability of winning the Electoral College would shoot up to 93 percent from 71 percent, according to our election night model. And if Trump were to win it, his chances would increase to 59 percent from 29 percent.

This is a developing story, but the Los Angeles Times is reporting a shooting near a polling place in Azusa, California, a city in the San Gabriel Valley. It’s being reported that one person is dead, multiple people have been shot and the shooter is heavily armed and active. We will, of course, be keeping our eye on this.

Trump has repeatedly claimed the election is “rigged,” possibly positioning himself to not accept the results of tonight’s election. In exit polls, Trump and Clinton supporters, unsurprisingly, disagree on whether the votes in their state will be counted accurately. Among Clinton supporters, 91 percent are “very” or “somewhat” confident, but only 77 percent of Trump supporters are.

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Virginia, where polls close at 7 p.m., was a consistently Republican state, at least at the presidential level, until Obama won it in 2008. But now it’s practically a blue state — our model gave Clinton a better than 85 percent chance to win the state. One factor giving Clinton an edge in Virginia: 37 percent of residents ages 25 and up have a bachelor’s degree, making it one of the most educated states in the country. Clinton, of course, is expected to outperform Trump by a wide margin among college-educated voters. Virginia is also in strong shape economically, with an unemployment rate of 4 percent (vs. 4.9 percent for the U.S.) and a median household income of more than $66,000 (vs. $56,000 nationally). But Virginia is to some degree a tale of two states: The eastern counties near Washington, D.C., are among the wealthiest and best-educated in the country. But many counties in the western part of the state have median household incomes below $40,000.

Nine states are deciding on marijuana legalization ballot initiatives today. We’re spotlighting each during the course of the day. Florida’s polls start closing at 7 p.m. Eastern. If the ballot measure in Florida passes, it will legalize medical marijuana for specific debilitating diseases. Florida is particularly interesting because low-THC marijuana is legal in the state when consumed by a method other than smoking. The ballot measure would make it more widely available to patients. In 2014, a similar ballot measure failed. Unlike the 2014 measure, this year’s initiative requires parental consent if the patient is a minor. According to the 13 polls we’ve seen in 2016, the measure is likely to pass. Every poll has the measure going through, with the smallest margin at about 25 percentage points and the largest margin at 70 percentage points.

We’re going to see our first states being called soon enough, but in the preliminary exit poll results from Pennsylvania, I was struck by respondents’ answers to questions about whether they had been affected by either candidate’s ground game. You’ll recall that Pennsylvania is a state that Trump really needs to win, and the effectiveness of his ground game has been doubted by many (earlier this year, I reported on an internal Trump memo that outlined the campaign’s unorthodox strategy of going after unlikely voters). In Pennsylvania, 23 percent of voters say they were only contacted by the Clinton campaign, 13 percent only by Trump’s, 16 percent by both. That could make the difference tonight.

Early in the night, before we have a critical mass of returns, one thing I’ll be looking for is whether and where Trump is doing better than Romney did four years ago. So I’m looking over the Kentucky counties that have reported votes so far. And it doesn’t appear that Trump is doing significantly better than Romney. Trump is doing better in some counties but worse in plenty of others.

The Philadelphia district attorney’s office is investigating a report that a man wearing a badge labeled “poll police” attempted to interfere outside a polling place near 39th and Haverford in West Philly. A police report was filed in the 16th District; a spokesperson from the D.A.’s office confirmed that officials “are aware” of the incident and “we are investigating.” BillyPenn learned the confrontation happened after a question about a voter’s eligibility that was eventually resolved. After the ordeal, a group arrived in a pickup truck and the man with the badge approached the poll watcher, asking whether the poll watcher was making trouble. He took off his jacket and showed the badge. The poll watcher apparently thought the man may have been a Trump supporter. The report follows an Election Day that had largely passed without major incident and with few complications. At an afternoon press conference, the D.A.’s office said it had received 10 calls about machine malfunctions, a handful of calls about illegal assistance and 13 complaints of electioneering. This post was produced in conjunction with BillyPenn, a website covering the Philadelphia area.

It’s been a long election. Throughout the day, I’ll be highlighting some of the moments that made me say, “Whoa, can you believe that was this election?!” (Here are the first and second entries.) Remember when there was a kid with stickers all over his face behind Hillary Clinton? Remember when Donald Trump gave out Lindsey Graham’s phone number during a speech? (I just tried calling it, by the way. No dice.) Remember when the political press spent a few days running down the details of whether Ben Carson had stabbed a kid but had his blade deflected by the kid’s belt buckle? If you have any nominations for “remember when,” get in touch by Twitter.

As you start to see how different demographic groups voted this year, it might be helpful to see how they voted in the past. We’ve got you covered:

One thing we’ll keep an eye on in Indiana is the amount of ticket splitting. In preliminary results, Bayh, in the Senate race, is running 8 points ahead of where Clinton is running in the presidential race. As more Democratic areas come in, we’ll see if that’s enough for Bayh to win the Senate race even as Clinton is losing the presidential race in Indiana.

The first states will be called soon, and the state-by-state results in 2016 will be added to the long history of presidential elections. Here’s that history so far:

We’re still looking at preliminary exit poll data, but how does the 2016 electorate look so far compared to 2012? The two electorates look mostly the same, as you would expect. But there may be some slight differences. (These numbers are likely to change.)

1. College graduates are 50 percent of the electorate in 2016 versus 47 percent in 2012.
2. Liberals are 27 percent of the electorate compared to 25 percent in 2012.
3. Senior citizens (65+ year-olds) are 17 percent of the electorate in 2016 compared to 16 percent in 2012.
4. Evangelical white voters are 27 percent of the electorate in 2016 versus 26 percent in 2012.

Exit polls ask voters how they feel about candidates and the issues. I wish they asked more about how people feel about the process of voting. Exit pollsters are there mainly to serve the media, including our partners at ABC News, and I get why they focus on the most newsworthy tidbits. But they’re also in a unique position to talk to people right after they’ve experienced voting, and it’d be fascinating to know how their experience went: How long did they wait? Was the ballot confusing? Did anyone try to stop them from voting? My own experience voting this morning in Queens, New York, was both inspiring and troubling. Inspiring, because people lined up in the cold to vote in a state where the race at the top of the ballot is a foregone conclusion, and because poll workers were abundant and kind. Troubling because the process was inefficient and confusing — you had to figure out from watching other people where to take your ballot to fill it out, and then where to take it to scan it; no signs or people pointed the way. This is far from a scientific exit poll, but I asked people on Twitter how their experience affected their faith in our electoral process. Most respondents so far said nothing changed for them; of the rest, more gained faith than lost it. You can still vote in this exit poll for a few more hours.

It’s not all politics today at FiveThirtyEight. Or maybe it is. … I called Walter Engelund of NASA’s Langley Research Center this afternoon to talk about a piece I’m writing about the technical challenges of sending humans to Mars. He told me that the U.S. space program is a politically charged topic. “Almost without exception, whenever a new administration comes in, we get a change in priorities,” he said. Sending humans to Mars will require sustained support, and that means politicians who are willing to fully fund NASA and prioritize its Mars program. Both Clinton and Trump have expressed enthusiasm for the space program, but they’re vague on details. Trump has given at least one speech promising not to cut space funding, but he also told a town hall rally in New Hampshire back in August that he wants to “rebuild our infrastructure” before sending people to Mars. Clinton has called herself an “enthusiastic supporter of human space flight” and indicated that going to Mars is a “consensus horizon goal,” whatever that means.