What Went Down In The 2018 Midterms

I wrote earlier in the day about Latinos’ voting power as a bloc — albeit a diverse bloc. Even taking into account age and citizenship, though, Latinos are less likely to vote than other racial or ethnic groups. Researchers say they have a good sense of why.

Essentially, the political parties have done a poor job of engaging Latino voters. Major demographic change is underway, but that doesn’t mean the electorate will automatically shift with it. That kind of change will take coordinated efforts to reach eligible voters who haven’t participated in elections in the past. And that doesn’t just mean running ads in Spanish, said Mark Hugo Lopez, a director at Pew Research Center. Many Latinos don’t speak Spanish or engage with Spanish-language media.

I’ve heard from a variety of Latino-focused organizations that they’ve reoriented their work toward voter engagement this year, trying to make up where previous efforts have failed. In Texas, where more than 1 in 4 eligible voters are Latino, organizers have been invoking immigration policy when speaking to potential and new voters in the hopes that it will motivate them to get to the polls. Since Latinos tend to align more behind Democrats, many party activists are hoping that will help some of their candidates into statewide office. Although it’s not clear that there are enough resources to swing the election toward Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic underdog with a fighting chance against incumbent Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, the more telling sign for the future could be what happens in down-ballot races.

Whatever happens, the lessons learned from this midterm election will be as much about how effectively organizers and political parties have reached Latino voters as they are about the electorate itself.

Republican House members Chris Collins of New York (80 percent) and Duncan Hunter of California (82 percent) and Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey (94 percent) are all favored to win re-election, even though all three have been indicted in corruption probes. (The Department of Justice ended its probe against Menendez earlier this year after a deadlocked jury resulted in a mistrial and then a judge found him not guilty of several of the charges.)

How are they leading their races? Well, as my colleague Anna Maria Berry-Jester wrote last month, partisanship is trumping scandal in these cases. And that’s happened before the 2018 campaign cycle. None of these three men is in a swingy area–and that is probably protecting them from the impact of these scandals. That said, I wouldn’t rule out a loss from any of them, particularly Collins and Hunter, since they are Republicans running in what is likely to be anti-GOP election night.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but the robocalls might not stop tomorrow. With health insurance open-enrollment season now underway, some people are experiencing an influx of robocalls featuring health insurance pitches. According to Barbara Feder Ostrov at California Healthline, many of these calls violate Federal Trade Commission rules, and some of the plans being promoted are scams.

A reader wrote to ask about Puerto Ricans and voting this election season. After Hurricane Maria, many Puerto Ricans moved to the mainland United States, and political scientists and politicos alike have been pondering whether that will translate to new voters, particularly in central Florida. Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens and immediately eligible to vote if they move to one of the 50 states (provided they register, of course).

This summer, news organizations noted that there hadn’t been much of an uptick in voter registration among Hispanics in the state, which experts saw as a sign that recently relocated Puerto Ricans probably wouldn’t turn out to the polls come Election Day. Well, Election Day is here, and no one knows quite what to expect. Hispanic voter registration has increased in the state by 6.2 percent since the 2016 presidential election, a notable amount. But in the four counties with the largest Puerto Rican populations, voter registration among Hispanics has grown more slowly than the state average, while in the other 14 of the 18 counties with the largest Puerto Rican populations, it has grown faster than the state average. My only forecast is that we’ll learn a lot more on this topic in a few hours.

Gerrymandering is having a moment! During the past decade, a lot of people (particularly Democrats) have learned to hate gerrymandering. And as a result, the issue is showing up on more and more ballots, where the public can vote on it directly.

Today, redistricting is on the ballot in four states: Colorado, Michigan, Utah and Missouri. In the first three states, voters will decide whether to take the job of drawing state legislative and congressional maps away from state legislators in order to turn it over to an independent commission. This type of reform has already been implemented in various other states. The initiative in Missouri is unique. It would establish the position of “non-partisan state demographer,” who would be in charge of drawing maps for the state legislature. The demographer would be required to use mathematical formulas such as the “efficiency gap” to maximize competitiveness and partisan fairness.

Redistricting reforms generally poll well, and an Ohio ballot measure on the issue passed with 75 percent of the vote this past May. Polling in the three states considering independent commissions appears to reinforce that trend. I could not find polling on Missouri’s measure, but I, for one, will be interested to see what Missourians think of creating a state demographer.

I’m posting cute animal pictures and facts throughout the day as a mental health service.

Usually, when people trot out cuttlefish facts, they go straight to this cephalopod’s color-changing abilities. But, dear reader, I trust you are widely read enough to know some of that already. Instead, we’re going to talk about the cuttlebone. This is a part of the cuttlefish’s anatomy that allows the animal to intentionally and precisely control its depth in the water. Not actually a bone at all, the cuttlebone has two chambers — one that fills with water and one that fills with gas. By controlling the gas-to-water ratio, the cuttlefish can control its own buoyancy. If you own a bird, you may have seen a cuttlebone yourself, because they’re often sold in pet stores as calcium-rich chew toys for parrots.

Is it weird that the president’s party might gain seats in one chamber of Congress while losing seats in the other? As I wrote last month:

This is an unusual position for the presidential party in a midterm election. But it’s not unprecedented.

Looking back at the 18 midterms in the post-World War II period, the president’s party has accomplished this feat only three times — 1962, 1970, and 1982. I calculated how many seats the presidential party held in the Senate and House at the time of the midterms and then how many seats it won or lost in the election. In the table below, I have highlighted the three cycles where the Senate and House moved in opposite directions — incidentally, the president’s party gained Senate seats while losing ground in the House in all three.

In midterm elections, the president’s party generally loses seats in both chambers of Congress, but it is quite possible that 2018 will join the list of cycles where the White House party gained seats in the Senate while losing seats in the House.

We’ve been paying attention to conditions at polling places — line length, nature of the location, balloting — and I just wanna add some quick poli sci to that. I’m reminded of one of my favorite books in the discipline, Richard Bensel’s The American Ballot Box in the Mid-Nineteenth Century. He tries to explain what the polling places were like then — the physical space, the atmosphere, the people there. The physical and social environment shows us what politics was like — in contrast with the mostly orderly lines and secret booths we see today, the polling places of yesteryear were rowdier and less private. Today, the long lines seem to be shaping people’s understanding of turnout and participation, and I wonder what people will say years from now about how we voted in 2018 and what it says about us.

So Maggie, there’s been a lot of concern that correcting lies or debunking myths might end up reinforcing erroneous beliefs among voters. Research by Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler suggested that there is a “backfire” effect that can happen when misperceptions are corrected. Instead of updating their beliefs, people seemed to double down on their false ideas. It’s a terrifying idea in this era of “fake news” wars.

But new research has mostly failed to replicate the backfire effect, suggesting that it may not be common, if it happens at all. For instance, Andrew Guess and Alexander Coppock recently published a paper describing three experiments where they tried and failed to elicit a backfire effect, even under conditions that would seem favorable to produce it. In a study of race and peoples’ views on the death penalty, Nyhan and his colleagues also found that backlash effects were small or nonexistent.

I talked with Nyhan about this a while back. Most researchers are bummed if their studies can’t be replicated, but Nyhan was happy. It’s good news, he said, because it suggests that fact-checking really can counteract false beliefs.

A feature of Trump’s presidency that has received some attention is that he is remarkably unpopular for a president presiding over such strong economic growth. (In particular, see Sides/Tesler/Vavreck’s chapter on “The Trump Tax.”) How might this affect midterm forecasts? After all, two of the strongest predictors of midterm election outcomes are presidential popularity and economic growth. But what happens when those two influences are pulling in different directions?

In my own simple model, my measure of economic performance is growth in per capita real disposable income from the second quarter of the year prior to the election to the second quarter of the election year. I use Gallup approval rating on Labor Day just before the election as my measure of presidential popularity. What surprised me is that these two measures are somewhat negatively correlated.

What also surprised me is that the combination of presidential unpopularity and modest economic growth just before a midterm election is not unusual. Trump’s situation (2.1 percent growth, 41 percent Gallup approval) is almost identical to Obama’s in 2014 (2.4 percent growth, 40 percent Gallup approval). It’s also very close to situations faced by Reagan in 1982 and George W. Bush in 2006 — both of whom saw large losses for their party.

All this is to say that the situation Trump and his fellow Republicans face today is hardly uncharted territory.

If Democrats were to win every race that’s rated as Solid, Likely and Lean Democratic in our final Deluxe forecast and nothing else (an unlikely scenario), they would take the House with five seats to spare.

There has been a lot of coverage of the three black Democrats running for governor this year (Abrams, Gillum, Jealous). Three Latino Democrats are running for governor too: Arizona’s David Garcia, New Mexico’s Michelle Lujan Grisham and Texas’s Lupe Valdez. One reason you haven’t heard as much about these three is that their races are not particularly close. According to our forecast, Lujan Grisham has about a 93 percent chance of winning, Garcia and Valdez both have less than a two percent chance of winning. (There are no black or Latino Republican gubernatorial candidates.)

California’s complicated (and possibly broken) ballot proposition system is incredibly intimidating, frequently asking voters to weigh in on esoteric and convoluted issues. Should EMTs have to be on-call during their lunch breaks? Should the state ask Congress to let it run on Daylight Saving Time all the time? Should the state authorize $8.9 billion in bonds to fund a suite of water projects around the state? One silver lining to California’s complicated ballot proposition system: Local journalists have done an incredible job of breaking down the propositions to make them understandable for voters. CALmatters has a great series of 1-minute video explainers on California’s complicated propositions. Ballot.FYI publishes similarly understandable and, dare I say, fun write-ups.

There’s a reason Latinos are so frequently invoked during election season: They are the second-largest racial or ethnic group in the country, and their numbers are still growing. That makes them an important bloc to court, but much of the population growth is among people too young to vote. Nearly a third of Latino Americans are under 18, compared with a quarter of blacks and just under a fifth of whites.

Latinos who are old enough to vote still skew young, and younger adults vote at much lower rates across all racial and ethnic groups. This year, 43.5 percent of eligible voters who are Latino are between the ages of 18 and 35. The turnout for Latinos in that age group in the 2014 midterms was just 16 percent, according to a recent analysis from the Pew Research Center. That’s compared with 23.1 percent turnout among all voters 18 to 34 years old. Bernard Fraga, a political scientist at Indiana University Bloomington, broke down 2014 turnout by race, ethnicity and age:

And Latinos can’t exert that voting power equally in every state. Take Georgia, for example, whose Latino population has more than doubled since 2010, according to Census data, and now includes about 1 million people. Just a third of the state’s Latino residents are eligible to vote. Collectively, they make up just 4.7 percent of the state’s eligible voters this year, according to Pew’s calculations. Stacey Abrams, the state’s Democratic candidate for governor, has been notably proactive in reaching out to Latinos and other minority voters. But while their support might be essential to a win (and to the future of the state’s Democratic Party), this small group of voters can hardly be the decisive vote in this year’s election.

Likewise, in California, Latinos are 39 percent of the overall population (outnumbering whites), but they make up just 30 percent of the electorate.

Following my call for questions and comments about judicial elections a little while ago, John’s response below is pretty typical. There are often many would-be judges on the ballot, running for many seats, on many courts, and it’s often quite a chore to find much reliable or helpful information about them. One argument for partisan judicial elections is that at least voters will have some information (the party label) about the judicial candidate. But the argument can slide completely the other way: Perhaps voters shouldn’t have to choose these people at all, and they should be appointed. Some states have split the difference with appointments and retention elections — something often called the “merit plan” or “Missouri plan.”

Amelia, your post is really interesting. Though, to answer your question of “what the goal is” I think the main thing I was searching for is what we can do to counter the narrative of/belief in widespread voter fraud that doesn’t exist. Redirecting that belief towards fixing real problems is one option. But it’s a question I’m sort of stuck on, as a science journalist. It really feels like it’s up there with climate change as one of those things that you can’t fact-check your way out of. So then what?

When I started in on a political science Ph.D. in 2002, it sometimes felt like I was getting a degree in how to estimate the incumbency advantage. And to some degree, that made sense: At the time, the advantage that accrued to incumbent officeholders when they sought re-election was sizable. Among political scientists, the debate wasn’t about the size of the incumbency advantage but about its sources. One key feature of more recent federal elections, though, has been the declining incumbency advantage, a point Nate has made repeatedly this fall. Columbia professor Robert Erikson found that the incumbency advantage peaked around 1980, and by 2010 it was in the low single digits. Voters aren’t crossing party lines to back familiar incumbents the way they used to. That helps explain while we could well see many incumbents from both parties — largely Republicans in the House, largely Democrats in the Senate — lose their seats tonight.

What is motivating voters today, besides the stickers? A Pew survey conducted in mid-September, in the midst of Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation battle, found that Supreme Court appointments were the most important issue for midterm voters — 72 percent of Republican voters and 81 percent of Democratic voters said the court was “very important” to them, dwarfing the even health care and the economy.

It’s weeks later now, though, and perhaps these numbers have faded somewhat. Some quantitative observers — e.g., Nate Cohn and Patrick Ruffini twittering here — noticed a motivating effect of the nomination fight for Republicans, but it was an effect that wore off.

But to the extent that “the Supreme Court” is now American political shorthand for “arbitration of moral superiority and decorousness” — and I believe that’s a large extent — it wouldn’t be a surprise if a bitter fight over one of its seats could motivate at least a few folks to get out and vote.

Authenticity is a concept that gets kind of a bad rap in political science because it’s hard to measure and define, but I’m gonna go rogue from my profession for a moment. I think it’s a pretty apt word to use for what some candidates have tried to earn through ads this cycle. Some candidates have tried especially hard to demonstrate that they are authentically tied to the places they seek to represent, and that they intend to do what they think is right, even if it’s not always easy or popular. MJ Hegar, who’s running for a U.S. House seat in Texas, closed her campaign with an ad telling her opponent, “you don’t know shit about war” (“shit” is bleeped out) and showing her riding a motorcycle to a bar. On the Senate side, McCaskill has an ad emphasizing her Missouri roots and willingness to engage with people who disagree with her. Also notable is that these are two Democratic women running in Republican areas – a particularly tough position, as Clare pointed out a few days ago.

Restrictions on voting access have made headlines in the lead-up to the election, but in several states, voting may have been easier this year than ever before. That’s because state legislators have passed new laws designed to remove barriers that keep people from voting. One big solution more states are adopting? Making voter registration more convenient.

Since 2016, six states have made it possible to register to vote online, bringing the total number of states with online voter registration to 37. Nine states and the District of Columbia have now implemented automatic voter registration, where eligible voters’ information is automatically added to the rolls when they visit a state agency like the Department of Motor Vehicles. (Five more states are in the process of implementing automatic voter registration, and Nevada could become the 16th state if a ballot measure passes this year). In Utah, voters this year can register to vote on Election Day for the first time. (This is currently allowed in 14 other states and the District of Columbia, and it’s on the ballot in Maryland.)

All of these changes have the potential to boost turnout by removing administrative hurdles to register to vote. There’s some evidence that voter turnout increased modestly in Oregon after it became the first state to pass an automatic voter registration law in 2015. But it’s hard to know exactly how big the impact will be in other states; after all, the new policies don’t guarantee that voters will actually show up to cast a ballot.

(It was Micah.)

Maggie, you were asking earlier how we can clean up our messy election system. One potential solution: automatic voter registration, which is on the ballot this year in Michigan and Nevada. The big innovation here is that it makes registration “opt-out” instead of “opt-in” — if you get a driver’s license, you also get registered to vote, unless you choose to decline.

These policies are relatively new, and it’s not clear whether they actually boost turnout. They also don’t necessarily solve the problem of figuring out whether people have moved out of the state and need to be removed from the rolls. Some people may be zealous about getting a new driver’s license when they move to a new place … others, not so much.

Other states are allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to pre-register to vote — specifically, 13 states and D.C. allow teens to pre-register beginning when they’re 16, and another four states allow it starting at the age of 17. At least one study has indicated that this did lead to higher turnout among young people.

But I guess the other question is: What’s the goal here? Are we talking about trying to make the election system easier to administer? Or is it more about trying to increase turnout by removing hurdles to voting? Or both? These changes don’t necessarily make the election system easier to maintain — but they might make it easier for people to vote.

Clare’s video got me thinking about McCaskill, who is a fascinating figure. She won in 2006 in a Democratic wave year. She was an early endorser of Obama in the 2008 cycle, when there was a lot of pressure for female senators to back Clinton. She won reelection in 2012 in part because of her controversial opponent, Todd Akin, who referred to the idea of “legitimate rape.”

Missouri is getting more red. McCaskill knows this and is trying to distance herself from the national Democratic Party. She recently aired an ad declaring she is “not one of those crazy Democrats.” At the same time, she is again running in a Democratic wave year. If McCaskill wins again, it will be a bit of good fortune (she has run in three favorable years for Democrats) but also will illustrate she has considerable political skill.

The forecast I’m most confident in for today’s elections is that, if Democrats have a remotely good night, Trump will claim that some sort of voter fraud took place in one or several races. This is especially likely if Democrats take over one or both chambers of Congress, in which case Trump may make such claims in order to call into question the legitimacy of any new Democratic majority. He’s already hinted at this, and he said in 2016 that he’d only accept the results of that year’s presidential election if he won it. He even claimed voter fraud after he won.

My hope is that various news organizations have thoroughly considered just how they will report (or not report) on Trump’s claims. For those that haven’t, I would strongly encourage reviewing Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler’s piece on how to counter misinformation in journalism. Among the key recommendations in that piece:

• Don’t repeat false claims. If Trump claims that undocumented immigrants are voting in Texas, just quote-tweeting him without contextualizing his claims by discussing the evidence or lack of evidence supporting them helps spread the misinformation.
• Reduce partisan cues. It’s not enough to say, “Trump says voter fraud occurred, Democrats disagree.” To most readers, that means either side could be right and the parties are just disagreeing as usual. If Trump’s claims need to be debunked, it can be done in an authoritative and nonpartisan manner.

If Trump does make claims along these lines, there’s a good chance Fox News will repeat and amplify them, which Trump will may then cite the next time he repeats his claims, creating a Trump-Fox feedback loop. But other news organizations don’t have to add to that. And they certainly don’t need to lend credence to baseless claims just to appear unbiased.

My colleague Clare Malone says she’ll be paying close attention to the Senate races in Missouri and Arizona. In the very red state of Missouri, the Classic version of our Senate forecast gives Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Democrat, a 4-in-7 chance of beating her challenger, Republican state attorney general Josh Hawley. In Arizona, our forecast gives Democrat Kyrsten Sinema a 5-in-8 chance of beating Republican Martha McSally for Jeff Flake’s open Senate seat.

CORRECTION (2:44 p.m.): An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated it was reporting on the Deluxe version of the forecast, when it instead was relaying the Classic numbers.

Three states are voting on abortion. Alabama and West Virginia have measures on the ballot that would write an abortion ban into the state constitution. Both states already have such laws on the books; the existing laws and the state-level amendments, if passed, are basically unenforceable due to Roe v. Wade, but if that longstanding Supreme Court decision were overturned, as some believe could happen with Brett Kavanaugh on the court, then abortion would be outlawed in these two states.

In Oregon, voters are deciding on whether or not to prohibit the use of public funds for abortions, except in cases where federal law requires states to pay for the procedure, or where a doctor determines that it’s medically necessary.

It looks like there are some voting hiccups in some areas and the usual long lines, but there is not any kind of major voting controversy so far. I had expected something like that–particularly in the Georgia race.

According to the Center for American Women in Politics (CAWP), only 39 women have ever served as governors (22 Democrats and 17 Republican). The twenty-two states where no woman has yet held a governorship are Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New York, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

This election cycle, four women could become their state’s first female governors: Stacey Abrams (Georgia), Paulette Jordan (Idaho), Janet Mills (Maine) and Kristi Noem (South Dakota).

From 1980 to 2016, the average turnout of the eligible-voter population hovered at 56.5 percent in presidential elections but just 39.4 percent in midterms. But the national figures mask some sizable differences in voter turnout between states:

For instance, Minnesota had the highest average voter turnout for presidential elections (73 percent) and midterms (57 percent) during this time period. In fact, its average voter-turnout rate during a midterm was nearly same as the national average for presidential elections. On the other end of the spectrum, Mississippi’s average midterm voter turnout was the lowest in the nation at just 30 percent. On average, the South (as defined by the Census Bureau) has trailed in voter turnout in both presidential and midterm cycles when compared with other regions of the U.S.

What role does higher voter turnout play in an election? The conventional wisdom is that high turnout helps Democrats, which could be important in a midterm year with a particularly tough Senate map for the party. That might be true, but it’s not quite that simple. After all, voter turnout for the 2010 Republican wave was about 41 percent, which was only a little higher than the 40 percent turnout four years earlier for the 2006 Democratic wave. But where those voters are turning out might matter.

In Texas, the population is less Republican-friendly if we just look at the state’s demographics. But that’s not representative of who actually votes in Texas. Since 1982, Texas has averaged 32 percent turnout in midterms — and that lower turnout probably helps the GOP because white voters are more likely to cast ballots than nonwhites. But higher voter turnout in another typically low-turnout state, West Virginia (which also has a midterm average of 32 percent), might actually improve the GOP’s chances: President Trump has an approval rating above 60 percent in the state, which suggests that undecided voters are probably more likely to approve of Trump than not.

As I mentioned earlier, Democrats and independents have said that health care is the most important issue to them this year. And this election has major implications for the issue: If Republicans keep the House and the Senate, they are likely to attempt another overhaul of the Affordable Care Act. If Democrats take at least one chamber of Congress, you’d expect the law to pretty much stay as is – it’s hard to imagine any major health care legislation getting through a split House and Senate.

Victory Fund is a political action committee dedicated to electing LGBT candidates to office, and their numbers show that at least one LGBT candidate ran in all 50 states this cycle. What’s more, at least 399 LGBT candidates will appear on the ballot this November. And according to our analysis of data shared with us by Victory Fund, of those 399 candidates, 24 are running for House or Senate — Victory Fund found 12 LGBT nominees in congressional races in the last midterm cycle in 2014. Currently, just seven members of Congress, or 1.3 percent, openly identify as LGBT, compared to 4.5 percent of all adults in the U.S. Although, as FiveThirtyEight’s Perry Bacon wrote, LGB identification can shift over time.

What will it mean if more LGBT candidates are elected to Congress? For starters, academic research shows that LGBT legislators are better advocates for issues that affect LGBT people, both in the U.S. and abroad, so greater representation in Congress might have real policy implications. We will be tracking races featuring LGBT candidates to see how they fare in their races. If you want to follow the hundreds of LGBT candidates running at the local level, Victory Fund will be on Twitter, sharing updates on races using their #rainbowwave hashtag.

While we’re talking about the mechanics of Election Day, here’s something that drives me up the wall: badly designed ballots. The butterfly ballot — which confused many elderly voters in Palm Beach County in the 2000 presidential election and may have cost Al Gore some votes as a result — might be the most famous ballot-design blunder. (Remember that month when everyone in the country was debating the difference between “pregnant” and “hanging” chads?) But every year, across the country, voters make mistakes because the ballots are just really confusingly laid out or the instructions don’t make sense. This is even an issue with electronic voting machines. That’s why some UX experts and designers have done research into the science of creating usable ballots. Even the font can make a difference!

Most of the focus tonight will be on legislative-branch elections and executive-branch elections (in states). Indeed, the races for the U.S. House and Senate and for governorships are the races that FiveThirtyEight has been devoted to forecasting these past months. But the third branch of American government is also on many ballots today, and we’ll keep tabs on those races, too.

A total of 29 states are holding elections for their highest courts today. And hundreds of state appellate court seats are up for election this year. State courts are an enormous piece of the U.S. judiciary — all of them combined handle tens of millions of cases a year, and more than 95 percent of all cases filed in this country are filed in state court.

How these elections work depends heavily on where you are. “America has almost as many different ways of selecting state judges as it has states,” a former chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court once wrote. If you vote in Alabama, say, you’ll see candidates on the ballot with party labels, just like in a congressional election. If you vote in Arkansas, you’ll see candidates but no party labels. And if you vote in Arizona, you’ll see a sitting judge and the words “yes” and “no.” These are called retention elections.

A couple of notable state Supreme Court races are in newly partisan North Carolina and in West Virginia, where the entire court was impeached over the summer. I’ll be keeping an eye on these third-branch elections throughout the day and posting periodic updates here. Tweet at me with questions or comments from your state.

In district attorney’s races across the country, candidates are running on the promise of criminal justice reform. And these local prosecutors’ races are getting more money and attention from liberal advocates who want to change the way prosecutors approach their work.

In Dallas, for example, the Democratic challenger, John Creuzot, is promising to “end mass incarceration” by declining to prosecute people for low-level crimes related to homelessness and reforming the bail system. Candidates in Alabama and Washington State are running on similar platforms, and could add to a recent string of progressive victories that have landed criminal justice reformers in top prosecutors’ offices in places like Chicago and Philadelphia. But it will require voters to pay attention to the details in races that typically don’t get much air time.

Criminal justice issues are also on the ballot in several states. Voters in six states — Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Nevada, North Carolina, and Oklahoma — will decide on “Marsy’s Law,” a controversial measure designed to protect crime victims and their families throughout criminal proceedings. A ballot initiative in Louisiana could abolish non-unanimous jury trials, a relic of Jim Crow, which are only allowed in one other other state (Oregon). And voters in Washington will consider whether to remove a legal barrier for prosecuting police over the use of deadly force.

Gov. Nathan Deal, the incumbent in Georgia, is ruling out any effort to strip the governor’s office of power in a special session of Georgia state’s legislature next month. Why does this matter? In 2016, after North Carolina Democrat Roy Cooper won the governor’s race, Republicans in the state legislature voted to roll back some of the powers of the governor’s office. These provisions were signed into by law by the man Cooper had defeated, Republican Pat McCrory, in the weeks before McCrory left office. Deal signaling his opposition to such moves is significant, since there is a considerable chance Democrat Stacey Abrams will be elected to be Georgia’s next governor today. But this kind of power grab still could happen in another big state: Florida. If Democrat Andrew Gillum wins, incumbent Gov. Rick Scott and the GOP-controlled legislature will remain in power till January.

Issues involving energy and climate are up for a vote in several states. Here’s what to look out for:

In Colorado, Proposition 112 would require all new oil and gas development to be located at least 2,500 feet from occupied structures, water sources and areas designated as vulnerable. Proponents say the rule would protect health and public safety, while oponents say it would eliminate most drilling on nonfederal land in the state — and the oil and gas industry has poured millions of dollars into opposing the measure.

Amendment 74, meanwhile, would require state and local governments to compensate property owners whenever a law or regulation reduces the fair market value of their property. That could severely limit environmental regulations that affect private land. If both Proposition 112 and Amendment 74 pass, state and local governments potentially could be on the hook for a huge payout to the oil and gas industry to compensate companies for their reduced ability to drill where they want. A recent poll from the University of Colorado’s American Politics Research Lab found that 52 percent of voters supported Proposition 112 and 63 percent supported Amendment 74.

In Florida, Amendment 9 presents voters with a strange mashup of issues. It would alter the state constitution to prohibit offshore oil and gas drilling and prohibit vaping in enclosed indoor workplaces. One recent poll from St. Pete Polls showed that 46 percent of respondents supported the measure, which requires 60 percent approval to pass.

In Nevada, a constitutional amendment, State Question No. 6, would require that all electric utilities that sell electricity in the state derive at least 50 percent of their total electricity from renewable energy sources by 2030. But there’s a twist — it would become law only if voters approve it again in 2020. A similar measure in Arizona, Proposition 127, appears unlikely to pass.

And finally, in Washington, the Carbon Emissions Fee Measure, Measure 1631, would put a tax on carbon. The tax would start at $15 per metric ton of carbon in 2020, then increase $2 per metric ton each year until certain goals are met. The measure has wide support among environmental groups, and a Crosscut/Elway poll from October found that 50 percent of respondents were “definitely for” the initiative, while 36 percent were “definitely against” it.

In 2016, Wisconsin was one of the states that shocked election analysts by ending up in Donald Trump’s column. It’s wasn’t just that Democrats had won the state in every presidential contest since 1984 — polls also showed Hillary Clinton several points ahead of Trump. But on Election Day, he won the state by about 22,000 votes.

Maybe we shouldn’t have been so surprised about Wisconsin’s uncertainty given the state’s uneven track record. Wisconsin has produced reformers like Robert LaFollette and beloved politicians from both sides of the aisle, including Republican Tommy Thompson and Democrat Herb Kohl. But there’s a darker side to the state’s politics, too: It was home to the anti-Communist Sen. Joseph McCarthy, and in recent years, Milwaukee has emerged as a site of major racial tension.

As for what will happen in Wisconsin in 2018, it seems as if the state has more or less absorbed the larger, national political trends. During the August Republican primary, Senate candidates Kevin Nicholson and Leah Vukmir tried to tie themselves to Trump, hoping to take advantage of his popularity among Republicans in the state. Despite criticizing the president in the past, Vukmir won the primary, though aligning more closely with Trump may not have paid off. It seems as though Sen. Tammy Baldwin’s seat sits solidly in the Democratic column. As for the three-term Republican governor, Scott Walker may be in serious trouble. His support for the recent multibillion-dollar deal to bring Taiwanese manufacturing company Foxconn to the state has opened him up to criticism, and tonight, Walker stands a real possibility of losing to Democrat Tony Evers.

As FiveThirtyEight’s Perry Bacon Jr. observed last week, Democrats may be enjoying a resurgence in the Midwest this year. Wisconsin may be the bellwether for that trend.

Latinos are the second-fastest-growing racial or ethnic group in the country, which means that they’re often presented as being full of political promise. Emphasis on “promise” — because of low voter turnout, the narrative is also that Latinos have not yet meet their full potential. But it’s not that simple. Throughout the day today, I’ll be highlighting what we’re really talking about when the “Latino vote” is invoked. (Hopefully with a little more nuance than it’s usually given.)

The first thing to know — or at least remind yourself of — is that Latinos are not a monolith. The group includes people with origins in Spain whose families have been on this land since before it was the United States. It includes citizens and non-citizens (though far more of the former). It includes Cubans, driven from their country by politics and pulled in by welcoming policies in the U.S., and recent immigrants from Central America, who have escaped violence and economic distress.

At least some of those subgroups are renowned for their voting power; it would be difficult to find a pundit criticizing Cuban-Americans, who have historically had the highest voter turnout of any Latino group, for failing in their civic duties, for example. The solid bloc of Latino voters in South Florida is known for getting candidates elected (although the demographics, and political allegiances, of the state’s Latinos are changing), and Latinos are being courted by the state’s gubernatorial candidates this season.

Latinos have politically diverse views as well. While the group as a whole leans Democratic, about a quarter identified as Republican in 2016, according to a Pew Research Center survey. Among Latinos born in the U.S., men and those who mainly speak English, support for Republicans was slightly higher. The group is as diverse in its opinions on social issues as it is demographically, Mark Hugo Lopez, director of global migration and demography research at the Pew Research Center, told me. In past surveys, a majority of Latinos supported larger government, but they are more split when it comes to issues like abortion or gay marriage.

An increase in voter turnout among Latinos would likely be a net benefit for Democrats, but it’s not entirely clear how it would play out in state and local elections, as evidenced in Texas earlier this year.

There are plenty of reasons why voters might have to wait to cast a ballot on Election Day, but this, via the Arizona Republic, is a new one for me: A Chandler, Ariz., polling location was foreclosed overnight.

Our podcast producer Galen Druke says he’ll be closely watching the tossup race happening in the Texas 7th Congressional District. The Classic version of our House forecast gives Democrat Lizzie Fletcher a 1 in 2 chance of beating incumbent Republican John Culberson. Texas 7th saw the largest swing in the country between Romney and Clinton in 2012 and 2016, outside of Utah. Polls there begin to close at 8 p.m. Eastern.

CORRECTION (2:44 p.m.): An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated it was reporting on the Deluxe version of the forecast, when it instead was relaying the Classic numbers.

As Anna mentioned, Democrats have been polling better than Republicans on health care. So why do more Americans trust Democrats on this issue?

Democrats have seized on a rise in popularity of the Affordable Care Act, as well as growing concern that specific provisions in the law, like coverage for pre-existing conditions, might be overturned. It also probably doesn’t hurt that Republicans have campaigned for years to repeal and replace the ACA and have attempted to do so.

Trump has tweeted that Republicans will protect those with pre-existing conditions, and some GOP candidates have run ads promising to do the same. But their rhetoric runs counter to their actions. In the background, the Trump administration has backed a lawsuit that argues protections for pre-existing conditions are unconstitutional. But whether Republicans will suffer electoral losses as a result remains unclear.

In battleground areas, both Democrats and independents identified health care as the most important issue to them in the midterms, according to a recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Among Republicans, immigration took the top spot. Candidates are trying to capitalize on the respective issues. In campaign ads, Democrats have invoked protections for pre-existing conditions (those were part of the Affordable Care Act, but you might have noticed that the law isn’t mentioned in many of the ads), while Republicans have drawn attention to a group of migrants traveling through Mexico toward the U.S.

Democrats seem to have the upper hand when it comes to health care. More voters told Kaiser that they trust the Democratic Party to do a better job than the Republican Party on preserving protections for pre-existing conditions, maintaining women’s access to reproductive services, improving rural health care and addressing the opioid epidemic.

When it comes to whom they trust to better handle immigration, voters also fall strongly along party lines, with independents tending to break for Democrats. So even though President Trump’s home-stretch efforts to keep immigration in the headlines might invigorate some Republicans, it could alienate some undecided voters. Battleground districts, however, look fairly different than the average congressional district: They are more likely to be suburban and filled with college-educated voters, a group that swings somewhat more toward Democrats on immigration, according to a Washington Post poll.

I’m posting cute animal pictures and facts throughout the day as a mental health service.

Behold, the trash panda in its natural environment. Or, anyway, an environment it adapts to with remarkable skill. Because here’s the interesting thing about raccoons: They learn. Really well. And the ability of a raccoon to break into your trash can is a learned behavior. For instance, back in 2014, some psychologists ran a study comparing the knowledge base of rural and urban raccoons. They put some dog food at the bottom of a trash can, put the lid on, and let the animals try to figure out how to get at the meal. Rural raccoons followed the smell and investigated the outside bottom of the can. Urban raccoons — who had more experience with devouring our refuse — went straight for the lid. Basically, every time you get some new system for keeping unwanted invaders out of the garbage, you can bet there is a pack of raccoons working on breaking through the barrier.

In our Senate forecast we publish a voter power index, which measures how likely an individual voter will be to cast the ballot that pushes a party over the majority line. A voting power index of 27.6, as in the case of North Dakota, means that we expect a vote cast there to be 27.6 times more powerful than the national average. The index favors states with smaller populations.

Today the parties are competing using electoral maps that were drawn in 2011, and that’s a good thing for Republicans. The GOP’s success in the 2010 midterms put them in full control of nearly twice as many state governments as Democrats, which became extra important when electoral maps were redrawn in 2011. If, for the moment, we consider any map drawn exclusively by one party to be gerrymandered, this imbalance in state governments resulted in many more Republican gerrymanders than Democratic ones. Some of the maps have been overturned in the years since, but the vast majority of them are still in place.

Those Republican gerrymanders are a big part of the reason that, according to the Deluxe version of our House forecasts, Democrats won’t be favored to take control of the House unless they win the popular vote by at least 5.6 percentage points.

Gerrymandered maps aim to waste one party’s votes by “packing” as many of their voters as possible into a small number of districts, and “cracking” the rest across districts where the party drawing the map is likely to win. In order to do this successfully, map drawers test their maps under various environments, including past Democratic waves. Well-crafted gerrymanders are prepared for swings in the national environment. Today’s election will put those 2011 gerrymanders to the test. These midterms mark the first major swing towards Democrats since their inception.

So far, the gerrymanders appear to be holding up well. In states with Republican gerrymanders — such as Texas, North Carolina, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin — Democrats are favored to flip very few House seats. Compare that to states where commissions or courts drew the maps — such as California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Iowa and Minnesota — and you will see how much more responsive their maps are to the national environment.

Now, if we see a big Democratic wave tonight, all bets are off. But under the most likely scenario, Republicans will have gerrymandering to thank for limiting their losses in a big way.

@Wanderlust907 says, “Stars of gold on a field of blue. Our typical stickers in Alaska.”

The tumultuous last two years featured many moments that commentators declared potential “game changers” — events that would shape the 2018 elections. But hindsight provides a long list of these events that have been almost entirely absent from the campaign. Now that Election Day is here, let’s take a trip down memory lane with the “game changers” that weren’t:

• The government shutdown
• the DACA decision
• the travel ban
• most Trump tweets
• the Comey firing
• Steve Bannon
• Roy Moore
• the Putin press conference
• the Syria strike
• North Korea provocations and summit
• pulling out of the climate and Iran deals
• “Fire And Fury”
• the anonymous op-ed
• hurricanes and Puerto Rico damages
• John McCain’s death
• And the Pruitt scandals

That’s just to name a few. I’m not saying all these events had zero political effects. Many may have influenced Trump’s approval rating, for example. But even that has stayed within about a 6-point range for more than a year.

Even heavily covered events like the Russia investigation and the border separations have come up less than expected in the last several weeks of the campaign. The Democratic Party’s rebranding under a “Better Deal” hasn’t had much resonance. Salient recent events like the Kavanaugh hearings have come up more often, but so have the long-ago votes on Obamacare repeal. The daily media tends to overreact to new events, but only a few issues seem to remain salient when voters head to the polls.

I have a soft spot for maps, and Brian Powers sends this sticker from Lexington.