According to the Associated Press, Republican Greg Gianforte has been elected the next governor of Montana, which appears to mean Republicans have taken full control of state government there.
Where The Race For The House Stands
There wasn’t a lot of clarity to be had tonight as the race for president and the Senate both remain too close to call. But as for the House of Representatives, we have a sense of where things are headed, as ABC News and other major media outlets have projected that Democrats will retain control of Congress’s lower chamber.
Coming into the night, this was the most likely outcome, too, as our forecast gave Democrats a 97 in 100 chance of holding onto a House majority. Democrats entered the night with 233 seats to the Republicans’ 201 (with one Libertarian member), so the GOP needed 17 seats to capture a majority. But so far, the only seats called by ABC News that have flipped are two Republican-held seats in North Carolina that changed dramatically due to court-ordered redistricting in 2019 — the 2nd and 6th congressional districts. This was expected, as our forecast gave Democrats better than a 99 in 100 shot in both.
That doesn’t mean that Democrats aren’t going to suffer losses, though. With at least 92 percent of the expected vote in from two Democratic-held seats in South Florida, it looks like the GOP will likely win the 26th and 27th congressional districts, which are mostly in Miami-Dade County, where Biden and other Democrats appear to have underperformed. Other media outlets have called those races for the GOP, which reflects the Republicans’ improved showing among Hispanic voters tonight in Florida, as both of those two seats have large Cuban American populations.
Lots of votes still have to be counted, but it looks all but certain that the House will still be in Democratic hands when the next Congress takes office in January 2021. And that means House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will keep her gavel for one more term, as she’s said she will not serve as speaker beyond the 117th Congress.
Ossoff running about 2 points behind Biden in Georgia, so if the presidential race winds up being a photo-finish, the Senate race might have a good chance of going to a runoff. The libertarian candidate has 2.3 percent of the vote so far there.
ABC News projects a Democratic win in CA-6 and a Republican win in UT-2.
Exit polls should obviously be taken with a big grain of salt at this point, but some interesting nuggets from the national exit poll: So far, Trump seems to have won among white voters by less than he did in 2016, while Biden seems to be doing better among independents, among moderates and in suburbs than Clinton did. And while first-time voters went overwhelmingly for Clinton in 2016, Biden seems to have increased his lead among this group as well.
Galen Druke speaks to Clare Malone about Trump’s win in Ohio and what it could mean for some other remaining races.
ABC News projects that Donald Trump will win Iowa.
ABC News also projects that Republican Joni Ernst will win the Senate race in Iowa.
Iowa projected for Trump by ABC News. Looks like Ann Selzer is pretty good at polling after all!
Bullock is 1 point ahead in Montana while Biden is 6 points behind.
Here’s a bullish sign for Biden in Pennsylvania. I wouldn’t be surprised if rural counties wind up with margins similar to the ones they posted in 2016, but urban and suburban ones (like Dauphin) lurch leftward.
ABC News projects Democratic wins in CA-3, CA-5 and WA-1; and a Republican win in WA-5.
“Keep the faith, guys! We’re gonna win this!” That’s how Biden ends this VERY short speech. A totally surreal scene in some ways, since he’s basically making the speech to a drive-in movie theater seating scenario.
Posted by Trump just after Biden ended his speech:
Yeah, that Minnesota projection — which ABC hasn’t made yet! — is bullish for Biden in Wisconsin and Michigan. Maybe less so in Pennsylvania, which was polling more tightly and which isn’t as similar demographically to Minnesota.
The cars are honking up a storm! “We’re going to have to be patient until the hard work of tallying votes is over,” Biden says. “But we’re feeling good about where we are … we’re confident about Arizona.”
He also goes on to say he thinks he’ll win Pennsylvania. “I’m optimistic about this outcome.”
Our best clue to how Wisconsin might go could be found in next-door Minnesota, where the Associated Press has just projected Biden as the winner. In the AP’s count, Biden leads Trump by an impressive 12 points there, with 76 percent of the expected vote reporting. In 2016, Wisconsin was just 3 points more Republican-leaning than Minnesota.
ABC News projects Democratic wins in OR-4, OR-5 and WA-8; and a Republican win in WA-3.
OK, Biden is taking the stage in Delaware at his “drive-in amphitheater” election night celebration. “We believe we’re on track to win this election.”
That’s Fivey Fox’s first emoji of the night. Fivey reports the ABC News projections with emojis if the projections diverge from our expectations based on our final forecast.
In this case, Fivey was surprised (😮) by Trump’s win in Florida, which our forecast showed as “slightly favored” for Biden.
Just as a reminder, Fivey is an emotional fox. Fivey responds with a surprised emoji (😮) if a candidate we listed as “slightly favored” loses a race, with a shocked emoji (😲) if a candidate we have listed as “favored” loses a race, and with a mind blown emoji (🤯) if a candidate we have listed as “clearly favored” or “very likely” loses a race.
… as I said, that Florida call is a bit overdue. One implication is that Florida is as much a red state as a purple one, because it looks to have moved further away from the tipping point.
ABC News projects that Donald Trump will win Florida (😮).
The AP has called Florida for Trump. We’re a little reluctant to note other organizations’ calls sometimes when we think they might be out on a limb, but the AP is fairly conservative and Trump looks like he’s in good shape in Florida to me.
ABC News projects a Democratic win in CA-29.
Galen Druke asks Nathaniel Rakich to help us map out the potential schedule for the rest of the week and when we can expect more results from some key races.
A lot of states have been called on some networks and not on others. If you plug in all the states where any network has called the state for Biden or Trump, it shows Biden at 88 percent to win the Electoral College, Trump at 6 percent, and a 6 percent chance of a tie. But that depends on Biden winning Arizona and Minnesota, which ABC News hasn’t projected yet.
ABC News projects a Democratic win in MA-7.
Georgia was one state where we were expected to get timely results. Well, so much for that — separate problems in Fulton County (a burst pipe) and Gwinnett County (a software issue) have delayed the counting of absentee ballots. In Gwinnett, 80,000 ballots were affected ,but it sounds like they are still being counted tonight, per Atlanta Journal Constitution reporting. However, some ballots will have to be manually checked, which could cause the results to change. In Fulton, election officials anticipated having 20,000 ballots left to count tomorrow, with results expected no earlier than noon.
ABC News projects a Democratic win in CA-2.
In Maine, about 3 percent of the vote has gone to independents in the presidential race so far, which could make a difference because the state uses ranked-choice voting.
Dan, of the trio of measures I just posted about, I’d rank them in this order in terms of effectiveness at depolarization: 1) ranked-choice voting 2) independent redistricting 3) open top-two primaries. Of course, I think we need even stronger medicine in the form of some type of proportional representation. Maybe we’ll get a ballot initiative on that in 2022.
Lee, presumably it is far too late and our readers are far too tense for me to joke about asking you to rank depolarizing reforms?
ABC News projects a Democratic win in CT-5 and a Republican win in MI-1.
Another check-in on the race with Galen Druke and Micah Cohen. How does 2020 compare to 2016 and 2018 so far?
Iowa has been hit hard by a COVID-19 surge, and Trump’s trade policies haven’t been popular. So I’ve been watching both that race and margin closely. But I will say that the Seltzer poll that had Trump up 7 looks pretty good.
From the department of democracy-literally-on-the-ballot, it looks like ranked-choice voting has lost in Massachusetts, the top-two open primary failed to get to the requisite 60 percent support in Florida, and independent redistricting has passed in Virginia.
ABC News projects Republican wins in ID-2, NY-21, NY-27, TX-6 and TX-10.
ABC News also projects a Democratic win in TX-34.
With 81 percent of the expected vote counted in Iowa, per the AP, Trump has a comfortable 52 percent to 46 percent lead. That said, Biden leads by 15 points in Polk County (Des Moines), which Clinton carried by only 11 in 2016.
In Iowa’s U.S. Senate race, Republican Joni Ernst also leads Democrat Theresa Greenfield 52 percent to 45 percent — very similar to the presidential race.
One of the big uncalled states is Georgia, where Trump leads by about 8 percentage points with 79 percent of the expected vote reporting, according to ABC News. On its face, that would seem to be pretty good for Trump. But The New York Times’ needle now gives Biden a slight edge, probably because there are many votes left to be counted in the Atlanta area. Only half of the expected vote is in from deep-blue Fulton County, and only about one-third is in from next-door DeKalb County. Fulton’s count was slowed by a burst pipe at State Farm Arena, and a couple of precincts in DeKalb had their poll-closing times extended by a judge. So it appears a fair number of Democratic-leaning votes are outstanding, but it could take a while before we know what the near-final tallies look like.
The Washington Post’s election night model points to the source of uncertainty in Georgia: We don’t know how Biden will do in suburban counties.
I’m not sure what to make of this, but the NYT needle is now showing very close race in Georgia.
ABC News projects Democratic wins in ME-1, MO-5 and NY-26; and Republican wins in NE-1 and TX-5.
Our final forecasts for the 12 a.m. races
The final numbers from FiveThirtyEight’s forecast for races where the last polls close at 12 a.m. Eastern
ABC News projects that Joe Biden will win Virginia.
ABC News also projects that Democrat Mark Warner will win the Senate race in Virginia.
ABC calls Ohio for Trump. This was a state where Trump was slightly ahead in polls, so we’ll want to see what the final margins look like there before extrapolating too much about Trump’s performance in the rest of the Midwest. But it’s certainly not a great sign for Biden.
ABC News projects Democratic wins in CA-36, CA-41, WA-2, WA-6 and WA-9.
ABC News also projects Republican wins in MD-1 and WA-4.
We projected a turnout of around 324,000 votes in Nebraska’s 2nd District, and about 276,000 have been counted there so far. So there may be something left to count there, but not a ton, given that Biden leads by around 29,000 votes there now.
ABC News projects that Donald Trump will win Ohio.
The Trump and McSally campaigns both seem to pretty damn ticked off at the Fox projection of Arizona for Biden. McSally’s campaign is claiming that there are a million votes not yet counted, but it seems to be the consensus at FiveThirtyEight that they’re rounding up quite a bit there with that number. Though, as our friend Nate Cohn at the Times points out, the projection was made quite early.