How Election Week 2022 Went Down

Adding a bit more context to Amelia’s post, according to our latest FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos poll, in October, likely voters were asked which issues were most important for the country (selecting up to three from a list of 20), and they ranked abortion ninth (11 percent). Sixty-three percent of likely voters had been seeing a lot about abortion in the news, making it the second-most-seen issue among the same list of 20 (after only “inflation or increasing costs,” 77 percent).

As Amelia mentioned earlier on the blog, she and I will be following how female candidates are doing tonight, particularly in toss-up races. We don’t have results yet, of course, but a lot of women are running in toss-ups. Three such women in the House (Axne in Iowa, Wild in Pennsylvania and Luria in Virginia) were part of the Democrats “blue wave” in 2018 and held on in 2020. But conditions aren’t as ideal in 2022 for Democrats … or for women, for that matter. As I wrote on the live blog earlier, while abortion is still top of mind for some voters (potentially giving female candidates an advantage), it is less salient than issues that voters trust Republicans more on right now, like the economy and inflation. We will be keeping an eye on these races and discussing what the outcomes in these races tells us.

How are women faring in ‘toss-up’ races?

Results for female candidates in races where both parties had less than a 60 percent chance of winning, according to the Deluxe version of FiveThirtyEight’s final preelection forecast, as of 7:15 p.m. Eastern

race	candidate	party	Percent reporting	vote margin	Winner?
AK-1	Mary S. Peltola i	D	0%	—
AK-1	Sarah Palin	R	0	—
IA-3	Cindy Axne i	D	0	—
MI-3	Hillary Scholten	D	0	—
NV Senate	Catherine Cortez Masto i	D	0	—
NV-1	Dina Titus i	D	0	—
OR-5	Jamie McLeod-Skinner	D	0	—
OR-5	Lori Chavez-DeRemer	R	0	—
PA-7	Susan Wild i	D	0	—
PA-7	Lisa Scheller	R	0	—
TX-15	Michelle Vallejo	D	0	—
TX-15	Monica De La Cruz	R	0	—
TX-34	Mayra Flores i	R	0	—
VA-2	Elaine G. Luria i	D	0	—
VA-2	Jen A. Kiggans	R	0	—

The preliminary exit polls (which, of course, are incomplete and subject to change) are showing that abortion is the second-most-important issue for Americans, coming in just after inflation. That might seem surprising given that abortion has been fading as an issue priority for voters in the past month or two, but remember that people had only five options to choose from. Unsurprisingly, though, abortion was the issue that Democrats were most likely to pick — which may encourage the party to continue leaning into this issue in future elections, particularly if abortion-rights supporters succeed on the abortion-related ballot amendments in Michigan and Kentucky.

Polls are now closed in Indiana’s 1st Congressional District where, as I mentioned, it’s a tight race between incumbent Democrat Rep. Frank Mrvan and Republican challenger Jennifer-Ruth Green. It’s wound up being a competitive race, partly due to an influx of cash from conservative PACs boosting Green’s campaign. That said, heading into election night, our Deluxe forecast favored Mrvan to win, with 91-in-100 odds.

One of the things that makes midterm election nights tough to assess is that their long-term impact can hinge on just a few Senate races. A party can lose many House seats but find consolation if it manages to win some of the marquee Senate races, as the GOP did in 2018. In part, that’s because Senators serve for six years while representatives serve for just two — and also because there are only 100 senators, versus 435 House members. That’s before thinking about the powers that the Senate has, such as confirming judicial appointments.

This may not be the most important race of the night, but one of the ballot measures Arkansas voters (like me!) are voting for this year is whether to legalize recreational marijuana. In the latest poll, 51 percent of the state’s voters were for the ballot measure, while 43 were against. If the measure wins, it’ll show what a sea change there’s been in opinions on marijuana use. Arkansas is one of 37 states that already allow marijuana use for medical purposes. Legalizing marijuana is incredibly popular, and Biden moved to reform federal marijuana laws last month. It’s been a huge cultural shift just in the last two decades.

Trump has been posting frequently today on Truth Social, his social media site. He has been casting delays and technical difficulties as evidence of voter fraud, which it is not, and he has claimed these few instances of issues are a “disaster.” Remember that so far the vast majority of voting has gone smoothly, and election officials are being transparent about what’s gone wrong and how they’re trying to mitigate it. About an hour ago, Trump posted a video encouraging voters to stay in line if they’re waiting to vote. While his claims that the (very typical) hiccups are evidence of fraud are inaccurate, this is good advice: Stay in line if you’re waiting to vote!

I know we have a while before polls close here, but I’ll be keeping a special 👀 on North Carolina — particularly looking at the Senate contest and the congressional race in the 13th District. We did a write-up of what to watch for in the Senate race here, but our forecast predicts Republican wins in both cases.

In the Senate race in particular, though, Black voters may be key if Democrat Cheri Beasley wants to make this race competitive. For one, she has hasn’t been shy in admitting that she hopes she can gin up support among Black voters, who make up about 22 percent of the citizen voting-age population. And if Beasley wins, she’d become the state’s first Black U.S. senator. But she faces an uphill climb against Republican Ted Budd. Notably, according to preliminarily exit-poll results, only 42 percent of the state’s voters approve of President Biden’s job performance (these exit polls will continue to update throughout the night). And what could make Beasley’s run more complicated is that only 21 percent of voters in the state say they’re casting their vote to support the president, while 35 percent are voting to oppose him.

Alternatively, Nathaniel, “No” on the ballot measure (the pro-abortion stance) is running about 10 points ahead of Charles Booker, the Democratic Senate candidate. In votes that have been counted so far, he’s received 56 percent, while “No” is at 66 percent. If that trend persists, the question may be if Booker can crack 40 percent of the vote in the final results. In 2020, Amy McGrath won 38.2 percent …

After the Kansas abortion vote, The New York Times did an analysis looking at how the rest of the country might have voted on a similar amendment. In that analysis, estimated support for abortion rights was 53 percent in Kentucky. I’ll be interested to see if the massive fundraising differential between the anti-amendment (pro-abortion rights) and pro-amendment (anti-abortion rights) sides makes a difference.

Not many votes reporting yet in Kentucky, where we’re watching the vote on the constitutional amendment to clarify that the state constitution does not protect abortion rights. In Jefferson County (Louisville), the amendment is running about 13 percentage points behind Trump’s 2020 performance. If that gets replicated across the state, it would point to a very close race.

Tonight, I’ll be bringing you the news from Minnesota, my home state, where the women are strong, the men are good-looking and all of the cases of federal COVID-19 funds fraud are well above average. Both the governor’s race and the attorney general race this year have to deal with the fallout from Feeding Our Future, the largest pandemic fraud scheme in the nation. Basically, a charity that was supposed to be funneling federal pandemic grants to supply meals to children during the early days of the pandemic, instead drained that money into the pockets of dozens of private business owners. At least $250 million was appropriated and used to buy luxury goods, cars and property in the U.S., Kenya and Turkey. At least 49 people have been accused of colluding in this scheme, according to Minnesota Public Radio.

The case is an election issue because of a lot of confusion and debate over what incumbent governor Tim Walz and the incumbent attorney general, Keith Ellison, knew about it and when and why they didn’t stop it sooner. Walz has given multiple timelines for his knowledge about Feeding Our Future, according to the Minnesota Reformer news site. And Ellison’s office at one point led the Department of Education in stopping payments to the charity, only to allow them to resume after the charity sued the Department of Education, alleging racism. Ellison and the Education Department began working with the FBI after that point, according to local news station KARE 11. But he and Walz’s challengers have criticized them for not doing more, faster and more publicly.

Oh, but to be clear, while polls have now closed in most of Indiana, but we’ll have to wait until 7 to start getting results from IN-1. That’s because part of the state is on Central time, so polls are still open there, including the 1st District in the northwest corner, hugging the shore of Lake Michigan.

We’re also likely to get a “first” for a woman candidate relatively early in the evening. Republican Sarah Huckabee Sanders is very likely to win her race for Arkansas governor, which would make her the first woman to serve as governor of the state.

I’m also reporting tonight on Kansas, where lots of people are running for lots of offices — but nearly all of them are taking turns accusing each other of being in the pocket of either Biden or former Gov. Sam Brownback. These boogeymen have made spectral appearances in the debate for the race in Kansas’s 3rd District and in several key moments of the governor’s race. It’s been an effective way in this election to transfer a bad smell to your opponent without directly addressing their individual positions. The vibe suggests that voters don’t need to know about those positions — as long as they think of the candidate connected to someone they already don’t like.

Not to outsource our jobs to a competitor … but the New York Times has brought back the infamous needle this evening. Who knows how it will work out this time around, but especially early in the evening, I’m going to be checking that out because they are going to be able to get some sense of the trends from individual precincts where there are full results well before a state has fully counted its votes. However, if the Senate is close, as polling suggests, the needle could just end up hanging out around “toss-up” for some time. In which case, I’ll say I’m going to be watching the competitive House races on the eastern seaboard, like in Virginia, to see what gets called first.

As someone who does a lot of exit polling, one thing I’ll say for them in general — I am not vouching for today’s specifically — is that they tend to have higher response rates than other forms of polling. Also, by definition, you are surveying the population of interest: voters. But, as Galen points out, early voting and mail voting mean that exit polls are increasingly including just a fraction of the voting population. They may be of more use to political scientists in understanding public opinion than in forecasting election results.

I do want to reiterate what Nate said about exit polls. The advantage of exit polls used to be that you could actually catch people on their way out of the polling location, and it took on more of an air on the original kind of polling, which literally involved door-knocking and talking to people in-person. There had always been early and mail voting, but it wasn’t significant enough or partisan enough to necessarily throw off the results. Now, though, with increase early and mail voting particularly among Democrats, exit polls look more and more like regular polls where you just call people and its up to them whether they respond. That means that if there is an error in the pre-election polls because of non-response bias, there could well be an error in the exit polls because of non-response bias. This is all to say that the polling is either all fine — both pre-election and exit — or the polling is all messed up. We don’t know which it is yet so … TL;DR: Ignore the exit polls!

I’ll be watching a trio of congressional races in Virginia. The 2nd District, 7th District and 10th District will give us a sense of how good of a night this will be for Republicans. If Republicans win the 2nd District, it will probably be a good night for them. If they win the 7th District, it will probably be a great night for them. If they win the 10th District — which is pretty darn blue — it will be an amazing night for them. J. Miles Coleman of Sabato’s Crystal Ball said it best:

That’s true, Nate, but there are a few tight races in states with earlier poll closing times that will start to give us a sense of the temperature out there. I’m watching IN-1, where Democratic incumbent Rep. Frank Mrvan is hoping to hold off Republican challenger Jennifer-Ruth Green. This is a seat that has been held by a Democrat for nearly a century and while redistricting made it a little more GOP-friendly, it largely stayed the same (so much so that Mrvan released a statement thanking the legislature). It’s just one race, but as these toss-up elections earlier in the evening get called, we’ll start to get a clue of how the night is shaping up.

Jacob, the Florida numbers don’t surprise me — there’s not much in the way of a competitive top-of-the-ticket race to drive Democratic turnout. I’m not sure how much it tells us about the national picture.

Meredith and I will be following the fate of women candidates, particularly the ones in toss-up races. Depending on how well they do, the number of women in Congress could actually decline in 2023. But it’s worth remembering that some high-profile female incumbents — like Elaine Luria in Virginia’s 2nd District — are running against other women. If they lose, the overall number of women in Congress won’t be affected.

The first state I’ll be watching tonight is Florida, where Republicans are expected to have a great night even if the party doesn’t necessarily meet expectations elsewhere. Rubio and DeSantis look set to dominate in the Senate and gubernatorial contests, and Republicans are poised to pick up four House seats across the state after a very favorable redistricting session led by DeSantis himself. There’s already been a lot of chatter about Republicans doing well in Miami-Dade County, which usually votes for Democrats, and Republican pollster and data analyst Patrick Ruffini is tracking Republican turnout in Pinellas County as well, where he says the party is outperforming expectations. That would be good news for the GOP’s candidates in what passes for competitive Florida House districts these days: the Miami-based 27th and the Pinellas-based 13th District.

To be honest, I don’t see anything particularly surprising in the exit polls or anything that should cause you to revise your prior expectations about the race. But the whole problem with the exit polls is: To the extent you do see surprises, should you believe them? Or are they an artifact of how it’s incredibly difficult to conduct and properly weight an exit poll when there are so many different voting methods to choose from?

I have a little eye on IA-3 as well. This toss-up race is also one of the districts targeted by an ad campaign that is focused on specific, individual voters that the organizers believe are likely to come out and vote because of the climate policy in the Inflation Reduction Act. Six other races that are toss-ups in our forecast were also targeted in this ad campaign, including Senate races in Pennsylvania and Nevada, as well as House races NV-1, PA-7, PA-8 and VA-2. Given that this is an attempt to get people who are known to care about climate to vote when they might not have otherwise, it could tell us something about how much the electorate really is paying attention to the IRA, one of the biggest pieces of climate legislation in the last 20 years.

Like Monica, I am also interested in Iowa’s 3rd District, and whether the Democrat, Axne, keeps her seat. The climate in 2018 not only favored Democrats but also Democratic women! In the 2018 “blue wave,” female candidates were responsible for 60 percent of seats that Democrats flipped. I am curious if she, and a few other women, can hold on to their seats in this 2022 environment.

I’m watching Iowa’s 3rd District, where the Republican challenger, Zach Nunn, is slightly favored to oust the Democratic incumbent, Rep. Cindy Axne. The district stretches from Des Moines to the Iowa suburbs of Omaha, and Axne first won it in 2018, when the climate favored the Democrats. She barely held onto the seat in 2020. The way the district goes this year could show us the overall political climate.

One of the early states is Kentucky (although polls close at different times in different parts of the state — time zones, man!), and I’ll be watching their ballot measure on abortion. The measure, if it passes, would explicitly clarify that the state constitution does not protect abortion. Kentucky is redder than Kansas, where a similar measure failed during the primary over the summer, so I’ll be watching to see how close those results of this vote turn out to be. It could tell us something about how much the national environment has shifted since August. Anti-amendment (which is to say pro-abortion rights) advocates substantially outraised the pro-amendment (which is to say anti-abortion) side, but in a state like Kentucky, that may not be enough.

We’re less than an hour out from the first round of final poll closures, so before we get numbers from the half-dozen states whose polls close at 7, let’s take stock of what we can learn from these early results. What races are folks watching in order to glean some early insight into national environment?

Don’t forget: There are 36 gubernatorial races taking place tonight, too. And the results of these contests will likely have a bigger impact on your day-to-day lives than congressional races, as governors have an outsized influence on state-level policy issues like health care, education, tax policy and more.

According to FiveThirtyEight’s final Deluxe Forecast, Republicans and Democrats are each poised for a few pickups. There are a bunch of competitive races — specifically in Arizona, Kansas, Nevada, Oregon and Wisconsin — and a few races that are slightly competitive, but probably won’t flip (I’m looking at you, Alaska, Georgia, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico and Oklahoma).

Meanwhile, Democrats are poised for a few easy pickups in both Maryland and Massachusetts. And if the party prevails here (as we suspect they will) both victors could make history: In Maryland, a win for Democrat Wes Moore would make him the state’s first Black governor. While, in Massachusetts, Democrat Maura Healey’s win would her the country’s first out lesbian governor and the first woman elected to the governor’s mansion In Massachusetts.

According to FiveThirtyEight’s final Deluxe forecast, Republicans have an 84-in-100 chance of taking control of the House of Representatives today.

Our average projection is that Republicans will win 230 seats and Democrats will win 205, which would be a 17-seat net gain for Republicans. However, a wide range of outcomes is possible. Our model estimates that there’s an 80 percent chance that Republicans will win between 214 and 246 seats.

If the House is at all competitive, though, what districts should you keep an eye on? Our forecast can tell you that, too, by calculating the odds that a given district will be the “tipping-point” seat in the House, or the seat that clinches the House majority for either Republicans or Democrats. Here are the 25 districts most likely to be that tipping point in our final forecast:

The districts that could decide control of the next House

The 25 most likely “tipping-point” districts in the 2022 House election, according to the FiveThirtyEight final Deluxe forecast

		Republicans		Democrats
District	Incumbent Party	Candidate	Chance of Winning	Candidate	Chance of Winning
NC-13	R	Hines	77%	Nickel	23%
NJ-07	D	Kean Jr.	72	Malinowski*	28
OH-13	D	Gesiotto Gilbert	81	Sykes	19
NY-22	R	Williams	64	Conole	36
MI-10	D	James	79	Marlinga	21
IA-03	D	Nunn	58	Axne*	42
NM-02	R	Herrell*	78	Vasquez	22
OH-01	R	Chabot*	84	Landsman	16
CA-27	R	Garcia*	63	Smith	37
PA-07	D	Scheller	56	Wild*	44
AZ-02	D	Crane	66	O’Halleran*	34
WI-03	D	Van Orden	85	Pfaff	15
OR-05	D	Chavez-DeRemer	58	McLeod-Skinner	42
VA-02	D	Kiggans	52	Luria*	48
NY-01	R	LaLota	77	Fleming	23
PA-17	D	Shaffer	46	Deluzio	54
CA-22	R	Valadao*	61	Salas	39
CA-45	R	Steel*	81	Chen	19
NV-01	D	Robertson	47	Titus*	53
TX-34	R	Flores*	52	Gonzalez*	48
CO-08	—	Kirkmeyer	91	Caraveo	9
RI-02	D	Fung	46	Magaziner	54
NE-02	R	Bacon*	92	Vargas	8
TX-15	D	De La Cruz	46	Vallejo	54
NY-19	D	Molinaro	42	Riley	58

I actually have a wired connection, Chad (old school these days). But yeah, the thing about doing TV is that the producers tend to want your first priority to be TV. So I’ll be jumping in as much as I can with observations tonight, but mostly it’s going to be up to the rest of our wonderful team!

Nate, how’s the Wi-Fi on the ABC studio set (where readers can watch you all night long)?

Coming into tonight, arguably the most uncertain part of the 2022 midterms is the race for control of the U.S. Senate. Currently, the chamber is evenly divided 50-50, but Democrats hold power via the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Kamala Harris. As a result, any net gain for one party will change the power dynamics of the chamber.

But will one party gain ground? FiveThirtyEight’s Deluxe forecast essentially calls the race for the Senate a toss-up, as it gives Republicans have a 59-in-100 shot of winning a majority, which is not much better than a coin flip:

What does this mean for the actual number of seats each party could control? In 80 percent of outcomes in our forecast, Republicans win between 48 and 54 seats. But the average outcome is now 51 Republican seats, which would represent a one-seat gain and, crucially, a GOP majority. This is a far cry from earlier in the cycle, when polls suggested Democrats might be in a decent position to retain control. Now the best they may be able to hope for is preserving the status quo.

Zooming in, four races will largely decide party control in the Senate. For Democrats, they need to hold onto at least two and possibly all three of the seats they are defending in Arizona, Georgia and Nevada. In Arizona, Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly is a slight favorite over Republican Blake Masters, but he is far from secure. Meanwhile, Nevada is a toss-up, so Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto is very much in danger of defeat. And in Georgia, Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock is actually a slight underdog to Republican Herschel Walker. Meanwhile, Republicans’ most insecure seat is in Pennsylvania, where Republican Sen. Pat Toomey is retiring. Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and TV personality and physician Mehmet Oz are locked in a tight race that could go either way.

To any readers who are just joining us — welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s 2022 Election Day live blog. While we’ve been waiting for the polls to close, our staff has been sharing final forecasts, tracking what’s happening on the ground and following up on the key trends they’ve been watching throughout the election cycle.

We’ll be getting results within the hour, so if you’re looking to kill time, I encourage you to scroll down. You want information on when we’re expecting results? We’ve got that! Wondering what our polling partnership with Ipsos says about the issues most important to Americans? Got that, too. We’ve also got projections for how various groups of candidates will do, ranging from progressives to women to those who deny the legitimacy of the 2020 election.

As a reminder, we’ll be here live-blogging the results in congressional and gubernatorial races, as well as some key statewide races like attorney general and secretary of state, and keeping tabs on ballot measures. We’ll keep you informed until we know who won what, and we’ll continue to track any outstanding races. We’ll be clear about what the results do show, and what results we don’t have yet, as the vote count could change in a number of key states as more ballots are counted. That also means we won’t be afraid to say what we simply don’t know.

If you have any questions about the midterm elections or its implications, you can reach us at @538politics.

Longtime viewers of the FiveThirtyEight YouTube channel will remember Rita, our iPad on a tripod, who helped us visualize the forecast. Well, Rita’s back, baby, and she’s gotten a glow-up! Here, Rita helps me explain how certain results in the Senate races in New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Florida could affect FiveThirtyEight’s Senate forecast.

One-hundred and eighty-five Republicans running for House, Senate and governor seats in this year’s midterm elections have denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election. According to FiveThirtyEight’s forecast, more than half of them have at least a 95-in-100 chance of winning their races.

Whatever happens in today’s elections, the Supreme Court’s June decision overturning the constitutional right to abortion has reshaped the midterms in ways that would have been hard to predict just a few months ago. Republicans found themselves on the defensive over abortion restrictions that are far more extreme than most Americans want, and even Democrats in blue states where abortion access is secure framed their candidacies around the issue.

The question now is how much the new landscape of abortion access will change the outcome of the election, especially if it will motivate Americans who might otherwise have sat out the election to vote for Democrats. In late September, FiveThirtyEight’s analysis of the gender gap in this year’s generic-ballot polling — the difference between the share of men and women who voted for a particular candidate or party — found that women did appear to be swinging toward the Democrats in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling. Women have voted for Democrats at higher rates than men since the early 1980s, but there was a particularly wide gender gap in 2018, which then narrowed in 2020.

But as Republicans have gained in the polls, some of that swing may have diminished. When I checked in on the numbers again, I found that the gender gap was a tiny bit narrower for Republicans in October than it was in September — and the share of women supporting Republicans (42.1 percent) in October was, on average, 1.5 percentage points higher than it was in June (40.6 percent).

The generic ballot’s gender gap has widened since June

Difference in share of female voters and share of male voters who say they would support the Republican or Democratic congressional candidate in an election

	Gender Gap in voters who would vote for …
	Democratic candidate	Republican candidate
June	+5.3	-6.5
July	+5.5	-7.3
August	+4.8	-6.3
September	+5.5	-8.2
October	+6.3	-8.1

Overall, the gender gap for both parties is still pretty close to where it was at the end of September — but it’s gotten slightly bigger for the GOP. That’s because while Democrats have gained a little more among women than Republicans have, a higher share of men are supporting the GOP than in June. Despite that movement, though, it doesn’t look like we’re heading for a repeat of 2018, with its historic 12-point gender gap, at least based on the polls we have now.

Ahead of the election, FiveThirtyEight and ABC News tracked where each Republican candidate for House, Senate, governor, secretary of state and attorney general stood on the 2020 election. We found that while many candidates questioned or fully denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election, those who didn’t often just avoided the topic altogether. It was much rarer for a Republican candidate to publicly affirm the legitimacy of the 2020 election. Just 77 GOP candidates running for those offices have fully accepted the results of the 2020 election with no reservations.

But this less popular stance doesn’t seem to be hurting the candidates heading into Election Day. A plurality of candidates (46 percent) running for House, Senate and governor are in races our final forecast projects as “Solid R,” meaning the candidates have at least a 95-in-100 chance of winning. Here’s a look at where the election-accepting candidates stand heading into Election Day:

Where election acceptors may win in 2022

Forecast odds for Republican candidates who have fully accepted the results of the 2020 election

Candidate	Race	Chance of winning
John Boozman*	AR Sen.	>99%
Jerry Moran*	KS Sen.	>99
John Hoeven*	ND Sen.	>99
John R. Thune*	SD Sen.	>99
French Hill*	AR-02	>99
Steve Womack*	AR-03	>99
Victoria Spartz*	IN-05	>99
Larry D. Bucshon*	IN-08	>99
S. Brett Guthrie*	KY-02	>99
Patrick McHenry*	NC-10	>99
Kelly Armstrong*	ND-AL	>99
Mike Turner*	OH-10	>99
Troy Balderson*	OH-12	>99
David P. Joyce*	OH-14	>99
Nancy Mace*	SC-01	>99
Kay Granger*	TX-12	>99
Chip Roy*	TX-21	>99
John Curtis*	UT-03	>99
Dan Newhouse*	WA-04	>99
Phil Scott*	VT Gov.	>99
Todd Young*	IN Sen.	99
Ann Wagner*	MO-02	99
Bryan Steil*	WI-01	99
Chris Sununu*	NH Gov.	99
Young Kim*	CA-40	98
Brad Finstad*	MN-01	98
Jim Pillen	NE Gov.	98
Chuck Grassley*	IA Sen.	97
Laurel Lee	FL-15	97
Andrew R. Garbarino*	NY-02	96
Marco Rubio*	FL Sen.	95
Ashley Hinson*	IA-02	93
Don Bacon*	NE-02	92
Kevin Stitt*	OK Gov.	92
Barbara Kirkmeyer	CO-08	91
David G. Valadao*	CA-22	61
Lisa Murkowski*	AK Sen.	50
Christine Drazan	OR Gov.	37
Keith Pekau	IL-06	33
Michael V. Lawler	NY-17	30
Neil C. Parrott	MD-06	28
Mike Erickson	OR-06	28
Matt Larkin	WA-08	28
Scott R. Gryder	IL-14	22
Anthony P. D’Esposito	NY-04	22
Scott Baugh	CA-47	20
Tyler Kistner	MN-02	20
Brian Maryott	CA-49	18
Paul Junge	MI-08	17
Amanda L. Adkins	KS-03	16
Bob Healey	NJ-03	15
Joe O’Dea	CO Sen.	9
Mark Ambrose	MI-11	2
Tamika Hamilton	CA-06	1
Steven Monahan	CO-06	1
Chris Dargis	IL-08	1
Robert Stefanowski	CT Gov.	1
Joe Pinion	NY Sen.	<1
Gerald Malloy	VT Sen.	<1
Max Semenenko	CA-07	<1
Stephen Slauson	CA-12	<1
Larry Lazor	CT-01	<1
Jeffrey A. Sossa-Paquette	MA-02	<1
Martell D. Bivings	MI-13	<1
Liam Madden	VT-AL	<1
Brian Dahle	CA Gov.	<1
Heidi Ganahl	CO Gov.	<1

Show more rows

… sort of. The forecast is great! I just have a slight quibble with the odds we’ve given one particular Senate race.

What races are our reporters watching tonight? I talked to Senior Elections Analyst Geoffrey Skelley about why you should care about the House races in Virginia.

What races are our reporters watching tonight? I spoke with politics reporter Alex Samuels about why she’s keeping a close eye on a few key races in Texas, including the governor’s race and a couple of House races.

When it comes to candidates who refuse to accept the outcome of the 2020 election, some of the biggest names are also in the tightest races. Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for governor in Arizona, has made false claims of election fraud central to her campaign. She even suggested there was voter fraud in the Republican primary … after she won it. Lake is in a competitive race against Democrat Katie Hobbs, Arizona’s secretary of state. FiveThirtyEight’s Deluxe forecast has that race as “leans Republican,” with Lake having a 68-in-100 chance of winning in the final FiveThirtyEight Deluxe forecast.

But that’s not the norm. The majority of candidates who have denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election (they either said it was stolen or took legal action to overturn the results), look to be sailing into their desired posts — 67 percent of candidates for House, Senate or governors’ offices are in races our forecast projects as “Solid R,” meaning the candidates have at least a 95-in-100 chance of winning. Here’s a look at where the election-denying candidates stand heading into Election Day:

Where election deniers may win in 2022

Forecast odds for Republican candidates who have denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election

Candidate	Race	Chance of winning
Katie Britt	AL Sen.	>99%
Markwayne Mullin	OK Sen.	>99
Jerry Carl*	AL-01	>99
Barry Moore*	AL-02	>99
Mike Rogers*	AL-03	>99
Robert Aderholt*	AL-04	>99
Dale Strong	AL-05	>99
Gary Palmer*	AL-06	>99
Rick Crawford*	AR-01	>99
Andy Biggs*	AZ-05	>99
Debbie Lesko*	AZ-08	>99
Paul Gosar*	AZ-09	>99
Doug LaMalfa*	CA-01	>99
Kevin McCarthy*	CA-20	>99
Darrell Issa*	CA-48	>99
Doug Lamborn*	CO-05	>99
Matt Gaetz*	FL-01	>99
Kat Cammack*	FL-03	>99
John Rutherford*	FL-05	>99
Cory Mills	FL-07	>99
Bill Posey*	FL-08	>99
Daniel Webster*	FL-11	>99
Gus Michael Bilirakis*	FL-12	>99
Greg Steube*	FL-17	>99
Scott Franklin*	FL-18	>99
Byron Donalds*	FL-19	>99
Brian Mast*	FL-21	>99
Mario Diaz-Balart*	FL-26	>99
Rich McCormick	GA-06	>99
Andrew Clyde*	GA-09	>99
Mike Collins	GA-10	>99
Barry Loudermilk*	GA-11	>99
Rick W. Allen*	GA-12	>99
Marjorie Taylor Greene*	GA-14	>99
Russ Fulcher*	ID-01	>99
Mike Bost*	IL-12	>99
Mary Miller*	IL-15	>99
Jim Baird*	IN-04	>99
Greg Pence*	IN-06	>99
Tracey Mann*	KS-01	>99
Jake LaTurner*	KS-02	>99
Ron Estes*	KS-04	>99
Harold “Hal” Rogers*	KY-05	>99
Steve Scalise*	LA-01	>99
“Mike” Johnson*	LA-04	>99
Garret Graves*	LA-06	>99
Jack Bergman*	MI-01	>99
Tim Walberg*	MI-05	>99
Lisa McClain*	MI-09	>99
Michelle Fischbach*	MN-07	>99
Blaine Luetkemeyer*	MO-03	>99
Sam Graves*	MO-06	>99
Jason Smith*	MO-08	>99
Trent Kelly*	MS-01	>99
Matt Rosendale*	MT-02	>99
Greg Murphy*	NC-03	>99
Virginia Foxx*	NC-05	>99
David Rouzer*	NC-07	>99
Dan Bishop*	NC-08	>99
Elise M. Stefanik*	NY-21	>99
Jim Jordan*	OH-04	>99
Bill Johnson*	OH-06	>99
Warren Davidson*	OH-08	>99
Kevin Hern*	OK-01	>99
Josh Brecheen	OK-02	>99
Frank D. Lucas*	OK-03	>99
Tom Cole*	OK-04	>99
Stephanie Bice*	OK-05	>99
Dan Meuser*	PA-09	>99
Lloyd K. Smucker*	PA-11	>99
John Joyce*	PA-13	>99
Guy Reschenthaler*	PA-14	>99
Glenn “GT” Thompson*	PA-15	>99
Mike Kelly*	PA-16	>99
Joe Wilson*	SC-02	>99
Jeff Duncan*	SC-03	>99
William Timmons*	SC-04	>99
Ralph Norman*	SC-05	>99
Russell Fry	SC-07	>99
Diana Lynn Harshbarger*	TN-01	>99
Tim Burchett*	TN-02	>99
Chuck Fleischmann*	TN-03	>99
Scott DesJarlais*	TN-04	>99
John Rose*	TN-06	>99
David Kustoff*	TN-08	>99
Keith Self	TX-03	>99
Pat Fallon*	TX-04	>99
Lance Gooden*	TX-05	>99
Morgan Luttrell	TX-08	>99
August Pfluger*	TX-11	>99
Ronny Jackson*	TX-13	>99
Randy Weber*	TX-14	>99
Pete Sessions*	TX-17	>99
Jodey C. Arrington*	TX-19	>99
Troy E. Nehls*	TX-22	>99
Beth Van Duyne*	TX-24	>99
Roger Williams*	TX-25	>99
Michael C. Burgess*	TX-26	>99
Michael Cloud*	TX-27	>99
John Carter*	TX-31	>99
Brian Babin*	TX-36	>99
Chris Stewart*	UT-02	>99
Burgess Owens*	UT-04	>99
Robert G. “Bob” Good*	VA-05	>99
Ben L. Cline*	VA-06	>99
Scott Fitzgerald*	WI-05	>99
Tom Tiffany*	WI-07	>99
Carol Miller*	WV-01	>99
Alexander X. Mooney*	WV-02	>99
Harriet Hageman	WY-AL	>99
Kay Ivey*	AL Gov.	>99
Brad Little*	ID Gov.	>99
Eric Schmitt	MO Sen.	99
Neal Dunn*	FL-02	99
Carlos A. Gimenez*	FL-28	99
Andy Harris*	MD-01	99
Richard Hudson*	NC-09	99
Andy Ogles	TN-05	98
Joe Kent	WA-03	98
Lauren Boebert*	CO-03	97
Nicole Malliotakis*	NY-11	97
Scott Perry*	PA-10	97
Ken Calvert*	CA-41	95
David Schweikert*	AZ-01	95
Anna Paulina Luna	FL-13	93
Clay Higgins*	LA-03	88
J.D. Vance	OH Sen.	87
Derrick Van Orden	WI-03	85
Steve Chabot*	OH-01	84
Ron Johnson*	WI Sen.	81
Yvette Herrell*	NM-02	78
Bo Hines	NC-13	77
Kari Lake	AZ Gov.	68
Eli Crane	AZ-02	66
Mike Garcia*	CA-27	63
Mayra Flores*	TX-34	52
Adam Paul Laxalt	NV Sen.	51
Monica De La Cruz	TX-15	46
Jim Bognet	PA-08	41
April Becker	NV-03	38
Sarah Palin	AK-AL	33
Karoline Leavitt	NH-01	33
George A.D. Santos	NY-03	32
J.R. Majewski	OH-09	22
Sam Peters	NV-04	17
Tudor M. Dixon	MI Gov.	15
Erik Aadland	CO-07	12
Scotty Moore	FL-09	4
Sandy Smith	NC-01	4
Douglas V. Mastriano	PA Gov.	3
Mark Gonsalves	GA-07	1
Elizabeth L. Joy	NY-20	1
Chris Chaffee	MD Sen.	<1
Jo Rae Perkins	OR Sen.	<1
Jeff Zink	AZ-03	<1
John Dennis	CA-11	<1
Alison Hayden	CA-14	<1
Mike Cargile	CA-35	<1
Joe E. Collins III	CA-36	<1
Eric J. Ching	CA-38	<1
Aja Smith	CA-39	<1
John Briscoe	CA-42	<1
Omar Navarro	CA-43	<1
Jennifer Qualteri	CO-01	<1
Calvin B. Wimbish	FL-10	<1
Jesus G. Navarro	FL-24	<1
Caesar Gonzales	GA-13	<1
James Falakos	IL-04	<1
Caroline Colarusso	MA-05	<1
Donnie Dionicio Palmer Jr.	MA-07	<1
Scott M. Collier	MD-07	<1
Brian Flowers	MS-02	<1
Darius Mayfield	NJ-12	<1
Tina Forte	NY-14	<1
Christopher A. Mann	OR-01	<1
Aaron Bashir	PA-02	<1
Charlotte Bergmann	TN-09	<1
Irene Armendariz-Jackson	TX-16	<1
Carmen Maria Montiel	TX-18	<1
Jenny Garcia Sharon	TX-37	<1
Leon Benjamin Sr.	VA-04	<1
Doug Basler	WA-09	<1
Keith R. Swank	WA-10	<1
Geoff Diehl	MA Gov.	<1
Dan Cox	MD Gov.	<1

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In 2020, due to slow vote counting in many states, it took days to declare Joe Biden the president-elect. We likely won’t have to wait that long this year, but it is again possible that we won’t know all the winners of the 2022 election on election night. States like Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania that are key to Senate control could take multiple days to count all their votes.

The exact timing of the results depends on the state; each has different rules for when and how votes are counted. But we can make an educated guess based on when states reported results in their primary election earlier this year. If every state reports its results at the same pace as in the primary, here is how election night (and the following day) will unfold.

For more information, check out our piece from over the weekend about when states expect to report results.

Three of the closest Senate races are in Pennsylvania, Georgia and Wisconsin — and these videos are a great place to start if you want to brush up on the issues (and controversies) that have dominated the conversation there. I spent a LOT of time this election cycle watching campaign ads. And here, I explore how certain TV ads have changed the minds of voters in these key states.

First up, the race between incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker in Georgia:

Then, the race between incumbent Sen. Ron Johnson and Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes in Wisconsin:

And finally, the race between Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania:

Every election, you get bombarded by data points from exit polls dissecting what issues voters said mattered, what share of the vote came from certain demographic groups and how those groups voted. Now, exit polls are useful in that they attempt to reach people who actually voted, so their results can be valuable when it comes to understanding trends and the importance of various issues. However, we’re here to caution you to take a wait-and-see approach with exit poll data tonight.

For all the attention they get, exit poll data is best used after the election is over. That’s because exit poll data is reweighted after results start coming in to better match the vote percentages from the location they were sampled and more accurately reflect voter preferences. As the night wears on, you may see the exit poll figures change in meaningful ways as further reweighting occurs. Exit polls will stop changing only after we have most or all of the results, but that’s typically very late on election night or even a day or two later, especially in an era with more mail voting. As a result, exit poll numbers — particularly the early results — are not a good measure of a candidate’s support, either in the overall race or among a certain demographic.

Moreover, an exit poll is still a poll, so there is some degree of potential error from the sampling process, including the risk that certain groups of voters will be less likely to respond to an exit poll worker at a sampling precinct. And while exit polls aim to talk to actual voters, the rise in alternative forms of voting, such as voting by mail or early in-person, has complicated how exit polls are conducted — and raised questions about how well they can gauge the actual makeup of the electorate. For instance, FiveThirtyEight largely avoided using exit poll data from vote-by-mail states like Colorado in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary because there was no way of being certain that respondents, reached by phone, had actually voted. And in the 2020 presidential election, the national exit poll may have exaggerated the share of the electorate that was nonwhite, which has been a long-term challenge for exit polling.

This is not to say that exit polls don’t have value — they do! But they’re most useful after the election, not on election night.

Despite what you may have heard, polls are still quite important to understanding what the public thinks about different issues and remain useful for forecasting elections.

That doesn’t mean, however, that there aren’t reasons to be worried about the state of polling. One big concern this cycle is that we have fewer surveys of individual contests than in previous midterms, which leaves us with more broad-strokes data and less of the fine-tooth-comb type. In late October, we took a look at the state of the polls:

Accompanying this broad shift is also a higher share of polls sponsored by or associated with partisan sources. This is a problem because partisan polls tend to be more inaccurate than polls conducted by or for nonpartisan groups. Conversely, we’re seeing a smaller number of horse-race polls conducted by or sponsored by “legacy media” outlets, like major network and cable news outlets, national papers of record, wire services and prominent national news magazines.

While concerning, these trends aren’t necessarily surprising. Polling has become more expensive and more challenging, as the response rate to more traditional polling methods, like live telephone calls, is sometimes below 1 percent. Moreover, recent high-profile polling misses in 2016 and 2020 — note that 2018 polls were comparatively better — may have also made major news organizations more hesitant to release surveys of important statewide races.

Voting today has been going smoothly in most of the country. But, like with every election year, there have been a few hiccups that have slowed things down for some voters. In Maricopa County, Arizona’s most populous county, Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates and County Recorder Stephen Richer reported that some of the tabulator machines used to count hand-marked paper ballots at the polls are malfunctioning and not scanning the ballots.

In those instances, voters can deposit the ballot into a secured slot and they will be tabulated later tonight, similar to how early voting ballots are counted. Or they can go to another polling site to vote. And while there have been long wait times at some locations, most currently have wait times of under an hour.

In Bell County, Texas, voting hours were extended to 8 p.m. Central after technical difficulties, with check-in systems caused multiple polling sites to open late. And in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, a judge ordered polls to stay open until 10 p.m. Eastern after machines at some polling places ran out of paper, causing delays.

These small glitches have inspired election-fraud conspiracy theorists to pounce on every instance of delay or technical difficulties and hold it up as evidence of fraud — which it is not. All of these are par for the course with elections. Keep in mind that U.S. elections are really tens of thousands of smaller elections being run simultaneously across the country, and so small setbacks are expected, especially when technology is involved. This is why there are fallback plans in place, to ensure every voter can cast a ballot that is counted.

This year marks the first election cycle in which members of Gen Z are eligible to run for Congress. Barely eligible for the House at 25 years old, two candidates are the first of their generation to be on House ballots this fall: Karoline Leavitt, a Republican running in New Hampshire’s 1st District, and Maxwell Alejandro Frost, a Democrat running in Florida’s 10th District.

Leavitt, a White House assistant press secretary during former President Donald Trump’s administration, catapulted to fame after beating a handful of GOP hopefuls in the New Hampshire primary, including once-presumed front-runner Matt Mowers, another Trump administration alum branded as a more “establishment” candidate. She’s facing incumbent Democrat Rep. Chris Pappas, who was first elected in 2018 and beat Mowers in 2020. According to our forecast, Pappas is favored to win, with a 67 percent chance, but Leavitt’s performance in the primaries shows that she’s beat the odds before. A vocal 2020 election denier, she’s aligned herself closely with far-right stances on issues including immigration, gun rights and critical race theory bans. Though the former president did not back any candidate in the primary, Leavitt recently received Trump’s endorsement on Oct. 22.

While Leavitt’s race is up in the air, Frost hails from one of Florida’s rare solidly blue districts, and he’s very likely to win the seat for the state’s 10th District. He’s been politically active since his teenage years, rallying for gun reform and serving as a national organizing director for March for Our Lives. Frost’s platform also centers around environmental policy reform, housing affordability and Medicare for All.

Of course, generational cutoffs can be a bit arbitrary, and there are a handful of other candidates who may have missed the 1996 cusp differentiating millennials and Gen Zers but still count among the emerging 20-somethings trying to make splashes in America’s ever-aging gerontocracy.

One of those is Bo Hines, a 27-year-old self-proclaimed “MAGA warrior” running in North Carolina’s 13th District. The former college footballer has worked as a staffer for various Republican politicians, including Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb, and graduated from law school earlier this year. With a 77-in-100 chance of winning, Hines is up against state Sen. Wiley Nickel in a race that could help determine control of the House. Like Leavitt, he’s a young conservative who has fiercely tethered himself to MAGA Republicans and, in turn, bagged an endorsement from Trump.

Of these three, Frost’s outcome looks the most certain. But while Americans under 30 have been increasingly regarded as more liberal than older generations, candidates like Leavitt and Hines show that Republicans are indeed capable of offering captivating and competitive young conservatives.

Although the progressive movement lost some key races in Democratic primaries this year, their caucus in the House should gain new members after Election Day. As we’ve written before, the progressive movement has developed a more sophisticated strategy that includes challenging members of their own party who they judge as out of step politically, but also targeting blue districts where a general election competition is less of a hurdle to growing their influence. This strategy had mixed results this year: Several progressives challenged Democratic incumbents in this year’s primaries, such as Rep. Danny Davis in Illinois, and Rep. Henry Cuellar in Texas, but nearly all of those progressives lost. Despite that step back, though, the progressive movement saw some candidates win competitive primaries in safely blue districts, and those candidates should win their races tonight.

For instance, Maxwell Alejandro Frost, who was endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, won his primary in Florida’s 10th District, a seat that was vacated by Rep. Val Demings so she could run for Senate. Like Frost, Pennsylvania state Sen. Summer Lee won a close primary despite heavy outside funding of her opponents, and she should win her race today, as should Greg Casar in Texas and Delia Ramirez in Illinois. These candidates emulate members of “the Squad” as young people of color, campaigning on an unabashedly progressive message.

But not all of the young progressives are sticking with a progressive message. Mandela Barnes, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Wisconsin, is facing an uphill battle, with a 19-in-100 chance of winning, according to the final FiveThirtyEight forecast. Progressive endorsements from Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have been weaponized against him, and Republican ads have flashed images of Barnes alongside members of the Squad, with a message that Barnes is soft on crime. As our former colleague Perry Bacon Jr. has written, Barnes’s previous positions on issues like the abolition of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, were arguably liabilities as he sought office in a purple state that is more than 80 percent white. But Barnes has been campaigning on an economic message since the primaries, so hedging on more of a progressive message isn’t necessarily a pivot. Still, his ties to progressive causes have been featured heavily in his opponent’s campaign (with not-so-subtle racial undertones), which could hurt him with white moderates in the state.