Nov. 8, 2022 US election coverage

Our live coverage of the 2022 midterms elections has moved here.

Voters around the country weighed in on key ballot measures on Tuesday, including initiatives that require IDs to vote and others that would legalize recreational marijuana.

Here’s what we know so far:

Marijuana

Arkansas voters reject recreational marijuana ballot initiative: Arkansas voters on Tuesday rejected a constitutional amendment that would have allowed cannabis possession and recreational consumption by adults as well as the sale by licensed facilities, CNN projects. Had it passed, cannabis possession of up to an ounce would have been legal and some tax revenue from marijuana sales would have contributed to funding law enforcement.

Maryland legalizes recreational marijuana with ballot measure: Maryland voters on Tuesday approved a constitutional amendment that legalizes recreational marijuana for people 21 and older. It will go into effect on July 1, 2023, and allow possession of 1.5 ounces or two plants. Possession of small amounts of marijuana was already decriminalized in Maryland. Under the amendment, those previously convicted of cannabis possession and intent to distribute will be able to apply for record expungement.

Voters end prohibitions on marijuana in Missouri: Missouri voters on Tuesday approved a constitutional amendment that ends prohibitions on marijuana in the state and allows personal use for those or those over the age of 21, CNN projects. It will allow personal possession up to 3 ounces. Additionally, the amendment allows individuals with marijuana-related non-violent offenses to petition for release from prison or parole and probation and have their records expunged. The amendment, which will be enacted 30 days after the election, prohibits marijuana facilities from selling cannabis-infused products shaped or packaged as candy that may be attractive to children.

North Dakota voters reject ballot measure to legalize recreational marijuana: A citizen-initiated ballot measure that aimed to allow the use of marijuana in “various forms” for those who are at least 21 years-old was rejected by North Dakota voters, CNN projects. It would have allowed marijuana possession of up to an ounce and all marijuana is to be tested in a facility “for the potency of products and the presence of pesticides” and subject to random inspection. Legalization was on the ballot in four other states this November.

South Dakota voters reject proposal to legalize recreational marijuana: Voters in South Dakota rejected a ballot measure that aimed to legalize marijuana for recreational use in the state, CNN projects. Marijuana legalization previously passed in 2020, but South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem’s office championed efforts to nullify the legalization saying that it violated the state’s constitution. The Republican governor’s office previously indicated to CNN that the 2022 measure appears to be written constitutionally and she would have implemented it if it passed.

Voting

Nebraska voters approve measure to require ID to cast ballot: Nebraska voters have approved an initiative that would amend the state constitution to require that voters present a valid photo identification in a way that is specified by the legislature, CNN projects. To pass, “yes” needed to win a majority and votes equal to at least 35% of total votes cast in the election.

Connecticut passes ballot measure to allow early voting: Connecticut voters have approved a measure that would amend the state constitution to permit the legislature to enact early voting, CNN projects.

The battle for control of Congress – both the House and the Senate – is coming down to a dwindling number of key races, with Democrats dashing Republicans’ hopes for a red wave and both parties hanging onto hopes of winning narrow majorities.

Republicans began the night with a rout in Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis won heavily Latino, historically Democratic regions on his way to a blowout victory that could serve as a launch pad for a 2024 presidential run.

But in the hours that have followed, Democrats have fought back. In Pennsylvania, Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman defeated Republican Mehmet Oz for the seat of retiring Republican Sen. Pat Toomey.

Meanwhile, the battle for the House majority – one that favored Republicans, who expected to benefit from high inflation, historical trends and friendly new district lines after 2021’s redistricting – remains unsettled.

Here are some key takeaways as votes continue to be counted in key races:

Democrats go a long way to protecting their Senate majority: Republicans were not shy about the importance of Pennsylvania’s Senate race: “This is a must-win race. We believe if we win Pennsylvania, we win the majority,” said Steven Law, president of the preeminent Republican Senate super PAC. Early on Wednesday morning, CNN projected that Fetterman would be the next senator from Pennsylvania, defeating Oz in the most expensive and high stakes Senate campaign in the country. Fetterman’s win was a thunderclap for Democrats.

Democrats and the suburbs: Suburban areas across the country went a long way to helping Democrats avoid a significant red wave. Republicans may still win the House, but if the 2022 election was going to be a red wave, it was likely to come through suburban victories that have not materialized yet. Republicans did score some suburban victories – CNN projected Brandon Ogles the winner in a district around Nashville, Tom Kean Jr. winning in a suburban New Jersey district and Rich McCormick the victor in a district that included Atlanta’s northern suburbs – but it was their defeats that spoke volumes about the size of the GOP wave.

Virginia’s split decision offers early signals: Three Democratic-controlled House races in Virginia were widely viewed as an early warning signal of the night’s results. Democrats held seats in two Virginia districts Biden won in 2020. CNN projected that Democratic Jennifer Wexton won her reelection bid in Virginia’s 10th District. In an even more competitive race, CNN projected Rep. Abigail Spanberger also won reelection in Virginia’s 7th District. But Democrats lost in southeastern Virginia, with CNN projecting that Republican state Sen. Jen Kiggans defeated Democratic Rep. Elaine Luria.

Another Jan. 6 committee member loses: Luria, a member of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, lost her Virginia Beach-based House seat, CNN projected. She had defeated former GOP Rep. Scott Taylor in 2018 and 2020. But the district had become slightly more favorable ground for Republicans in redistricting: Biden carried the previous version by 5 points, and would have lost the new district by 2 points.

DeSantis and 2024: Gov. Ron DeSantis led a dominant Republican ticket in Florida – delivering historic margins in Democratic territory in his victory over Democratic Rep. Charlie Crist on a night that provides him a powerful argument if he seeks the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination. The easy wins by DeSantis, who led by nearly 20 percentage points with 92% of the estimated vote counted, and Sen. Marco Rubio, who was 17 points up, were enough to cast doubt on Florida’s status as a national bellwether.

GOP makes gains with Latinos in Florida: Republicans hoped to build on Trump’s inroads among Latino voters in 2020, a trend that could reshape the political landscapes in several swing states if it continues. The strongest early signal that the GOP had continued to make gains came in Miami-Dade County, home to a large Cuban population. But it’ll take a while to fully gauge whether those GOP gains take place outside of Florida.

Win for abortion rights: In Michigan, Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer – who staked her reelection campaign on her successful efforts to block the enforcement of the state’s 1931 law banning abortion in almost all instances – defeated Republican challenger Tudor Dixon, who had waged a campaign focused on cultural battles. Michigan voters also approved a Whitmer-backed amendment to the state’s constitution that will scrap that 1931 law and guarantee abortion rights. Voters in California and Vermont also green-lit constitutional amendments enshrining abortion rights.

A night of firsts: Up and down the ballot, in red states and blue, candidates from both parties are celebrating pathbreaking victories. Read about some of them here.

Election Day ballots from all 223 sites in Maricopa County, the most populous county in Arizona, have been reported as of 1:55 a.m local time, according to a tweet from the county’s elections department.

Additional results are expected to be posted Wednesday night, the county said.

As of 1:59 a.m. local time, with 90% of statewide precincts reporting, the Democratic candidates for the senate, governor and secretary of state were in the lead.

Earlier in the day, Maricopa County experienced technical problems with tabulation devices at about 20% of its voting locations, county officials said Tuesday morning, but there was no indication of intentional malfeasance despite claims to the contrary.

Some of the most aggressive deniers of the 2020 election results will lose their 2022 gubernatorial races, CNN projects.

CNN found that at least 22 of the 36 Republican candidates for governor have rejected, declined to affirm, raised doubts about, or tried to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory.

Here are some of the candidates CNN projects will lose:

Some incumbents who denied or questioned the election results will win, CNN projects. They include:

Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas will win reelection in New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District, CNN projects, keeping the swing seat in Democratic hands by defeating Karoline Leavitt, who worked as a press aide to former President Donald Trump.

Republican Derrick Van Orden will win in Wisconsin’s 3rd District, CNN projects.

Democrat Rep. Annie Kuster will win reelection in New Hampshire’s 2nd District, CNN projects, and defeat Republican Robert Burns.

Republican Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks will win in Iowa’s 1st District, CNN projects.

Michigan Secretary of State Joycelyn Benson – who emerged as a leading national voice countering election denial following the 2020 election – will win a second term, CNN projects.

Benson defeated a challenge from Republican Kristina Karamo, who made false claims about the 2020 election and had been endorsed by former President Donald Trump.

Democrat Josh Green will win the Hawaii governor’s race, CNN projects, and defeat Republican Duke Aiona.

Democrat Rep. Elissa Slotkin will win in Michigan’s 7th District, CNN projects.

As results continue to come in tonight, CNN will make projections on key races that will define which party will control each chamber Congress.

Here’s what you need to know about how CNN makes projections:

What is a CNN “key race”? Who decides that? “Key race” is a subjective term. Most politics watchers generally agree that only a subset of races is truly competitive in November, and these are generally considered the key races. Political parties spend more money on these races. Reporters spend more time covering them.

Of the 35 Senate races on the ballot in 2022, the election forecasters at Inside Elections considered three to be true toss-ups and another four to tilt toward either Republicans or Democrats.

Nineteen House races are true toss-ups, although many more could wind up being closely contested. Five governor races are toss-ups. See the Inside Elections ratings for Senate, House and governor.

Key races can also be races that might be less competitive but have broader implications or feature especially notable candidates.

What factors help CNN make projections? Using a mix of many factors, including current and previous election results, real-time exit polling, recent opinion polls, voter registration data and more, CNN’s decision desk is frequently able to reliably project that a candidate has received enough support to win. It is a projection, however, and not the final word. State officials and courts have the official say.

Can CNN project a race without any votes in? This is a task CNN takes very seriously. Based on previous election results, exit polling, recent opinion polls, early voter turnout and other factors, it is sometimes possible to see that one particular candidate will win a race. If there is any chance of an upset, CNN will refrain from projecting a race.

Democratic Rep. Angie Craig, an incumbent House lawmaker, defeated Republican challenger Tyler Kistner in Minnesota’s competitive 2nd Congressional District.

Democrat Wiley Nickel has defeated Republican Bo Hines in a competitive North Carolina House race for the 13th Congressional District, CNN projects.

Nickel is a Democratic state senator. Hines is a 27-year-old political newcomer and former college football player who won former President Donald Trump’s endorsement ahead of the primary. As a result of Trump’s endorsement, the race has been viewed as a test of the former president’s influence.

Democratic Rep. Matt Cartwright will hold on to his seat in Pennsylvania’s 8th Congressional District, CNN projects, defeating Republican Jim Bognet in a second consecutive general election.

Cartwright beat Bognet, a former political consultant, by only about three and a half percentage points in 2020 and was considered an underdog to defend the seat again this year. But his winning streak on increasingly red turf remains intact, even as his vote-share has trended down over the years.

With the balance of the House and Senate coming down to a handful of key states, the race for control is getting tighter.

Here are some of the key headlines from the midterms as results continue to come in:

Brad Raffensperger will stay Georgia’s election chief

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who refused former President Donald Trump’s request to “find” the votes needed to overturn his 2020 loss in the Peach State, will win reelection, CNN projects.

John Fetterman beats Mehmet Oz

Fetterman, the Democratic nominee, thanked supporters and those who voted for him after CNN projected he would win, saying, “I never expected that we were going to turn these red counties blue. But we did what we needed to do.”

J.D. Vance takes Ohio Senate seat

Voters from union households in Ohio favored GOP Senate candidate J.D. Vance over his Democratic rival, Rep. Tim Ryan, which helped the Republican clinch the open seat, according to the early results of the Ohio exit poll conducted for CNN and other news networks by Edison Research.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has won reelection

Whitmer defeated Republican challenger Tudor Dixon in one of the nation’s most important political battleground states, CNN projects. Whitmer won a second term after a campaign that focused largely on her support for abortion rights in the wake of the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade.

Abortion on the ballot

Here’s a look at how Michigan’s voter turnout for the measure stacks up:

Pennsylvania voters who most valued “honesty and integrity” in their Senate candidate favored Democrat John Fetterman over Republican Mehmet Oz, according to the early results of the Pennsylvania exit poll conducted for CNN and other news networks by Edison Research.

Fetterman also won among voters who said they wanted a candidate who cared about people like them, while Oz won among the smaller bloc of voters who prioritized a candidate sharing their values.

CNN projects that Fetterman will defeat Oz to win the open Pennsylvania Senate race, flipping a Republican-held seat.

A majority of female voters, White college-educated voters, voters of color and political independents supported Fetterman, the exit poll finds, while most male voters and White voters without college degrees supported Oz.

Most voters, about 53%, said they disapproved of President Joe Biden’s job performance. But roughly 14% of those who disapproved of Biden cast their ballots for Fetterman, as did nearly all of those who approved of the president. A slim majority of voters in the state said that Biden was not a factor in their vote, with most also saying former President Donald Trump did not play a role.

Voters were close to evenly split on whether or not Oz’s views were too extreme, while about 53% said Fetterman’s views were not.

Voters in Pennsylvania were closely split over whether Fetterman’s health was good enough to represent the state effectively. Fetterman, Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor, suffered a near-fatal stroke days before the May Democratic primary.

But a majority of voters said that Oz has not lived in the commonwealth long enough to represent it effectively. Oz has said he moved to Pennsylvania in late 2020 after living in New Jersey for decades.

Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson will win in Iowa’s 2nd District, CNN projects.

Georgia’s incumbent Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock addressed supporters in Atlanta just before 2 a.m. ET with results still trickling in and acknowledged that the race wouldn’t be called tonight as it still is too close to call.

“We’re not sure if this journey is over today, or if there’s still a little work yet to do, but here’s what we do know. We know that when they’re finished counting the votes from today’s election, that we’re going to have received more votes than my opponent,” Warnock said.

Neither candidate has cleared the 50% benchmark to win the race outright.

During his brief remarks, Warnock urged supporters to “keep the faith.”

“Whether it’s later tonight, or tomorrow, or four weeks from now, we will hear from the people of Georgia,” he said.

John Fetterman will defeat Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania’s Senate race, CNN projects, picking up a seat for Democrats after the retirement of Republican Sen. Pat Toomey.

Fetterman, the state’s lieutenant governor since 2019, is still recovering from a stroke he suffered before the primary. At his election night party, he thanked his supporters and said he felt “so humbled.”

“We bet on the people of Pennsylvania, and you didn’t let us down,” he said.

See more photos from Fetterman’s watch party:

Democrat Chris Deluzio will win the open House seat in Pennsylvania’s 17th Congressional District, CNN projects, defeating Republican Jeremy Schaffer in their contest to replace departing Democratic Rep. Conor Lamb.

Lamb, who won the Western Pennsylvania seat twice, retired from the House to run in the Democratic Senate primary, which he lost to Lt. Gov. John Fetterman.

Deluzio, a voting rights attorney and Iraq War veteran, ran neck-and-neck with Schaffer in most pre-election polling, and many in both parties viewed their race as a national bellwether.

Republican Monica De La Cruz will win the contest in Texas’ 15th Congressional District, CNN projects, signaling that her party has deepened its inroads with Latino voters in the Rio Grande Valley.

De La Cruz will defeat Democrat Michelle Vallejo in a contest that national Democrats had effectively given up on weeks before Election Day by directing their spending to other races.

De La Cruz campaigned on a return to former President Donald Trump’s border policies, and she embraced Trump’s falsehoods about election fraud, questioning her own loss in a 2020 congressional race.

Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan held onto her seat in New Hampshire Tuesday night. She took the stage at her Manchester Election Night headquarters around 11:15 p.m. ET to supporters chanting, “six more years!”

Hassan thanked supporters before acknowledging her opponent, Republican Don Bolduc. She shushed the crowd when they began to jeer at the mention of Bolduc’s name.

“I want to take a minute to thank Don Bolduc for a hard-fought campaign and I want to thank Don Bolduc for his service to this country. We have differences, but we share a love for this country,” said Hassan, before turning her message of unity to Granite State voters. “I promise you, Democrats, Independents and Republicans — the people who voted for me and those who did not — that I will keep working every day to serve you faithfully, to listen to you and to work with you to address the challenges facing your families, our state and the country.”

Hassan’s victory speech focused on bipartisanship, with a commitment to work across the aisle on the economy and a nod to issues championed by her opponent on the trail.

“I will keep reaching out to colleagues from both sides of the aisle defined shared goals and the common ground and compromise necessary to help families and small businesses with the challenges that they face, like the high cost of housing and childcare,” said Hassan. “Of course, in order to have an economy that works, we have to be safe. The safety of our citizens and our nation is always government’s first responsibility. And I will keep working to support our brave men and women of law enforcement and to keep our country safe.”

Meanwhile, Bolduc whose campaign had been bolstered by a polling surge in the final few weeks, addressed his supporters just before 11 p.m. ET, acknowledging Hassan’s win to the crowd but noting he’d not yet called the Democrat to concede at that time.

“Maggie Hassan has won,” said Bolduc to a thinned-out crowd at his Manchester Election Night headquarters, “I was told the protocol was to call her first, but I’m not one for protocol. I wanted to tell my supporters first.”

The Republican added, “This is not a loss. We woke a lot of people up. Hopefully, we put her on notice. And hopefully, she’ll do the right thing for New Hampshire.”

Bolduc read from Rudyard Kipling’s “If” to the crowd of supporters before telling them, “Right now, in this nation, there are a lot of “ifs.” We have done something here in NH. We have created a rumble.”

“We didn’t win today, but imagine ‘if’ we continue to come together, if we join hands, if we decided that they work for us and we don’t work for them,” the retired US Army General continued, “We demand that they do the right thing for us, our children and our great grandchildren […] if we can do this, even in losing we will win.”

Bolduc, who earlier sang “Country Roads” on stage with the band performing Tuesday night, closed by telling the room to “live free or die, baby”— a reference to the Granite State’s motto.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a statement on tonight’s results, saying that while there are several races that remain too close to call “it is clear that House Democratic Members and candidates are strongly outperforming expectations across the country.”

She continued: “As states continue to tabulate the final results, every vote must be counted as cast. Many thanks to our grassroots volunteers for enabling every voter to have their say in our Democracy.”

The House and Senate, where Democrats currently hold narrow majorities, are up for grabs. Republicans need net gains of five seats to win the House.

Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz will win reelection in Hawaii, CNN projects, and defeat Republican Bob McDermott.

Californians have voted to explicitly and more clearly protect abortion rights in the state.

A “yes” vote amended the California Constitution to say that the “state shall not deny or interfere with an individual’s reproductive freedom in their most intimate decisions, which includes their fundamental right to choose to have an abortion and their fundamental right to choose or refuse contraceptives.”

Currently, the state constitution guarantees a right to privacy, which the California Supreme Court has ruled includes the right to have an abortion.

In May, following the leak of the US Supreme Court’s draft opinion to overturn Roe v. Wade, California Democratic leaders Gov. Gavin Newsom, state Senate President Pro Tempore Toni Atkins and state Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon said in a statement that they would propose an amendment “so that there is no doubt as to the right to abortion in this state.”

The Democratic-controlled state legislature in June approved putting the amendment on the November ballot.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has won reelection, CNN projects, defeating Republican challenger Tudor Dixon in one of the nation’s most important political battleground states.

Whitmer won a second term after a campaign that focused largely on her support for abortion rights in the wake of the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade.

She successfully sued to block the enforcement of Michigan’s 1931 abortion ban, and also championed a citizens’ initiative on this fall’s ballot that would amend the state’s constitution to guarantee abortion rights.

Her victory cements Whitmer’s place – two years after she was a finalist for President Joe Biden’s vice presidential pick – as a leading figure within the Democratic Party moving forward.

And it demonstrates the limits of voters’ willingness to punish officials in competitive states who took strict measures to combat the coronavirus pandemic, including school and business closures.

Michigan on Tuesday voted to enshrine abortion rights in the state’s constitution, a move that will block a decades-old abortion ban from taking effect, CNN projects.

The passage of ballot Proposal 3 amends the Michigan constitution to establish an “individual right to reproductive freedom, including right to make and carry out all decisions about pregnancy.”

Backers of the amendment have said it will block Michigan’s 1931 abortion law, which bans all abortions except to save the mother’s life.

The amendment allows the state to regulate abortion after fetal viability, except if needed to protect a patient’s life or physical or mental health. It also bars the state from prosecuting an individual for having an abortion or miscarriage or from prosecuting someone who assists a pregnant person in “exercising rights established by this amendment.”

The proposal had to overcome legal challenges to be included on the ballot, with the Michigan Supreme Court ordering officials in September to include the question on ballots in a 5-2 ruling.

Voters in Vermont approved an amendment to the state’s constitution to further protect abortion rights, CNN projects.

The amendment, supporters say, will protect “every person’s right to make their own reproductive decisions,” including about pregnancies, abortion and birth control.

The Vermont Constitution will now be amended to read: “That an individual’s right to personal reproductive autonomy is central to the liberty and dignity to determine one’s own life course and shall not be denied or infringed unless justified by a compelling State interest achieved by the least restrictive means.”

About half of New Hampshire voters called Republican Senate candidate Don Bolduc’s views “too extreme,” according to the early results of the New Hampshire exit poll conducted for CNN and other news networks by Edison Research.

Only about 43% said the same of his Democratic rival, incumbent Sen. Maggie Hassan.

CNN projects that Hassan will win a second Senate term in New Hampshire, defeating the Trump-backed Bolduc.

President Joe Biden’s job approval rating in the state is negative, per the exit poll, with only about 42% of voters approving. But roughly 1 in 5 Biden disapprovers, nevertheless, cast their vote for Hassan.

Roughly three-quarters of voters in the state – including similar shares of both candidates’ supporters – said that party control of the Senate was very important to their vote.

Republican Sen. Mike Lee will win reelection in Utah, CNN projects, staving off a challenge by independent Evan McMullin.

Lee’s win does little to shift the balance of power in the Senate – Utah was seen as a reliable Republican win and Lee has held the seat since 2011. But McMullin, who said during the race that he would not caucus with either Democrats or Republicans if he were to win the seat, gave Lee a tougher-than-expected race by making it a referendum on former President Donald Trump’s dominance of the Republican Party and the Lee’s shift from a Trump critic to a Trump devotee.

Utah Democrats opted not to put up their own nominee to challenge Lee, viewing McMullin as the best chance in decades for a non-Republican to win a Senate seat in the state.

McMullin’s attacks focused on Lee’s tightness with Trump and his actions around the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the United States Capitol, most notably texts he sent to then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/25/politics/mark-meadows-texts-2319

“We talk about 9/11, but I have to say, it shook me in the same way,” McMullin said during the campaign. “Different type of event. But just as dark, just as evil.”

Lee pushed back against those attacks during a debate between the two candidates, claiming he was “one of the people trying to dismantle this situation, trying to stop it from happening.”

Utah is home to one of the largest voting blocs of anti-Trump Republicans: In 2016, McMullin won over 21% of the vote in a longshot presidential bid; while in 2020, Trump only won 58% of the vote in the state, far lower than many recent Republican nominees.

There was an awkwardness to the race, too. In 2016, Lee publicly said he voted for McMullin over Trump, something the independent candidate tried to use against Lee.

Democrat John Fetterman, who CNN projects will defeat Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania’s Senate race, said he is humbled to serve as the state’s next senator.

“I’m so humbled, thank you so much,” he told his supporters.

He pointed to his campaign’s slogan of “every county, every vote.” Fetterman added, “We jammed them up.”

“I’m proud of what we ran on — protecting a woman’s right to choose, raising the minimum wage, fighting the union way of life,” he said. “Healthcare is a fundamental human right. It saved my life and it should all be there for you if you should ever need it,” he said, referring to the stroke he had earlier this year.

He thanked supporters and those who voted for him, saying, “I never expected that we were going to turn these red counties blue. But we did what we needed to do.”

“We bet on the people of Pennsylvania and you didn’t let us down. And my promise to all of you is I will never let all of you down,” Fetterman added.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers has won reelection, CNN projects, defeating Republican challenger Tim Michels and preserving Democrats’ veto power in a state where the GOP-led legislature is seeking veto-proof supermajorities.

Evers overcame weeks of attacks from Michels, a construction executive backed by former President Donald Trump, and other Republicans who portrayed him as soft on crime.

He campaigned on his support for abortion rights in a state where an 1849 law banning abortions in almost all instances, including rape and incest, took effect after the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade in June. Republicans in the legislature have so far declined to change that law.

Evers’ victory could stymie Republican efforts to implement new restrictions on mail-in voting, defang the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission and more ahead of a 2024 presidential race in which Wisconsin is set to once again play a crucial role.

Voters from union households in Ohio favored GOP Senate candidate J.D. Vance over his Democratic rival, Rep. Tim Ryan, which helped the Republican clinch the open seat, according to the early results of the Ohio exit poll conducted for CNN and other news networks by Edison Research.

Nearly 6 in 10 voters from union households cast ballots for Vance, who also garnered about the same level of support from men who voted and White voters. More than half of Buckeye State voters age 45 and older, voters without college degrees and those living in suburban and rural parts of the state opted for Vance, as well.

Ryan was the preferred candidate of just more than half of women who voted, independent voters, college-educated voters and younger voters. Roughly 6 in 10 voters who live in Ohio cities went for Ryan, as did more than three-quarters of voters of color in the state.

Voters who said they were most concerned about crime, inflation and immigration broke for Vance, while those who thought abortion and gun policy were top issues selected Ryan.

Vance was the choice of voters who wanted a candidate who shared their values, but Ryan was supported by those looking for a candidate who cares about people like them and a candidate who has honesty and integrity.

To read more on exit polling, click here

Democrats picked up a key Senate seat in Pennsylvania, with John Fetterman defeating Trump-backed GOP candidate Mehmet Oz.

Democrats now have secured 47 Senate seats to Republicans’ 46, so far.

It’s still too early to call who will control the chamber with seven seats yet to be projected including in Georgia and Arizona.

More than two-thirds of voters for House candidates don’t want President Joe Biden to run for reelection in 2024, according to the early results of the national exit poll conducted for CNN and other news networks by Edison Research.

More than 7 in 10 independent voters and roughly 9 in 10 Republican voters said they don’t want Biden to be in the 2024 presidential campaign. Fewer than 6 in 10 Democratic voters thought he should run.

Just under 6 in 10 independent voters have an unfavorable view of Biden, and about the same share disapprove of the job he’s doing as president.

Only 1 in 10 Democratic voters have an unfavorable view of the president and slightly more disapprove of his job performance.

More than 9 in 10 GOP voters have an unfavorable view of Biden and disapprove of the job he’s doing.

When it comes to former President Donald Trump, two-thirds of independent voters and more than 9 in 10 Democratic voters have an unfavorable view of him. Just over three-quarters of GOP voters have a favorable view.

Independent voters comprise about a quarter of the electorate, while Democratic voters are roughly one-third and Republican voters are just over one-third of the electorate.

Democrat John Fetterman will win the Pennsylvania Senate race, CNN projects, defeating Republican Mehmet Oz and helping Democrats pick up the seat following the retirement of GOP Sen. Pat Toomey.

Fetterman, the lieutenant governor since 2019, and Oz, who was endorsed by former President Donald Trump, ran one of the most contentious and expensive Senate contests in the country – all of it while Fetterman continued his recovery from a pre-primary stroke that often limited his ability to speak on the trail.

For Democrats trying to preserve their control of what has been a Senate split 50-50, with Vice President Kamala Harris as the tie-breaking vote, Fetterman’s win could prove decisive. The commonwealth entered Election Day as one of at least nine states holding what were expected to be competitive Senate races.

Fetterman’s victory caps a remarkable ascent from his time as mayor of small Braddock, a borough in western Pennsylvania, to the lieutenant governor’s office – which he won after unseating a fellow Democrat in a 2018 primary – and now, the US Senate. A longtime progressive, he is an outspoken supporter of abolishing the filibuster, raising the minimum wage, legalizing marijuana, criminal justice reform and passing legislation to protect same-sex marriage, among other leading liberal priorities.

His success will also provide inspiration to stroke survivors and other disabled Americans, some of whom took heart from his efforts to carry on campaigning even as he exhibited the lingering effects of his May stroke. Fetterman, though he has not released his full medical records, has said he expects to be at or near full strength by the time he takes office early next year.

Though Oz himself largely steered clear of disparaging Fetterman over his stroke-related difficulties, his campaign was less cautious, leading the Republican to repeatedly distance himself from his own staffers’ remarks. Asked at one point late in the campaign whether he would speak to his own patients the way his campaign addressed Fetterman, Oz responded with one word: “No.”

CNN hosts react:

Michigan’s Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer spoke moments ago as polls show her leading her race. She didn’t declare victory, but Whitmer said “we are feeling damn good about where we are heading.”

CNN is yet to make a projection in the race.

Whitmer thanked the crowd and said that Michigan voters’ “voices were heard” and they “set our state on the course that is focused on the future.”

“We have come a long way, Michigan,” Whitmer said, adding that her campaign is “thrilled at the unexpected high turnout.”

She invited those in attendance to “come back in the morning.”

“We will be ready to talk about what the future of this state is for the next four years,” Whitmer said.

Twenty-one candidates in these 14 states made history, so far, on Election night:

AlabamaArkansasCaliforniaConnecticutFloridaIllinoisMarylandMassachusettsMichiganNew YorkOhioOklahomaPennsylvaniaVermont

Some Republican candidates who have denied or refused to affirm the results of the 2020 election will be elected as state elections chief, CNN projects — though others will be defeated.

Here are three Republican secretary of state winners CNN has projected so far:

In addition, Republican candidate Chuck Gray of Wyoming ran unopposed for secretary of state in the general election after winning the Republican primary.

Here are five election deniers CNN projects will lose their 2022 races:

CNN found that at least 12 Republican candidates for secretary of state have questioned, rejected or tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election. CNN had not yet projected the other races as of midnight ET on Wednesday morning.

It’s 1 a.m. ET, and polls are now closing across Alaska.

These are the key races in the state: GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski has survived tough elections before – she won her 2010 Senate race as a write-in candidate – but now she is facing Trump-endorsed opponent Kelly Tshibaka in Alaska’s first ranked-choice Senate election.

The independent-minded Murkowski has frequently been a target of Trump and his supporters, especially since she voted to convict in Trump’s second impeachment. Murkowski won 45% in the top-four primary while Tshibaka, the former commissioner of the Alaska Department of Administration got 39%.

If no candidate wins a majority of first choice votes, the election will be decided by ranked choice voting and the second choices of supporters of Democrat Patricia Chesbro could be key.

In the House race, Rep. Mary Peltola won a special election in August to replace long-time Republican Don Young, who died in March, and she’s hoping to repeat the feat.

Peltola will face the same two Republicans in Alaska’s ranked-choice system. Sarah Palin, former Alaska governor and 2008 vice presidential nominee, is backed by Trump and finished second to Peltola in August.

Nick Begich, who has a name well known in Alaska politics, argues that he can beat Peltola in the ranked-choice tabulation, after many of his voters spurned Palin on their special election ballots. Peltola led the top-four primary with nearly 37% of the vote.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who refused former President Donald Trump’s request to “find” the votes needed to overturn his 2020 loss in the Peach State, will win reelection, CNN projects.

Raffensperger’s rebuff – and role as a witness before the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol – has made him one of the country’s best-known election chiefs.

“I’ve had to stand up to incredible pressure,” the Republican said, during a recent candidate debate. “Many people buckled and folded. I didn’t, and I won’t.”

He defeated the Democratic nominee, state Rep. Bee Nguyen, a rising political star in her party. She had put expanding access to the ballot at the center of her candidacy and sought to make history by becoming the first Asian-American elected to a statewide political office in Georgia.

The two have clashed over Raffensperger’s support of SB202, an elections bill approved by the Georgia General Assembly last year that imposed a range of new voting restrictions, including adding new identification requirements to vote by mail and making it a crime for third parties to give food or water to voters waiting in line.

Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez will defeat Republican Rep. Mayra Flores in a rare member-against-member House race in the Texas 34th District, CNN projects.

His win offers evidence that Democrats have had some success stemming their losses among Latino voters in the Rio Grande Valley, who shifted in the GOP’s favor in 2020.

Democrat Nikki Budzinski will win in Illinois’ 13th District, CNN projects.

Republican Thomas Kean Jr. will win in New Jersey’s 7th District, CNN projects, and defeat Democratic Rep. Tom Malinowski.

Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont will win reelection in Connecticut, CNN projects, and defeat Republican Bob Stefanowski.

Lamont defeated Stefanowski in 2018 by just about 3 percentage points.

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham will win reelection in New Mexico, CNN projects, overcoming a stronger-than-expected challenge from Republican Mark Ronchetti.

Lujan Grisham’s win makes her the fourth straight New Mexico governor to win reelection and will likely grow her national profile – the Democrat received some vice-presidential consideration by President Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 presidential general election.

Lujan Grisham centered her campaign on abortion, casting her opponent as extreme on the issue that motivated Democratic campaigns across the country. She also nationalized the race – both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris visited the state in the final weeks of the campaign.

The reason for that: The last four Democratic presidential nominees carried the state, including Biden by 11 percentage points two years ago.

Ronchetti, a former TV weatherman, tried to turn Lujan Grisham into an avatar for Democratic control in Washington and attacked her as a career politician.

“We can be a state that looks out for you before it looks out for government, but you have to give us a chance at change,” he said at the final debate between the two candidates.

But Lujan Grisham successfully convinced voters that Ronchetti was not the person to be the change.

“Bad for New Mexicans, bad for New Mexico,” she said of Ronchetti during the debate.

Rep. Henry Cuellar, the lone House Democrat who has voted against abortion rights, will win reelection in Texas’ 28th Congressional District, CNN projects.

Cuellar will defeat Republican challenger Cassy Garcia, halting the GOP’s efforts to sweep a trio of Rio Grande Valley districts as the party makes gains among Latino voters.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has won reelection, CNN projects, defeating her GOP opponent in the midterm race.

Pelosi, a towering figure in Democratic politics, won out against longshot Republican challenger John Dennis in the race for California’s 11th Congressional District.

Over the years, Pelosi, 82, has become one of the most prominent faces of the Democratic Party. As speaker, she has earned a reputation as a powerful and formidable leader to House Democrats who exerts significant influence and a tight grip over members of her caucus.

Pelosi has also been a fierce adversary to Republicans and has become a highly polarizing figure in Washington as a result.

Speculation over Pelosi’s future atop the House Democratic caucus has intensified as the midterms approached and Republicans fought to regain the House majority.

CNN reported in September that in interviews with more than two dozen House Democrats, a consensus began to emerge: If they lose the majority, there would be overwhelming pressure for Pelosi to go, a prospect that Democratic sources said the powerful House speaker is keenly aware of.

At the same time, multiple members said they were also starting to see how, if Democrats do hold control, it could lead to Pelosi extending her time in power. Yet Democrats are split about that possibility, with a sizable contingent eager for new leadership regardless of the outcome, even if she’d be the heavy favorite to hold onto the gavel.

Democrat Sharice Davids will win in Kansas’ 3rd District, CNN projects.

Republican Andy Ogles will win the House seat in Tennessee’s 5th District, CNN projects.

Democrat Seth Magaziner will win in Rhode Island’s 2nd District, CNN projects.

Democratic state Rep. Emilia Sykes has defeated Republican Madison Gesiotto Gilbert in a closely watched open race for Ohio’s 13th Congressional District, CNN projects.

Democrat Greg Landsman defeated Republican Rep. Steve Chabot, CNN projects, ousting the Cincinnati-area congressman after redistricting made Ohio’s 1st Congressional District stronger terrain for Democrats.

Landsman, a Cincinnati city councilmember, was a rare example of a Democratic candidate on offense in a midterm election cycle during which the party was largely focused on defending its House seats.

It’s midnight on the East Coast and we are down to eight Senate seats still to be decided — and it is dead even between Democrats and Republicans. The race to control the Senate currently stands at — 46 seats for Democrats, 46 for Republicans.

Here are more of the latest Election night headlines:

Here’s what the House and Senate look like at 11:30 p.m. ET, according to CNN’s projections:

House:

Senate:

It’s midnight ET, and the polls are closing in Hawaii.

Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz is running for his second full term — he was appointed to the Senate in 2012 and won a special election in 2014 before winning a full term in 2016. Hawaii is one of the bluest states in the country, giving Schatz a huge boost in his bid against GOP state Rep. Bob McDermott.

Hawaii has only elected two Republican governors in its history (Linda Lingle and William Francis Quinn), and it’s unlikely that will change this year. Hawaii voters will choose between Democratic Lt. Gov. Josh Green and Republican former Lt. Gov. Duke Aiona.

Green became a household name to Hawaii voters during the Covid-19 pandemic. In addition to being a doctor who worked as a physician during his time in the state legislature and as lieutenant governor, Green served as the administration’s health liaison between the state and the health care community during the pandemic.

Democrat Becca Balint will make history as the first woman elected to Congress from Vermont, with CNN projecting she will defeat GOP nominee Liam Madden for the state’s at-large House seat.

Vermont had been the last remaining state in the country not to have elected a woman to Congress.

With her win, Balint will also become the first out LGBTQ person elected to Congress from the Green Mountain State. She previously made history in the Vermont Senate, where she was the first woman to serve as president pro tempore.

The state’s lone House seat opened up after Welch, who was first elected to the House in 2007, announced a bid late last year for the seat being vacated by Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy. The retiring senator was first elected in 1974 and is the longest-serving senator still in office and the third-longest-serving senator in Senate history.

Democratic Gov. Tim Walz will win reelection in Minnesota, CNN projects, and defeat physician and former state Sen. Scott Jensen.

New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul will win a first full term in office, CNN projects, defeating Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin in what developed into a surprisingly tense race in its final weeks.

Hochul’s victory keeps New York Democrats on track to maintain their now nearly two-decade-old winning streak in statewide elections. A Buffalo native, Hochul took over the top job in August 2021 following the resignation of Andrew Cuomo, the three-term governor who faced impeachment amid a sexual harassment scandal. Despite being his lieutenant governor, Hochul and Cuomo were never closely aligned and she moved quickly upon taking office to clear it of his allies.

Already the first woman to hold the governor’s office in New York, Hochul will now become the first to win it in an election. Zeldin, a conservative acolyte of former President Donald Trump, ran a “law and order” campaign almost entirely focused on fears over rising crime and a 2019 criminal justice reform law that made it more difficult for judges to hold suspects in pre-trial detention. But he also tapped into frustration over the state of the economy, which has been slow to recover in and around New York City following the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic, and working class concerns over environmental initiatives like a plan to hike fees for automobiles entering heavily trafficked parts of the city.

Hochul, who in the latter part of the campaign dialed up her political outreach in New York City, where Democrats typically need about 70% of the vote to assure statewide victory, hammered Zeldin throughout the race over his anti-abortion positions and vote in Congress against certifying President Joe Biden’s election.

Like other blue state Republicans, Zeldin repeatedly insisted he had no plans to change abortion law in New York, where Democrats – both before and after the leak of the Supreme Court opinion striking down Roe was published – have passed a suite of comprehensive protections for patients and abortion providers.

But Zeldin undermined his promise with comments to an anti-abortion group suggesting he would appoint a like-minded state health commissioner, who would have significant power to shape policy. He walked those back, but in his lone debate with Hochul also hedged on whether he would back funding Planned Parenthood.

Incumbent Republican Ken Paxton will will reelection as Texas attorney general, CNN projects.

Incumbent Democrat Letitia James will win her reelection bid in New York’s attorney general race, CNN projects.

In her concession speech, Democrat Stacey Abrams began her remarks by thanking Georgia and congratulating incumbent GOP Gov. Brian Kemp on winning the race.

“It is good to be here in this moment surrounded by your love and support. And let me begin by offering congratulations to Gov. Brian Kemp,” Abrams said.

She added, “Look, I got into this race for one reason and one reason only, to fight. And not just any fight, a fight to save Georgia. A fight on behalf of our children and generations to come. A fight on behalf of our people, whether they know it or not. A fight for basic human rights that we should take for granted, but we have to struggle to hold onto. And a fight for the values that we hold dear and we may never sacrifice. I got into this for a fight that we know to be true deep down in our bones, that the state of Georgia, that the people of Georgia deserve more.”

Abrams thanked her supporters including those who have been with her since she first ran for office in 2006 and said that her obligation to continue to fight for Georgia remains resolute.

“I see in this crowd women and men who have been a part of this journey since I put my name on a ballot in 2006 and while I may not have crossed the finish line that does not mean we will ever stop running for a better Georgia. We will never stop running for the truth that we know to be true. For the people we know need to see us. For the ones who don’t know they deserve to stand let alone run. And tonight, we must be honest even though my fight, our fight for the governor’s mansion might’ve come up short, I’m pretty tall,” she said.

Abrams continued, ” And I — I am here because a moment where despite every obstacle we are still standing strong and standing tall and standing resolute and standing in our values. And we know Georgia deserves more, and whether we do it from the governor’s mansion, or from the streets, whether we do it from the capitol or from our communities, we’re going to fight for more for the state of Georgia.”

Republican J.D. Vance, the projected winner of Ohio’s open Senate seat, said he was “overwhelmed with gratitude” during his victory speech to supporters in Columbus Tuesday.

He thanked his family and campaign team as well as the Republican Party and officials who joined him on the campaign trail.

“We just got a great chance to govern and we need to use it,” Vance said. “We need better leadership in Washington, DC, and that’s exactly what I promise to fight for every single day,” he added.

Some background: Vance’s win is a boon for Republicans and a victory for former President Donald Trump, whose endorsement in the Republican primary helped Vance emerge from the contentious intraparty fight.

Vance continues a long line of Republican victories in a state that has tilted toward the party in recent years. Other than Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, no Democrat has won nonjudicial statewide office in the state since 2008 and former President Barack Obama was the last Democratic presidential nominee to win the state in 2012.

House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy has won reelection, CNN projects. McCarthy defeated longshot Democratic challenger Marisa Wood in the midterm race for California’s 20th Congressional District.

If Republicans win back the House majority, McCarthy is widely expected to be elected as the next House Speaker at the start of the new session of Congress, which would further elevate his position as a prominent leader in the national Republican Party and usher in a new era in Washington with Republicans set to pursue aggressive oversight of President Joe Biden’s administration.

As the top House Republican, McCarthy faces the challenge of having to balance the interests and priorities of different ideological factions within the House GOP conference, ranging from the far-right to more moderate members representing swing districts.

Democratic Rep. Ayanna Pressley wins reelection in Massachusetts 7th Congressional District, CNN projects.

Republican Katie Britt will be the first female senator elected in Alabama, CNN projects, winning an open-seat race to succeed retiring GOP Sen. Richard Shelby.

Two women have previously represented Alabama in the Senate, but both were appointed to fill vacancies.

Britt is just one of the projected winners who made history on Tuesday night. Here are a few others:

Rep. Elise Stefanik — the third-ranking House Republican — will win her reelection in New York’s 21st District, CNN projects.

As polls in more western states start to close, Republicans have two more Senate seats than Democrats — needing to win four more to win control of the chamber.

Republicans are projected to win 46 seats and Democrats are projected to win 44, with many more states still counting ballots, but the window of opportunity could be getting smaller for Democrats, CNN’s John King said in analysis.

“We are in a very narrow chess game for control of the Senate right now, and we have fewer pieces in place,” he said Tuesday.

There are a handful of key states with results will coming that could determine who controls the chamber — Pennsylvania, Georgia and Nevada, King said.

Watch:

Democratic Sen. Patty Murray will win reelection in Washington state, CNN projects, and will defeat Republican Tiffany Smiley.

Four-term Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden will win reelection in Oregon, CNN projects, and will defeat Republican Jo Rae Perkins.

Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur has won reelection in Ohio’s 9th Congressional District, CNN projects, holding onto a seat she has represented since 1983.

Headed into the 2022 midterms, Kaptur was widely seen as one of the most vulnerable House Democrats in the country, with both Ohio and her district, in part because of redistricting, moving away from her party politically.

But after Republican J.R. Majewski unexpectedly defeated better-funded and more establishment-aligned Republicans in the primary, the race began to tilt toward Kaptur given Majewski’s unflinching loyalty to former President Donald Trump, the fact he was a January 6, 2021, rally participant and has repeatedly shared pro-QAnon material, despite denying he followed the conspiracy theory movement.

Kaptur effectively won the race in September after the National Republican Congressional Committee cancelled all their ad reservations in the district. The decision came just days after The Associated Press reported Majewski had misrepresented his military service.

Kaptur’s win is a boon for Democrats. Kaptur’s district shifted dramatically during Ohio’s controversial redistricting process, moving from a solidly Democratic seat to one that leans toward Republicans.

Kaptur ran on her ties to Ohio, arguing that being a Midwestern Democrat in a party increasingly run with big-city sensibilities on both coasts is a growing challenge for her.

“What coastal people, God bless them, don’t understand, is that we lost our middle class,” Kaptur told CNN. “We lost so many people who’ve worked hard all their lives, including in many of these small towns. I understand that. We feel their pain. We went through it together.”

Two-term Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal will win reelection in Connecticut, CNN projects, and defeat Republican Leora Levy, a Trump-endorsed candidate who won her primary against a moderate Republican backed by the state’s Republican Party.

Republican Rep. Ted Budd will be the next senator from North Carolina, CNN projects, defeating former state Supreme Court Justice Cheri Beasley in a race that had tilted toward the GOP for months.

Budd’s win keeps the seat in Republican hands after Sen. Richard Burr announced he would not seek reelection and – with an evenly divided Senate – helps Republicans on their mission to take back the legislative chamber in January.

Democrats long viewed the North Carolina Senate race as a reach for the party. They would have liked to have won it of course, but the race attracted far less outside spending than contests in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – the states widely seen as the top two chances for Democrats to flip a Senate seat in 2022.

Budd, aided by an endorsement from former President Donald Trump, won the GOP nomination in May. Unlike Beasley, the three-term congressman trod a familiar political path – going from owning a family business to winning a seat in the US House of Representatives to seeking statewide office.

Headed into Election Day, Republican and Democratic operatives saw the race as tight, with increased polarization leading to an ever-shrinking sliver of persuadable voters across the state.

In the end, however, North Carolina’s recent political tilt aided Budd. Trump won the state twice and Democrats haven’t won a Senate seat in the state since 2008.

Budd, like Republicans across the country, hammered Beasley on inflation, crime and ties to President Joe Biden’s administration.

“We talked a lot about tonight about Joe Biden,” Budd said in his closing statement of a debate in October. “Why am I doing that? Because Joe Biden is on the ballot on November 8, and he goes by the name this year of Cheri Beasley.”

Republican J.D. Vance will win the Ohio Senate race, CNN projects, outlasting a stronger-than-expected challenge from Democrat Tim Ryan and keeping the seat under GOP control.

Vance’s win is a boon for Republicans and a victory for former President Donald Trump, whose endorsement in the Republican primary helped Vance emerge from the contentious intraparty fight.

Vance continues a long line of Republican victories in a state that has tilted towards the party in recent years. Other than Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, no Democrat has won nonjudicial statewide office in the state since 2008 and former President Barack Obama was the last Democratic presidential nominee to win the state in 2012.

The race between Vance and Ryan was a contentious and, at times, personal affair, with both candidates holding a clear animosity towards the other.

Ryan’s stout challenge to Vance worried Republicans in Ohio and Washington, D.C. That contributed to the acrimony, a feeling that played out on the campaign trail and during their two debates, both of which devolved into Vance and Ryan trading personal barbs.

“These leaders in DC will eat you up like a chew toy,” Ryan said of Vance’s support for Trump, even after the former president publicly accused him of “kissing my ass” to get him to campaign for him. “I am just telling you, like, I have been in this business, it is tough business. If you think you are going to help Ohio, you are not. If you can’t even stand up for yourself, how are you going to stand up for the people of this state?”

And Vance repeatedly questioned Ryan’s character. “Tim Ryan has put on a costume where he pretends to be reasonable moderate,” the Republican said during their first debate.

Money loomed large in the race, with Ryan consistently enjoying a significant fundraising advantage over Vance.

In the third quarter of 2022, Ryan raised a sizable $17.2 million, compared to Vance’s $6.9 million. In the second quarter, the gap was even more dramatic: Ryan raised $9.1 million to Vance’s roughly $1 million.

Still, because of Democratic skepticism about their chances in Ohio, Ryan had to largely go it alone in the state, pouring all the money he raised into a slate of television ads. Vance, by contrast, received considerable outside help – including from the Mitch McConnell-aligned Senate Leadership Fund, which announced in August it planned to spend at least $28 million in the state.

Election results are still coming in, and many races won’t be called for days, if not weeks. But for now, here’s a look at the candidates who CNN projects will make history in the 2022 midterms.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott pledged to do more to secure the border and congratulated other Republicans who are projected to win Tuesday.

“I ran for the farmers and ranchers down here on the border who pleaded for a more secure border in the state of Texas,” he said, adding that he will also continue to fight crime and “keep Texas number 1 in oil and gas” production in the US.

Abbott, who CNN projects will win reelection, said he will urge lawmakers to reinstate the Remain in Mexico policy and re-start building the border wall.

He thanked Texans who voted for him, assuring the crowd, “we will go to work every single day to earn that trust.”

“All of you inspired me and all of your propelled me” to reelection, the governor added, saying he heard from voters that they just want to “keep Texas, Texas.”

“Together we will keep Texas the greatest state, in the greatest country, in the history of the world,” Abbott added.

He touted other successes, including the quality of education, and funding law enforcement. The governor also congratulated “the next generation of Republicans” who were elected tonight.

Harriet Hageman, a Donald Trump ally who ousted Rep. Liz Cheney in August’s Republican primary, will win Wyoming’s at-large House seat, CNN projects.

Hageman defeated Democrat Lynnette Grey Bull, as well as contenders from the Libertarian and Constitution parties.

Her victory in the deep red state — Trump won Wyoming by 43 percentage points in 2020 — was all but guaranteed after she defeated Cheney in one of the nation’s most closely watched primaries.

Democratic state Attorney General Josh Shapiro will be the next governor of Pennsylvania, CNN projects, defeating far-right Republican state lawmaker Doug Mastriano.

Shapiro’s ascent means Democrats will keep control of the state’s top job, providing a powerful check on its GOP-held state legislature, as Gov. Tom Wolf leaves office due to term limits. Shapiro is also now poised to become a leading national Democratic figure short-listed for the party’s next open presidential primary.

Most polling of the race before Election Day showed Shapiro with a comfortable lead over Mastriano, who was endorsed by former President Donald Trump shortly before the primary and chartered buses to Washington ahead of the former President’s “Stop the Steal” rally on January 6, 2021. (Mastriano says he never entered the US Capitol and has not been charged with any crimes.)

But the Republican nominee’s support for expanded gun rights, strict anti-abortion laws and outspoken opposition to Covid-19 safety measures appeared to alienate voters in Pennsylvania’s decisive swing counties.

Mastriano, a retired army colonel, was outpaced by Republican Senate candidate Mehmet Oz in polling throughout the general election season and Oz often made pains to distance himself from his fellow GOP nominee.

Entering this campaign, Shapiro, who also outraised Mastriano by tens of millions of dollars, held the record for most votes won by a candidate in state history. In 2020, his 3.46 million ballots outpaced even Joe Biden, who ended up with roughly 3,000 fewer votes.

Republican Gov. Brian Kemp will be reelected in Georgia, CNN projects, defeating Democrat Stacey Abrams for a second time.

Abrams has called Kemp to concede, according to a Kemp campaign source.

Kemp had been seen as the favorite in the race for months, with Abrams unable to capture the momentum she experienced in 2018 and hampered by broader voter discontent with Democratic control of Washington.

The victory reasserts Republican control of the executive office in Georgia just two years removed from Democrats winning both of the state’s US Senate seats and President Joe Biden becoming the first Democrat to win the state since Bill Clinton in 1992.

Abrams’ defeat is a tough blow for Democrats who have long sought to elevate her in a state that, until recently, had been dominated by Republicans. After losing to Kemp by less than two percentage points in 2018, Abrams was among the women considered to run alongside Biden. She is often touted as one of the most influential Democrats in the country, despite currently holding no public office.

Kemp’s victory is a clear sign that economic arguments made by Republicans were more powerful in 2022 than Democrats’ focus on abortion. Abrams centered her campaign on the issue after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade over the summer. She told CNN in September that the issue was going to be “front and center in the conversation” – specifically Kemp’s signing of a bill that bans most abortions when early cardiac activity is detected, when many women don’t yet know they’re pregnant.

Kemp said on the campaign trail that he stood by that law, noting that it provided some exceptions. He instead spent much of his time focused on inflation, crime, and antipathy for Biden’s administration.

“Georgians should know that my desire is to continue to help them fight through 40-year high inflation and high gas prices and other things that our Georgia families are facing right now, quite honestly, because of bad policies in Washington, DC, from President Biden and the Democrats that have complete control,” Kemp said at his first debate against Abrams.

Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan will win her bid for reelection, CNN projects, defeating Republican Don Bolduc and delivering her party a key win in its bid to keep the Senate in Democratic control.

Hassan was widely seen as one of the most vulnerable Senate Democrats in the country at the start of the year, saddled with lagging economic indicators and President Joe Biden’s sluggish approval rating.

But the Democratic senator – aided by Bolduc being viewed by top Republicans in Washington and New Hampshire as out of step with the Granite State – was successful in her bid for six more years in office after winning her first term by roughly a thousand votes out of more than 700,000 cast.

Bolduc was widely written off by local and national Republicans, many of whom viewed him with skepticism as he rose during the primary and had grave concerns about his inability to raise money. After staking far-right positions on a range of topics to defeat a series of better funded Republican candidates, Bolduc attempted to walk back those positions almost as soon as he won the primary, including repeatedly pushing falsehoods around the validity of the 2020 election.

Even with their doubts, though, Republicans spent more than $34 million on ads between Labor Day and Election Day pushing Bolduc, a sign of how vulnerable the party saw Hassan.

Hassan’s successful attacks on Bolduc – and the Republican’s less than clear pushback – did little to assuage Republican concerns, leading the National Republican Senatorial Committee and Senate Leadership Fund to cut their planned spending in the state weeks before Election Day. The National Republican Senatorial Committee returned two weeks out with a small $1 million buy.

Like many Democrats across the country, Hassan was powered by energy around the abortion debate and used former President Donald Trump and the unfounded denial rhetoric around the 2020 election to cast Bolduc as an extremist.

“Let’s be very clear here: Don Bolduc is an election denier,” she said at a debate. “His refusal to accept election results means he doesn’t listen to you. This allows him to support an agenda that will raise your costs and eviscerate your rights, because at the end of the day, he doesn’t think he needs to listen, or isn’t accountable to you.”

Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar wins reelection bid in Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District race, CNN projects.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth will win reelection in Illinois, CNN projects, and defeat Republican Kathy Salvi.

When she was elected in 2016, Duckworth became the first disabled female senator. She was flying a helicopter in Iraq in 2004 when it was attacked and she lost both of her legs, and in 2018 she became the first senator to give birth while in office.

Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker will win reelection in Illinois, CNN projects.

Republican Gov. Brad Little will win reelection in Idaho, CNN projects, and defeat Democrat Stephen Heidt.

Democratic incumbent Gavin Newsom will win another term as California’s governor, CNN projects, a year after he faced a recall election. He defeated Republican state Sen. Brian Dahle.

The recall effort against Newsom gained momentum over the governor’s strict Covid-19 restrictions, especially when he was seen as not following them himself. In California, Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly two to one, giving Democratic candidates a huge advantage in statewide races.

The last Republican governor of the Golden State was Arnold Schwarzenegger, who served from 2003 to 2011.

Longtime GOP Sen. Mike Crapo will win reelection in Idaho, CNN projects, and defeat Democrat David Roth.

Democratic Gov. Janet Mills won a second term in office, CNN projected, defeating her predecessor, former Gov. Paul LePage, a right-wing Republican seeking to win back his old job after being forced out in 2019 due to state term limits.

Mills became the state’s first female governor when she defeated Republican Shawn Moody in 2018, setting a record for the most votes received by any gubernatorial candidate in state history.

Her defeat of LePage, an outspoken conservative who has described himself as “Trump before there was Trump,” is a rebuke to the former President’s political movement and a boon for Democrats, who entered the night defending 20 of the 36 contested governor’s offices nationwide.

LePage not only made false claims about voter fraud in 2020, but has a history of alleging stolen elections, something he denied in a debate despite publicly available evidence to the contrary. The Republican’s campaign also attacked Mills over Covid-19 restrictions and the struggles of the state’s seafood industry, but Mills pushed back, touting her efforts to backstop it by, among other measures, sending federal relief cash to reimburse licensing fees paid up and down the supply chain.

Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla will win election in California, CNN projects, becoming the first elected Latino senator in state history.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom appointed Padilla , the son of Mexican immigrant parents, to the seat that Kamala Harris vacated to become vice president in January 2021.

Padilla will defeat Republican Mark Meuser in both a regular election for a six-year term as well as a special election for the remainder of Harris’ term that ends in January.

Padilla and Meuser advanced to the general election after finishing in the top two in June in the state’s open primary, which sees candidates of all parties running on the same ballot with the top two moving on to November.

Prior to his appointment to the Senate, Padilla was elected to two terms as California secretary of state. He entered politics as an aide to California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, now his fellow Democratic colleague in the Senate.

He was elected to the Los Angeles City Council at 26 in 1999, later becoming the council’s youngest president in its history. In 2006, he was elected to the state Senate, representing the San Fernando Valley.

In Congress, Padilla has been vocal on transportation and immigration policies. He chairs the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, and Border Safety.

It’s 11 p.m. and polls are closing in four states:

See an hour-by-hour guide to Election Night poll closings here.

CNN projects that Wes Moore will become the first Black governor in Maryland’s history, defeating Republican state Delegate Dan Cox.

Moore will be just the third Black American to be elected governor of a US state. Virginia’s Douglas Wilder was the first in 1989, and Massachusetts’ Deval Patrick was the second in 2006.

Here’s a look at how Moore spent his Election Day:

Missouri attorney general Eric Schmitt will win an open Senate seat against Democrat Trudy Busch Valentine, CNN projects, ending one of the strangest races this election cycle, even if the final result was unsurprising.

For months, Republicans from Washington to Missouri were concerned that former Gov. Eric Greitens would win the Senate Republican primary race, even though he resigned in disgrace in 2018, worrying that he would emerge from a large field of candidates desperately trying to win former President Donald Trump’s endorsement.

In February, Schmitt declined to answer CNN’s question on whether the 2020. election was stolen, while standing by his decision to sign onto a 2020 Texas lawsuit to invalidate the results of swing states Trump lost, which was rejected by the Supreme Court. Other candidates, including Greitens, overtly sided with Trump.

In June, John Wood, a former senior investigator for the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, launched an independent campaign with the backing of former Missouri GOP Sen. John Danforth. Then, a day before the August primary, Trump endorsed “ERIC,” urging voters to choose either Schmitt or Greitens.

After getting pummeled on the air by the Senate Leadership Fund, the Mitch McConnell-aligned Super PAC, Greitens took third place, behind Rep. Vicky Hartzler and Schmitt.

The general election without the scandal-ridden Greitens was comparatively conventional. After Schmitt won, Wood dropped out, removing the chance of a spoiler in a state that had not sent a Missouri Democrat to the Senate in a decade.

Like Republicans across the country, Schmitt ran against the Biden administration, rising costs and crime. Valentine, an Anheuser-Busch heir who loaned over $10 million to her campaign, attacked him for banning abortion, even in cases of rape and incest, immediately after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

The race also turned personal. Valentine’s campaign essentially said that Schmitt sold out Missouri farmers to China. And Schmitt attacked Valentine’s pedigree, as she portrayed herself as a mother of six and former nurse, whose husband died of cancer and whose oldest son died after battling opioid addiction.

In one ad, Schmitt said he learned the value of hard work from his blue-collar grandfather and father. He said in college, he gave tours and took out the trash “at the estate Trudy Busch Valentine grew up on.” In another, Schmitt said Valentine “comes from billions and doesn’t care about what inflation is doing to your wallet.”

Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley will win reelection in Iowa, CNN projects, fending off his toughest challenge since he first won the seat in 1980.

Grassley defeated Mike Franken, a retired Navy admiral who campaigned with low expectations and little national Democratic support in the increasingly red state.

Grassley, 89, is set to become the longest-serving current senator in January, replacing Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, who is retiring. He would be 95 at the end of the eighth six-year term he won Tuesday.

Republican Sen. John Kennedy will win reelection in Louisiana, CNN projects.

Colorado Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet, who CNN projects will win reelection, thanked voters and said he feels he won this race by listening to the “struggles of the working people in this economy.”

“We won this campaign because we told the truth from the beginning to the end of this election. We said the same things in red parts of the state and blue parts of the state and our primary and our general election, we told the truth,” Bennet said, addressing a crowd at his watch party Tuesday.

He said he will continue to focus on the economy in Washington, DC, saying that it has worked for the top percentage of earners, but “hasn’t worked for anybody else.”

He said it is a result of policies made on Capitol Hill for the last 40 years that prioritizes people who “want to make stuff as cheaply as possible,” namely in China, instead of investing in US supply chains or trying to fix wages and income inequality.

Bennet touted bills that he has supported during his time in Congress, such as capping drug prices and passing a climate and energy bill to reduce costs — but said there is still more to do.

Bennet said his Republican challenger Joe O’Dea called him to concede and congratulate him on his victory, adding that his opponent said during the call, “‘I hope you do what’s right for the state of Colorado’ and I said, ‘that’s all I want to do’ and we agreed to stay in touch.”

“I appreciate the fact that he stepped up and ran for office, it’s not an easy thing to do,” Bennet said of O’Dea.

Republican Gov. Mark Gordon will win reelection in Wyoming, CNN projects, and defeat Democrat Theresa Livingston.

Republican Jim Pillen will win Nebraska’s gubernatorial race, CNN projects, and defeat Democrat Carol Blood.

Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds will win reelection in Iowa, CNN projects.

Reynolds became Iowa’s first female governor in 2017 when former GOP Gov. Terry Branstad became the US ambassador to China in former President Donald Trump’s administration. She won her first full term in 2018 by less than 37,000 votes.

While the Hawkeye State has traditionally been a highly competitive state, it has drifted toward Republicans in recent years.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has won a third term, CNN projects, fending off former Rep. Beto O’Rourke in a match-up in which Democrats had hoped to challenge Republicans’ decades of dominance in Austin.

Abbott, who is viewed by some within the GOP as a potential 2024 presidential contender, survived O’Rourke’s criticism of his management of the state’s power grid, his response to mass shootings, including the one at an elementary school in Uvalde, and his opposition to abortion rights.

The victory by Abbott underscores the extent to which Republicans remain dominant in Texas — buoyed in part by improved performances with Latino voters.

Democrats have long hoped that the growing and increasingly diverse urban centers and suburbs of Texas would provide the party a path to competitiveness in the largest red state on America’s political map.

O’Rourke got close in his 2018 Senate race against Republican Ted Cruz to becoming the first Democrat elected statewide in Texas since 1994. But polls this year showed him lagging farther behind Abbott as Republicans hammered Democrats across the nation over rising inflation and gas prices.

President Joe Biden’s advisers are closely monitoring the election returns as they continue to come in — and as of 10 p.m. on election night, they believe they are seeing a highly competitive landscape across the board.

For the time being — with the important caveat that it’s still early and many races haven’t been called — Biden advisers feel that things are likely not headed towards a blowout that some had predicted heading into this week, particularly as they take stock of competitive House and gubernatorial that have already been called in their favor.

Biden has been making calls from the dining room off the Oval Office, according to a source familiar, and has called a number of Democrats tonight. He was also watching returns from his residence and stopped by to visit some of his staff watching from the Roosevelt Room.

Wes Moore, the projected winner in Maryland’s governor race, told supporters “our time is now” during his victory speech.

Moore will be the first Black governor of the state and just the third Black American to be elected governor in US history.

Moore touted the diversity of his supporters and thanked them for their votes.

“It was your support, it was your sense of purpose that carried us across this state. All 24 jurisdictions from the western mountains to the eastern shore. From my birth place of Montgomery County to the adopted, to my adopted home of Baltimore City — Hey Baltimore. And everywhere in between,” he said.

He continued, “And the thing is, when I look across this room tonight, what we see right here is we see Maryland, right? We see people from all backgrounds, from all walks of life, from all income levels. We see teachers, we see small business owners, we see nurses, we see union members. All of you who’ve leant your voices and also gave your votes to this campaign and you said the same thing. Who all said with a collective voice that, “Our time is now.”

Moore also thanked his running mate Aruna Miller for her support. Miller immigrated with her family from India as a child and made history tonight becoming Maryland’s first Asian American lieutenant governor-elect. “It has been an absolute honor to go on this journey with you my friend,” he said.

Democratic Rep. Jamaal Bowman will win reelection in New York’s 16th Congressional District, CNN projects.

Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib will win reelection in Michigan’s 13th Congressional District, CNN projects.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who CNN projects will win a second term in office, appeared at his election night party in Tampa and thanked his supporters for “honoring us with a win for the ages.”

DeSantis, a Republican, was joined on stage by his wife, Casey, and their three children.

Here’s what the scene looked like at the Tampa Convention Center:

US stocks were up in after-hours trading as results from Tuesday’s midterm elections started rolling in.

Investors have been betting on a big Republican wave in the elections. If Republicans take at least one chamber of Congress, that will likely result in more gridlock, which the market usually loves. Investors are more than happy when politicians bicker but don’t actually enact any new laws that may hurt corporate profits.

Dow futures were up 16 points, or about 0.1%. S&P 500 futures were up 0.2%, and the Nasdaq Composite was up 0.4%.

Early results on election night can be very different from the final outcome once all the votes are tallied. That process can take days.

“If Republicans do well and take back control of one or both chambers of Congress, we see the event as a positive for the stock market into year-end,” Lori Calvasina, head of US equity strategy at RBC Capital Markets, said in a note to clients on Monday. “But if Republicans only take back control of the House, and not the Senate, we suspect the gains in the S&P 500 may be modest.”

Since 1948, the S&P 500 has had an annualized return of 16.9% during the nine years when a Democrat was in the White House and Republicans had a majority in both chambers of Congress, according to Edelman Financial Engines. That compares to 15.1% during periods of full Democratic control and 15.9% in years when there was a unified GOP government.

But at the end of the day, political headlines are often just noise for the markets. Ameriprise chief market strategist Anthony Saglimbene said on a conference call last week about the midterms that stocks have historically gone up after elections, no matter which party controls the White House and Congress.

Saglimbene noted that “growth, profits, inflation and interest rates” matter more to investors over the long haul.

Democrat Summer Lee will be the first Black woman elected to Congress from Pennsylvania, CNN projects, winning election to the state’s 12th Congressional District.

Lee, a Pittsburgh-area state representative, will succeed retiring Democratic Rep. Mike Doyle.

Republican state Sen. Jen Kiggans will defeat Democratic Rep. Elaine Luria in Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District, CNN projects, a big win for Republicans as they vie to take back control of the House.

Luria is a member of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the US Capitol.

Kiggans was a top Republican recruit this cycle, taking advantage of Virginia’s redistricting process which shifted Luria’s district from a tough, but competitive, area for Democrats to an even steeper climb. That shift, and the prospect of Democrats losing a seat, turned the race between Luria and Kiggans into one of the closely watched contests in the nation.

Luria ran on her role on the congressional committee investigating the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol, hammering Kiggans for aligning herself with top Republicans who have diminished the attack on the Capitol, claiming it made her “not fit to serve in the United States Congress.”

Kiggans, like many Republicans across the country, used rising prices and economic woes against Luria, arguing that “hard-working Americans are hurting from Joe Biden’s disastrous, failed economic policies. And in the 2nd Congressional District, these policies go by the name of Elaine Luria.”

Republican confidence in winning the seat grew after the 2021 gubernatorial election in Virginia, where Republican Glenn Youngkin defeated Democrat Terry McAuliffe. Youngkin carried the area during the race, boosting Republican hopes of ousting the Democrat who won her first term in office in 2018.

The Georgia Senate race remains something of a seesaw tonight, with Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker seeing their advantages expand and contract throughout the evening.

But at Walker’s campaign headquarters now, supporters are cheering as he narrowly took an edge over Warnock and inched closer to 50% – even as it remains entirely unclear whether the race will move to a Dec. 6 runoff.

Walker aides still see plenty of reasons to be optimistic tonight, with several counties in north Georgia – deep and reliably red – among those with a share of the outstanding vote. They believe the heavy Election Day vote benefits Walker.

Ralph Reed took the stage a few minutes ago and told supporters to settle in for a while longer, saying: “Get ready to party but it’s going to be a long night.”

So far tonight, only one thing is clear and constant: Republican Gov. Brian Kemp is outperforming Walker.

Kemp and Walker may share a political party, but tonight they are holding separate campaign parties – about two blocks apart in north Atlanta.

Pennsylvania’s acting secretary of state, Leigh M. Chapman, said it will take “a few days” for the state’s unofficial election results to be complete, and called on “voters, candidates and the media” to be patient.

“Election officials in all 67 counties are well aware that the eyes of the nation are on the Keystone State tonight,” Chapman said at a news conference in the state capital, Harrisburg. “And they are counting as fast as they can. But they are also prioritizing accuracy over speed, as they should.”

Chapman, a Democrat, cited “a handful of typical election day incidents,” including a few polling places opening late, power outages and a gas leak. But she said that “all were quickly handled.”

“In a very dynamic environment, Pennsylvania once again executed a free, fair and secure election,” Chapman said.

House Minority Whip Steve Scalise will win reelection in Louisiana’s 1st Congressional District, CNN projects.

Republican Rich McCormick will defeat Democrat Bob Christian in the House race for Georgia’s 6th District, CNN projects.

Rep. Abigail Spanberger will win reelection in Virginia’s 7th Congressional District, CNN projects, a significant win in the Democratic Party’s bid to stem their losses in the 2022 midterms.

Spanberger will defeat Republican Yesli Vega, a Prince William County supervisor who Democrats spent millions to define as too extreme on abortion. The strategy, which seized on the momentum felt in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in June and Vega’s conservative views on the issue, worked for Democrats, who banked on the issue being critical to swing suburban voters in the district.

Spanberger, who was first elected to the House in 2018, was seen as a top target for Republicans, who got a boost when Republican Glenn Youngkin defeated Democrat Terry McAuliffe in the 2021 gubernatorial election in Virginia. Youngkin carried the area that made up Virginia’s 7th District, increasing Republican hopes of ousting the Democrat.

Spanberger has now proven her ability to hold onto the once solidly red congressional seat after winning it in what was a good year for Democrats in 2018. By holding onto the seat in 2020 and 2022, Spanberger continues to be the only Democrat since 1971 to represent the district in Congress.

As results roll in, the balance of the Senate is currently tied — both Republicans and Democrats are projected to now hold 40 seats each, with many more still with results coming in.

In the races that have been called since polls have been closing, CNN projected Democrats have won in four states and Republicans have won in 10 states, including an additional special election in Oklahoma.

Either party needs 50 seats to win the majority.

Most voters in this year’s election view one party positively, and the other negatively – nationally, about 4 in 10 have a favorable view of only the Democratic Party, and a similar share have a favorable view of only the Republican Party, according to the preliminary national results of the exit poll conducted for CNN and other news networks by Edison Research.

Unsurprisingly, these voters almost unanimously supported their favored party in their district’s congressional election.

But there’s also a smaller bloc of voters – about 11% of the electorate, nationwide – who dislike both parties. This group broke in favor of the Republicans, with nearly 6 in 10 favoring a GOP House candidate this year. That’s a shift from 2018, when voters who disliked both parties were about evenly split in their vote.

Voters who were most upset with the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade differed from those who felt less profoundly unhappy with the decision, the exit polls show. Those who were angry about the overturning of Roe (about 39% of the electorate) overwhelmingly voted Democratic for the House (about 85% picked the Democratic candidate). Those who were dissatisfied but not angry (about 21% of the electorate) narrowly favored the GOP.

There was also a difference between voters who were most pessimistic about the economy, and those who felt less strongly negative. While nearly 9 in 10 voters who said the economy was poor voted for a GOP House candidate, about 6 in 10 who described the economy as “not so good” backed a Democratic candidate.

To some extent, these divides reflect the partisan differences already baked into views on abortion and the economy. Voters who considered themselves Democrats were roughly 59 points more than voters who considered themselves Republican to say they were angry about Roe v. Wade being overturned. Republicans, meanwhile, were about 28 points likelier than Democrats to call the economy poor.

Election officials for four of Wisconsin’s largest cities told CNN that they’re all likely to finish vote-counting within the next two hours.

Milwaukee, the state’s most populous city, expects to finish its tally of absentee ballots before 10 p.m. CT, Claire Woodall-Vogg, the Milwaukee Election Commission executive director, said at a news conference.

That’s hours earlier than during the 2020 election, when the city took until after 3 a.m. to finish counting and transmitting results to county officials. The speedier process is in part because there are only about a third as many absentee ballots for the city to count this year, as compared to 2020, Woodall-Vogg said.

In Madison, the state’s capital, results will be transmitted to the county within the next hour, City Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl told CNN. Madison does not have a “central count” of absentee ballots, so both in-person and absentee ballots are counted at local polling places.

Green Bay will likely be “wrapping up” its count “in the next hour or two,” City Clerk Celestine Jeffreys told CNN.

“We have a lot of workers, definitely fewer absentee ballots, and we also have speeded up our process,” Jeffreys said.

And in Racine, City Clerk Tara McMenamin said in a text message that she anticipated counting will be finished close to 10 p.m. CT.

More background: In Wisconsin’s decentralized election system, municipalities tally votes and then report their results to counties, which then post the results online. So it could take additional time for counties to publicly report the results they receive.

What do Florida voters think about the possibility two Florida men could run for president in 2024? Exit polls from the Sunshine State offer some clues.

With Donald Trump signaling a potential announcement next week, 33% of Florida voters said they want to see the former president run in 2024, according to the preliminary results of the Florida Exit Poll conducted for CNN and other news networks by Edison Research.

There appears to be more of an appetite for a bid by Ron DeSantis, with 45% of Florida voters saying they want the state’s governor – who CNN projects will win reelection – to seek the presidency in 2024.

DeSantis’ strength is reflected in the Florida exit polls, which show the governor winning Latinos in the state by 13 points. In 2020, Trump trailed Biden among Latino voters in Florida by 7 points. DeSantis also held a slight edge among independents, whom Biden carried in the state by 11 points. Those could be selling points if DeSantis and Trump collide in a 2024 GOP primary.

President Joe Biden made “congratulatory calls” to some Democratic candidates who have won their elections Tuesday evening, the White House said.

“This evening, the President has made congratulatory calls to Massachusetts Governor-elect Maura Healey, Rhode Island Governor Dan McKee, Senator-elect Peter Welch, Representative Lisa Blunt Rochester, Colorado Governor Jared Polis, Representative Abigail Spanberger, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer,” the White House said in a statement to the press pool.

CNN is at Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock’s HQ and each time the Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker key race alert appears on the screen, loud cheers emerge from the crowd

Warnock’s close aides are cautiously optimistic, staying largely mum and only offering the occasional update that they are “feeling good.”

But a Democratic strategist working with the campaign offered a little more from Warnock HQ, telling CNN: “Look at DeKalb. Look at Fulton. Look at all of the majors around Atlanta. That’s a huge piece.”

“A lot of those folks who voted for Biden in 2020, are they going to stay with us,” the strategist added, when asked what he’s watching. “But we’re seeing some of that split ticket trend I’m sure you’re seeing.”

The optimism was couched with the recognition that it is still early, and they are waiting for information from major counties.

Watch CNN’s John King and Jake Tapper at the Magic Wall:

Republican Gov. Kristi Noem will win reelection in South Dakota, CNN projects.

It’s 10 p.m. ET, and polls are closing in these states.

Polls are also closing in Idaho’s 2nd House district.

These are some of the key races in Nevada: As Nevada tries to recover from a pandemic downturn that hit the tourism industry especially hard, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto and Gov. Steve Sisolak are among the Democratic party’s most vulnerable incumbents.

Cortez Masto faces a challenge from former state Attorney General Adam Laxalt, who despite losing a bid for governor in 2018, won statewide in 2014. Sisolak is running against Joe Lombardo, the sheriff of the state’s largest county.

Democracy is also on the ballot, as Republican Jim Marchant, who has cast doubt on the 2020 election, seeks to run Nevada’s elections as secretary of state.

See an hour-by-hour guide to Election Night poll closings here.

CNN’s Priya Krishnakumar and Will Mullery contributed reporting to this post.

Republican Gov. Phil Scott will win reelection in Vermont, CNN projects, and defeat Democrat Brenda Siegel.

Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma will hold off a surprisingly tough challenge from Democrat Joy Hofmeister, winning reelection in the deep-red state, CNN projects.

The race was surprisingly hard-fought in a state no Democratic presidential nominee has won since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, and where Republicans have held the governor’s office since 2011, when Democrat Brad Henry left office.

Hofmeister is a two-term state superintendent of public instruction who won both of her races, in 2014 and 2018, as a Republican, before changing parties in 2021 to run for governor this year.

The party switch came after Hofmeister and Stitt had feuded over education funding, private school vouchers and Covid-related health policies – most prominently over mask requirements in schools, which Stitt sought to make optional.

Hofmeister supports abortion rights, an issue that became a flashpoint in the race after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June and abortion rights supporters in neighboring Kansas won an August referendum over whether to retain the state’s constitutional protections for the procedure. Stitt opposes abortion but said he would sign into law an exemption to the state’s current ban for cases of rape and incest.

Hofmeister sought to portray herself as a moderate voice who would temper both parties’ extremes. Stitt, meanwhile, tried to latch her to President Joe Biden – who lost Oklahoma to then-President Donald Trump in 2020 by 33 points.

“My opponent, she couldn’t see a path forward for herself as a Republican, so she joined Biden’s party,” Stitt said in a debate.

The late-October debate provided a viral moment when Hofmeister blamed Stitt for the state’s violent crime problem.

“The fact is, the rates of violent crime are higher in Oklahoma under your watch than in New York or California,” Hofmeister said.

A seemingly incredulous Stitt shot back: “Hang on, Oklahomans, do you believe we have higher crime than New York or California? That’s what she just said.”

Hofmeister was right: Oklahoma’s homicide rate of 9 deaths per 100,000 people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is higher than New York’s 4.7 deaths and California’s 6.1 deaths.

US stocks were up in after-hours trading as results from Tuesday’s midterm elections started rolling in.

Investors have been betting on a big Republican wave in the elections. If Republicans take at least one chamber of Congress, that will likely result in more gridlock, which the market usually loves. Investors are more than happy when politicians bicker but don’t actually enact any new laws that may hurt corporate profits.

Dow futures were up 16 points, or about 0.1%. S&P 500 futures were up 0.2%, and the Nasdaq Composite was up 0.4%.

Early results on election night can be very different from the final outcome once all the votes are tallied. That process can take days.

“If Republicans do well and take back control of one or both chambers of Congress, we see the event as a positive for the stock market into year-end,” Lori Calvasina, head of US equity strategy at RBC Capital Markets, said in a note to clients on Monday. “But if Republicans only take back control of the House, and not the Senate, we suspect the gains in the S&P 500 may be modest.”

To read more on the markets, click here

Anthony Brown will be the first Black person elected attorney general of Maryland, CNN projects.

Brown, who currently represents Maryland’s 5th Congressional District, has a been a longtime fixture in state politics, having also served as state lieutenant governor and in the state House and run for governor in 2014.

Democrat Wes Moore will be elected governor of Maryland, CNN projects, becoming the first Black person to lead the state.

He will defeat Republican state Delegate Dan Cox, an election denier backed by former President Donald Trump who ran on a hardline conservative platform. Retiring GOP Gov. Larry Hogan, a moderate, did not endorse Cox, who had defeated Hogan’s chosen successor in the Republican primary in July.

Moore will be just the third Black American to be elected governor in US history, after Virginia’s Douglas Wilder, who was elected to a term in 1989, and Massachusetts’ Deval Patrick, who was first elected in 2006 and served two terms. Two others, New York’s David Paterson, who served from 2008 to 2010, and Louisiana’s Pinckney Pinchback, who served for a little over a year between 1872 and 1873, were elevated to the governorship after their predecessors resigned or were driven out. Pinchback was a Republican, but the other three Black governors were Democrats.

Moore, a Rhodes scholar and former White House fellow, is also the former CEO of the Robin Hood Foundation, New York City’s largest anti-poverty nonprofit. He gained national recognition after authoring the 2010 book “The Other Wes Moore,” an inspirational story of two boys with the same name and ties to Baltimore.

The first-time candidate is also a veteran, having served as a captain and paratrooper with the US Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, where he led soldiers in combat in Afghanistan.

Moore had the backing of establishment Democrats, including House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland, and the support of Oprah Winfrey before winning the crowded Democratic primary in July.

Moore, who was considered an overwhelming favorite to win in the deep-blue state, participated in only one debate with Cox, hosted by Maryland Public Television on October 12, in which the two sparred over policies and took jabs at one another.

Moore called Cox an “extremist election denier,” citing a tweet from the Republican nominee in which he touted sponsoring buses for Trump’s January 6, 2021, rally following his loss in the 2020 presidential election. Cox tweeted that he was doing so to “#StoptheSteal.”

Cox accused Moore of wanting to “defund the police,” to which the Democratic nominee responded, “That’s not true.”

Moore’s running mate, former state Del. Aruna Miller, who immigrated with her family from India as a child, will also make history with her election as Maryland’s first Asian American lieutenant governor. Governor and lieutenant governor nominees are elected on the same ticket in the Old Line State.

CNN’s Melissa Holzberg DePalo, Eric Bradner and Zachary B. Wolf contributed to this report.

Republican Sen. John Hoeven will win a third term in North Dakota, CNN projects.

Democrat Gov. Jared Polis will win reelection in Colorado, CNN projects, and defeat Republican Heidi Ganahl.

Polis campaigned on his record, including enacting all-day kindergarten and efforts to decrease health care costs.

Democrat Sen. Michael Bennet will win reelection in Colorado, CNN projects, staving off a strong challenge from Republican Joe O’Dea.

Bennet, who was first elected in 2010, was the favorite in the race, but O’Dea, the CEO of a construction company, found some success in Colorado by breaking with his own party at times, pitching a more moderate position in a state that has leaned toward Democrats for years.

Bennet, aided by the state’s Democratic lean, ran a strong campaign focused on local issues like public land advocacy and broader issues like changing political culture by stopping corporate influence in politics.

The Democrat also successfully pushed back on O’Dea’s attempt to portray a more moderate image.

“I think he’s painting himself that way. I mean, it’s incredible. He has said that he would have voted for all three of Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominees notwithstanding the fact that he knows that they overturned Roe v. Wade. He opposes, as you just heard, Colorado’s law codifying a woman’s right to choose,” Bennet told CNN in October. “He says that Donald Trump, even though he probably knows better, bears no responsibility for what happened on January 6.”

Headed into the election, Democrats said they were confident Bennet would win. But the party’s top Senate outside organization, Senate Majority PAC, spent millions to unsuccessfully boost O’Dea’s more conservative primary opponent earlier in the year.

Bennet also may have been aided by former President Donald Trump’s late, anti-O’Dea foray into the race.

After O’Dea told CNN he would “actively” campaign against former President Donald Trump and for other GOP candidates if the former President runs again, Trump slammed him as a “RINO” (Republican in name only) and suggested Trump’s supporters wouldn’t vote for a “stupid” person like O’Dea.

Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen will win reelection in Maryland, CNN projects, defeating Republican Chris Chaffee.

Prior to winning his Senate seat in 2016, Van Hollen was a member of the House from 2003 to 2017.

Maryland has a Republican governor in Larry Hogan, but the state typically favors Democrats in federal elections.

As polls close in Wisconsin, a “cautiously optimistic” Republican Sen. Ron Johnson took the stage briefly at his election night party in Neenah, Wisconsin – but only to lead the audience in a rendition of happy birthday for his granddaughter.

His opponent, Democratic Lt. Governor Mandela Barnes, has been feeling good throughout the night, optimistic that “we’ve done all that we could,” but also urging those who were still in line as polls closed to stay in line.

Neither President Biden nor former President Donald Trump visited the state once in the final two months leading up to the election, notable considering between the two they’ve stopped in Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, Florida, and more in the final run-up.

Sen. Johnson has touched on the wider implications of what a win for him would mean, aside from “send a very strong signal to our Democrat colleagues that their policies aren’t working.”

It could be a major contributor to Republicans winning the Senate, setting the stage for him to become chair of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs’ permanent subcommittee on investigations.

“I would be like a mosquito in a nudist colony. It would be a target-rich environment,” Johnson told supporters on the eve of Election Day.

Both he and Barnes have campaigned not just on Wisconsin’s Senate seat, but on the future of the country being on the line.

If Barnes wins, he would be the state’s first Black Senator and among the youngest, unseating the two-term Republican.

“I can guarantee you we have not been outworked,” Barnes told CNN Monday.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer will be reelected to serve his 21st full term for Maryland’s 5th Congressional District, CNN projects.

As the results start to trickle to in, with Democrat Tim Ryan currently in the lead in Ohio’s Senate race, supporters at GOP candidate J.D. Vance’s headquarters told CNN they’re expecting that lead to narrow as more votes get tallied up.

Supporters are betting it will be a big night for Republicans here in the Buckeye State.

One supporter told CNN they’ll be watching to see how Republican congressional candidates in more competitive districts, like J.R. Majewski, perform in order to get a sense of just how big of night it will be for Ohio Republicans.

Meanwhile, Ryan’s camp said; while Vance has started to close the gap, they’re remaining optimistic and pointing to the fact Ryan has overperformed in the early vote in Warren, Franklin and Stark counties.

After the polls closed, Ryan tweeted a picture of himself with son with the caption: “We left it all on the field.”

View Ryan’s tweet:

We left it all on the field. pic.twitter.com/1B9t539jz5

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, a Democrat, has been elected as the Bay State’s governor, CNN projects, defeating GOP nominee Geoff Diehl, a state lawmaker who had been endorsed by former President Donald Trump.

Healey will become Massachusetts’ first elected female governor and the first out lesbian state executive in the US.

Her victory reclaims the office for Democrats, who have been shut out of the corner office for all but eight of the past 30 years, in the otherwise blue state. It also marks a pick-up for national Democrats who entered the night defending 20 of the 36 contested governor’s offices.

Republican Gov. Charlie Baker decided not to seek a third term, despite his high approval ratings, after it became apparent that the Trump wing of the GOP was coalescing behind a primary challenge.

Healey’s historic victory comes on the heels of Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s own pathbreaking win a year earlier, when Wu became the first woman elected to lead the city. Unlike Diehl, who defeated a moderate Republican opponent in the primary, Healey ran effectively unopposed, with her January 2022 decision to enter the contest clearing the Democratic field.

Democratic Rep. Hakeem Jeffries will win reelection in New York’s 8th Congressional District, CNN projects.

Five history-makers are projected to win races in four states so far: Oklahoma, Arkansas, Alabama and Florida.

Watch parties are taking place across the country Tuesday night as election results continue to pour in.

Here are some of the scenes from those parties so far:

Democratic Rep. Peter Welch will be the next US senator from Vermont, CNN projects, defeating Republican nominee Gerald Malloy to keep the seat held for decades by retiring Sen. Pat Leahy in Democratic hands.

Welch will join Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, in representing Vermont in the upper chamber. He announced his plans to leave the House and run for the Senate shortly after Leahy announced in November 2021 that he would not seek re-election after spending nearly 50 years in Congress.

Republican Sen. John Boozman will win reelection in Arkansas, CNN projects, and defeat Democrat Natalie James.

Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who won reelection according to CNN projections, thanked voters for supporting him and his policies, touting “we have not only won an election, we have rewritten the political map.”

“Thank you for honoring us with a win for the ages,” DeSantis said.

The governor also thanked voters who didn’t vote for him in the last election, saying that he is “honored to have earned your trust and your support over these four years” for reelection now.

DeSantis said that while Tuesday’s results were explicitly for the midterm elections, “but in reality Americans have been voting for many years now, they have been voting with their feet,” meaning that people who are not happy with policies in other states have been moving to Florida, according to DeSantis, pointing to things like crime and the economy.

“People come here because our policies work, leadership matters,” he added.

Democrat Jonathan Jackson — the son of Rev. Jesse Jackson and brother of former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. — will win the Illinois 1st Congressional District race, CNN projects.

Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson, who chairs of the House Jan. 6 select committee, will win reelection in Mississippi’s 2nd Congressional District, CNN projects.

A judge in Maricopa County, Arizona, denied a bid by Republicans to extend polling by three hours, saying there was no evidence that any voters were precluded from exercising their right to vote.

In a hearing that concluded two minutes before polls closed, the judge said while some voters may have been confused or faced difficulties, he didn’t see any evidence of voters who wanted to vote but were unable to do so.

Republicans had asked the judge to issue a temporary restraining order to keep polling centers in Maricopa County open until 10 p.m. local time for provisional ballots to be cast by voters who ran into issues with tabulation machines.

Democratic Jennifer Wexton will win her reelection bid in Virginia’s 10th Congressional District race, CNN projects.

Republican Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar will win in Florida’s 27th District, CNN projects.

Georgia’s acting Deputy Secretary of State Gabriel Sterling says that they have not seen any “real issues” on election night reporting data being submitted to their office yet.

“It’s been smooth, we haven’t had election night reporting issues at this point,” Sterling said at a news conference Tuesday evening.

All of Georgia’s major metropolitan counties have uploaded some votes, according to Sterling, with the exception of DeKalb County, which includes parts of Atlanta and the surrounding areas.

“The biggest bucket of votes we think that are still out there right now from a single county are the early votes from DeKalb. They are still working to get the upload completed. They internally have done it is my understanding, but they haven’t published it to us yet,” Sterling told the media.

Sterling said the majority of results already posted to the Georgia Secretary of State website at this point are mainly early in-person votes. He plans to update the media again tonight when he has additional information.

Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wins reelection in New York’s 14th Congressional District, CNN projects.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has been watching returns at the National Republican Congressional Committee headquarters in Washington, DC, and has stopped by the main offices of his super PAC, the Congressional Leadership Fund, according to aides.

He has been receiving reports from the ground, speaking to candidates who have won and his advisers say the early reports point to a Republican takeover of the House.

Democratic Rep. Cori Bush wins reelection bid in Missouri’s 1st Congressional District race, CNN projects.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the one-time press secretary and communications director for former President Donald Trump, will win Arkansas’ gubernatorial race, CNN projects.

She will be the first woman elected governor of Arkansas.

Huckabee Sanders defeated Democrat Chris Jones, who is a minister and former non-profit leader who got a degree in nuclear engineering from MIT.

Arkansas last elected a Democratic governor in 2010 and it’s now a solidly red state.

Sanders, while a first-time candidate, is no stranger to politics. Her father, Republican Mike Huckabee, was governor of Arkansas from 1996 to 2007. And by defeating Democrat Chris Jones, Sanders will also become the first daughter in US history to serve as governor of the same state her father once led.

Sanders previously worked for two years in the George W. Bush administration and later ran her father’s 2008 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination and then was campaign manager for his 2016 bid.

She gained national prominence in her role as former President Donald Trump’s White House press secretary, serving as a staunch defender of the then-President and his policies for more than two years. On many occasions, she clashed with national reporters and eventually scaled back televised briefings. She defended the move, saying that journalists could hear from Trump directly.

Sanders earned an early endorsement from Trump after joining the race for Arkansas governor, and prominent rivals later dropped out of the race, clearing her path to the GOP nomination.

Sanders’ path to victory in the race to succeed term-limited GOP Gov. Asa Hutchison was relatively smooth – unsurprising in a state that has taken a sharp turn to the right in recent years. But the campaign was not without personal challenges. In September, Sanders announced she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer and “underwent a successful surgery to remove my thyroid and surrounding lymph nodes.”

In her race for governor, Sanders defended her decision to grant only a handful of interviews with local media, saying she’s been speaking to voters directly.

“Freedom of the press is incredibly important, but with freedom of the press also comes a great deal of responsibility, and when they don’t live up to their end of the bargain, it forces some of us to go outside of the box, which I have done every single day for the last two years,” Sanders said at an October 21 debate hosted by the Arkansas PBS station.

In the debate, Sanders highlighted key issues of her campaign, including her education plan, Arkansas LEARNS, to increase literacy rates, and her support for phasing out the state income tax, though she has not explicitly stated a timeline for doing so.

CNN’s Andrew Menezes contributed reporting to this post.

Democratic Gov. Dan McKee will win in Rhode Island, CNN projects.

Republican Sen. Jerry Moran will win reelection in Kansas, CNN projects, and defeat Democrat Mark Holland.

Senate Republican Whip John Thune will win reelection in South Dakota, CNN projects, and defeat Democrat Brian Bengs.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer will win reelection in New York, CNN projects, and defeat Republican Joe Pinion.

Pinion briefly hosted a show on Newsmax and has worked as the director of a youth development at Morris Height Health Center in the Bronx.

Schumer’s victory will make him the longest-serving senator from New York after he’s sworn in next year.

Over 48 years, Schumer has never lost a race, rising from the state Assembly to the House of Representatives to the pinnacle of power in the Senate.

While seeking to keep Democratic control of the 50-50 Senate this year, Schumer continued his tradition of visiting the Empire State’s 62 counties, and his campaign built an overwhelming financial advantage over his Republican opponent, Joe Pinion, a former host and conservative commentator on Newsmax.

Pinion tried to turn Schumer’s longevity into a weakness, blaming him for a poor economy and charging that it’s time to turn the page.

“He is, in fact, an exceptional politician, one of the best that has ever lived,” said Pinion at a recent debate hosted by Spectrum News. “But he’s a failed senator. He has failed the people of this state on multiple occasions.”

At the debate, Schumer touted the Senate’s past two years and boasted that “for the first time,” New York received more money from Washington than it sent. He then ticked off the major legislation passed by this Congress: granting Medicare the power to negotiate lower prices for some drugs, what he called “the most important climate change bill ever” and bipartisan gun safety and infrastructure bills. He also pledged to protect abortion rights after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

“In the last two years, under my leadership, the Senate has had the most productive session in decades,” said Schumer.

The Brooklyn-bred New Yorker, the son of an exterminator and housewife, leaned into his Jewish background in one ad by teaching various Yiddish words – calling Republican political leaders “schmos” and describing the “naches” he felt in passing the Inflation Reduction Act.

“Fighting for New York is no shtick for me,” he added.

It’s 9 p.m. ET, and polls are closing in these states:

Here’s what to know about the key races in Arizona: Republicans hope to take Arizona back after Democrats made inroads in the swing state in 2020 when President Biden won the state and Mark Kelly flipped a Senate seat for Democrats.

However, the GOP isn’t putting up moderate Republicans to help that cause. Republican gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake and GOP Senate nominee Blake Masters were both endorsed by Trump and have expressed skepticism that Biden legitimately won the state.

These are the key races in Michigan: All eyes in Michigan will be on the state’s gubernatorial race as Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer faces conservative commentator Tudor Dixon, who’s hoping her Trump endorsement will help turn the state back towards Republicans.

The right to abortion will also be on the ballot. Democrats hope the issue will help boost turnout among their base voters.

Voting and elections will also be key issues, as Michigan voters will decide on a ballot measure to expand access to the ballot, and elect a new secretary of state. Incumbent Democrat Jocelyn Benson faces Republican Kristina Karamo, who has backed Trump’s lies about the 2020 election.

And these are the races playing out in Wisconsin: Wisconsin is one of the most closely divided states in the nation, and GOP Sen. Ron Johnson and Democratic Gov. Tony Evers both face highly competitive reelection campaigns.

Johnson, who has a history of controversial statements about the pandemic and the Jan. 6 attack, is facing Democratic Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, who at one point signaled support for removing police funding.

Evers faces Republican businessman Tim Michels, who won Trump’s support in the primary by aggressively amplifying the former president’s 2020 election lies.

CNN’s Priya Krishnakumar and Will Mullery contributed reporting to this post.

See an hour-by-hour guide to Election Night poll closings here.

Voters in Pennsylvania are split over whether Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman’s health is good enough to represent the state effectively, according to the preliminary results of the Pennsylvania exit poll conducted for CNN and other news networks by Edison Research.

Fetterman, Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor, suffered a near-fatal stroke days before he won the May Democratic primary.

But a majority of voters said that Mehmet Oz, the Republican candidate for Senate, has not lived in the commonwealth long enough to represent it effectively. More than 4 in 10 said he had.

Oz has said he moved to Pennsylvania in late 2020 after living in New Jersey for decades.

Voters also split over which candidate’s views are too extreme with more than 4 in 10 picking Fetterman and the same share selecting Oz.

More than one-third of Pennsylvania voters said that they care most about whether a candidate shares their values and whether a candidate has honesty and integrity. About 2 in 10 said the most important quality is that a candidate cares about people like them. Fewer than one in 10 said having the right experience matters most.

Men and women who cast ballots split their support, with more than half of men voting for Oz and more than half of women voting for Fetterman. Among independent voters, who made up about a quarter of the electorate, more than half voted for Fetterman.

For voters who thought that abortion was the most important issue, more than three quarters supported Fetterman. They made up just over one-third of the electorate.

But among those who said inflation was the most pressing issue, more than three-quarters cast ballots for Oz. They made up more than a quarter of the electorate.

To read more about the exit polling data, click here.

At the Allegheny County Elections warehouse in Pennsylvania, they’re about to get the final mail-in and absentee ballots that were dropped off personally by voters.

The last ones which were sent by mail were just dropped off here. There were 3,058 of those, the county spokesperson told CNN.

A total of 156,000 mail-ins/absentee votes — which had already been sent in — were processed at the warehouse earlier today.

Now that polls have closed, they will assign all those votes to candidates.

Rich Fitzgerald, executive of Allegheny County, said that Democrats Josh Shapiro, candidate for governor, and John Fetterman, candidate for Senate, have out-performed Joe Biden in the mail-in and absentee voting in Allegheny County.

In 2010 Biden got about 80% of the mail-in and absentee voting in Allegheny, Fitzgerald said.

Shapiro won 89% of that vote tonight and Fetterman won about 85% of it in the Senate race, he said.

Fitzgerald said he expects the Allegheny vote count, overall, to be done quickly tonight.

Democrat Robert Menendez Jr. — the son of Sen. Bob Menendez — will win New Jersey’s 8th Congressional District race, CNN projects.

Menendez defeated Republican Marcos Arroyo, who was running uncontested in the GOP primary.

Correction: An earlier version of this post gave the wrong name for the Republican challenger. Robert Menendez Jr. defeated Marcos Arroyo.

In North Carolina’s Senate race, Democratic candidate Cheri Beasley is leading her opponent, Republican Ted Budd — but most of those results are coming from early voting.

The polls closed at 7:30 p.m. ET and these early voting numbers show about 53% of the estimated vote being reported, CNN’s David Chalian said in analysis. Of the current votes that are in, 96% are coming from early voting.

“At the end of the day we think in North Carolina, only 55% is going to be pre-election vote,” Chalian explained, adding that generally, early voting tends to favor Democrats. “So right now most of what you are seeing there is pre-election vote.”

Here’s how the results break down even further:

CNN’s David Chalian breaks it down:

Here’s what the maps for Senate and House races looks like as of 8:30 p.m. ET.

Control of both chambers of Congress is on the line in Tuesday’s election, with the GOP needing net gains of just one seat to win the Senate and five seats to win the House.

Senate:

House:

Republican Rep. Ronny Jackson will a reelection bid in Texas’ 13th Congressional District, CNN projects. Jackson was backed by former President Donald Trump — having served as White House physician during his term.

Ukrainian GOP Rep. Victoria Spartz will win reelection in Indiana’s 5th Congressional District, CNN projects.

Spartz is the first Ukrainian-born member of the US Congress and is an outspoken advocate for her home country amid the ongoing war.

Republican Gov. Chris Sununu will win reelection in New Hampshire, CNN projects.

Roughly 8 in 10 North Carolina voters said the economy is “poor” or “not good,” according to the preliminary results of the North Carolina Exit Poll conducted for CNN and other news networks by Edison Research.

More than three-quarters of voters in the state said inflation has caused them and their family severe or moderate hardship.

About half of those who cast ballots said that President Joe Biden’s policies are hurting the country, while only 35% think they are helping.

About 4 in 10 North Carolina voters approve of Biden, while more than half disapprove.

The race for control of Congress, as well as governorships and key statewide positions, has defined the 2022 midterms.

Heading into Election Day, in addition to taking control of chambers of Congress, both parties were also looking to diversify their ranks of elected officials, both at the Capitol and beyond. Republicans were excited about growing their roster of female governors and electing more Latino members to the US House. Democrats eyed expanding the number of Black US senators and making a breakthrough for LGBTQ representation in governor’s offices. Both parties also sought to welcome their first members of Congress from Generation Z — those born after 1996.

Election results are still coming in, and many races won’t be called for days, if not weeks. But for now, here’s a look at the candidates who CNN projects will make history in the 2022 midterms.

Alabama Republican Katie Britt will be the first elected female senator from Alabama, CNN projects, winning an open-seat race to succeed her onetime boss, retiring GOP Sen. Richard Shelby. Britt is a former CEO of the Business Council of Alabama and was the heavy favorite in the general election in the deep-red state. Two women have previously represented Alabama in the Senate, but both were appointed to fill vacancies.

Florida Democrat Maxwell Frost will be the first member of Generation Z elected to Congress, CNN projects, winning the open seat for Florida’s 10th Congressional District. Generation Z refers to those born after 1996. Frost will succeed Democrat Val Demings, who vacated the seat to run for Senate.

Oklahoma Republican Markwayne Mullin will be the first Native American senator from Oklahoma in almost 100 years, CNN projects, winning the special election to succeed GOP Sen. Jim Inhofe, who is resigning in January. Mullin, a member of the Cherokee Nation, currently represents the state’s 2nd Congressional District. Democrat Robert Owen, also a member of the Cherokee Nation, represented Oklahoma in the Senate from 1907 to 1925.

Republican Gov. Bill Lee will win reelection in Tennessee, CNN projects.

GOP Gov. Henry McMaster will win reelection in South Carolina, CNN projects, and defeat Democrat Joe Cunningham.

First-term Republican Sen. Todd Young will hold his Indiana Senate seat, CNN projects, and defeat Democrat Thomas McDermott, the mayor of Hammond.

It’s 8:30 p.m. ET, and polls are closing in Arkansas.

Here are some of the races playing out in the state:

See an hour-by-hour guide to Election Night poll closings here.

Vice President Kamala Harris’s office said Harris made calls to several politicians on Election Day.

Harris called Reps. Jahana Hayes and Lauren Underwood, two races where the vice president campaigned and led abortion conversations.

In South Carolina, Harris called Biden ally Rep. James Clyburn.

The vice president also called state legislators including Nevada State Rep. Sandra Jauregui, Pennsylvania State Rep. Joanna McClinton, Florida State Rep. Fentrice Driskell, and Michigan State Rep. Keith Williams. Harris also held abortion roundtables in all states where the state legislators govern.

Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz will win reelection in Florida’s 1st District, CNN projects.

Incumbent GOP congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene will win her reelection bid in Georgia’s 14th Congressional District, CNN projects.

Ohio voters have approved an amendment to the state constitution to require that only a citizen of the United States can vote at any state or local election, CNN projects, assuming they meet other requirements.

The new measure would prohibit local governments from allowing a person to vote in local elections if they are not legally qualified to vote in state elections.

The vote is a win for Ohio Republicans, who had sought to cast noncitizen voting as a threat to democracy and a logistical headache.

GOP state Rep. Bill Seitz declared in a Dayton Daily News op-ed this month: “If you don’t have borders, you don’t have a country.”

“If non-citizens could vote just the same as citizens, you won’t have a country for long. That’s why both candidates for Ohio Governor and a unanimous Ohio Senate support Issue 2, and why a large bipartisan majority of the Ohio House did too,” Seitz said.

Democrats and voting rights organizations fell short in their effort to cast the measure as too broad, given that it will also eliminate the voting rights of 17-year-olds – something the state permits in certain circumstances – and bar people from registering to vote within 30 days of an election.

“Incorporating perspectives of non-US citizen residents by allowing them to vote on local issues adds value. These active community members pay taxes, own businesses and have children attending our schools; they are part of the fabric of communities and are affected by local government decisions,” Brian Housh, council president of the Village of Yellow Springs, wrote in a dueling op-ed.

Incumbent Republican Greg Pence will win his reelection bid in Indiana’s 6th Congressional District race, CNN projects. He is brother of former Vice President Mike Pence.

John Fetterman’s campaign knows it will take a while to get the vote count out of Philadelphia, where they will need to run up the score against Republican Mehmet Oz.

While they wait, the campaign has its eyes on a handful of bellwether counties including Erie, Northampton, Bucks and Centre counties, according to a senior campaign source.

Additionally, the source said the campaign will be watching to see if Fetterman outperforms Joe Biden in places like York County, where he lost by 25 points in 2020.

Republican Laurel Lee will win in Florida’s 15th District, CNN projects.

Republican Anna Paulina Luna will win in Florida’s 13th District, CNN projects.

Republican Cory Mills will win in Florida’s 7th District, CNN projects, defeating Democrat Karen Green.

A judge in Houston has ordered voting locations in Harris County to stay open for one additional hour following a lawsuit filed by the Texas Civil Rights Project and the Texas ACLU stating several polling locations were not open on time.

“A judge has issued a Temporary Restraining Order in this suit, which will keep the polls in Harris County open until 8pm CT,” the Texas Civil Rights Project said in a press release.

According to the Texas Civil Rights Project, all 782 Harris County polling locations are affected by the change and voters who get in line from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. CT will have to cast a provisional ballot.

Several polling places in Harris County experienced long lines of up to two hours at a large voting center in Houston, CNN affiliate KHOU reported, due to technical issues with voting machines.

“We are grateful to the court order that polling locations in Harris County will stay open until 8 p.m. CT,” said Ashley Harris, an attorney for ACLU of Texas. “Nobody should be denied their fundamental right to vote simply because their polling location did not open on time. We encourage everyone who hasn’t cast a ballot to go to their nearest voting precinct,” she said.

The groups sued on behalf of the Texas Organizing Project, a nonprofit advocacy group for Black and Latino communities.

Democrat Maxwell Frost, a 25-year-old community organizer, will win Florida’s 10th Congressional District, CNN projects, becoming the first member of Generation Z elected to Congress.

Frost will defeat Republican Calvin Wimbish in the race for the Orlando-area seat to succeed Democratic Rep. Val Demings, who vacated the seat for a Senate run.

Members of Generation Z — those born after 1996 — are eligible to be elected to the US House of Representatives for the first time in this election. (House members must be at least 25 years old.)

Frost has leaned into his youth throughout his campaign and has generated buzz through social media and public interviews.

Frost had the endorsements of notable progressives such as Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, as well as the Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC, on his way to winning a crowded primary in August that included a state senator and two former members of Congress. He was the heavy favorite in the general election in a deep-blue seat that now-President Joe Biden would have carried by 32 points in 2020.

Multiple states have reported attempted cyberattacks on their websites on Election Day, but none of the hacks have prevented anyone from voting, federal officials told reporters Tuesday night.

Mississippi is the only state that has reported a “sustained outage” of a website from the hacks, said a senior official from the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

Officials did not name the other states that had reported the low-level hacking activity.

The clerk of Champaign County, Illinois, told CNN earlier Tuesday that his office had been fending off a suspected cyberattack.

“We have not seen any evidence to suggest that these are part of a widespread coordinated campaign,” the CISA official said.

The website of Mississippi’s secretary of state has been down for multiple hours Tuesday after a Russian-speaking hacking group listed it as a target. CNN has reached out to the Mississippi secretary of state’s office for comment.

How this impacts voters: Such websites are not involved in the casting or counting of votes, but they often provide voters with information on how and where to vote. Hackers try to take them down to sow panic or make exaggerated claims about their impact.

The CISA official also sought to tamp down conspiracy theories that seize on the fact that it takes time to tabulate and certify election results.

“This may take days to weeks depending on state law — and that is completely normal,” the official said.

Republican Rudy Yakym will win the election for Indiana’s 2nd Congressional District, CNN projects, succeeding the late GOP Rep. Jackie Walorski, who died in a car accident this year with two of her staffers.

Yakym, a former Walorski campaign finance director, will defeat Democrat Paul Steury, a high school science teacher, in the reliably red South Bend-based district.

He is also projected to win the special election on serving out the remainder of 2022.

Yakym won his party’s nomination in October after earning the endorsement of Dean Swihart, the husband of the late congresswoman, who introduced the candidate before the state GOP voting caucus in August as a “pro-Trump, pro-life and Christian family man,” according to the South Bend Tribune.

Yakym, a married father of three, has worked at a logistics company and is the head usher at his Baptist church, according to his biography on the National Republican Congressional Committee website.

There is no sense of alarm among Georgia Republicans tonight — despite Democrats jumping to an early advantage as the first batch of votes is counted in the first hour after polls close.

Why? The ballots counted so far come largely from the record-setting early ballots cast in Georgia — more than 2 million in all.

A strategist inside the GOP war room — pouring over data for Gov. Brian Kemp and GOP Senate candidate Herschel Walker — say the votes from Election Day will overwhelmingly benefit Republicans. CNN has not yet made projections on these races.

“We like what we see from our turnout today,” the GOP strategist said. “That will become apparent soon enough.”

Yet one question looms large: Will there be a significant fall-off from Kemp to Walker? And did those voters back Warnock or not vote in the Senate race at all?

Ben Wikler, the chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, tells CNN “we are getting ready for a big red mirage and blue shift,” citing an “explosion in early voting and absentee voting” in locations with large central count facilities like Milwaukee, Green Bay and Kenosha.

The effect “could be magnified compared to 2018,” Wikler added.

According to the Wisconsin Elections Commission, historically jurisdictions that count ballots at central count facilities “have been some of the last to complete unofficial results reporting.”

Wikler said, “Kenosha’s really the biggest question mark on the map.”

Chad Doran, director of communications for the Republican Party of Wisconsin, tells CNN they’re “watching” for any red mirage-type scenarios.

“Day-of voting appears to be beating expectations, which is generally a good sign for Republicans,” Doran said.

Polls in Wisconsin close at 9 p.m. ET.

A Georgia state election official says America needs candidates to be “gracious” in both defeat and victory.

Acting Georgia Deputy Secretary of State Gabriel Sterling stressed that the US needs political candidates to be “gracious” and publicly trust election results regardless of whether they win or lose.

“We have reached a point in our nation’s history where we need leaders and candidates for both parties to step up and say, ‘I accept the results of this election’ regardless of the outcome,” Sterling said during a news conference Tuesday night in Atlanta.

“It sucks to lose, but here’s the math – there is always going to be somebody who wins and somebody who comes up short. For the stability of the nation as a whole, and for the defense for the institutions as they stand, candidates should gracefully accept defeat when the voters have said that to them and they should gracefully accept victory and not rub it in and spike the football,” he said.

Sterling said that both Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, himself, and other state election officials have been “stewing” on this in the aftermath of the 2020 election when former President Donald Trump falsely claimed the election was rigged and tried to overturn the results. But Sterling said that he is bringing this up tonight due to the fact that “we already have candidates out there saying if I lose it’s because it’s rigged. That’s a pile of crap. They know it is when they say it,” an emotional Sterling said.

“The system cannot take another two or four years of election denial, be it by voter suppression or voter fraud. Both of them are false claims, that have been proven false again and again and again,” Sterling pleaded.

“We have to stop weaponizing election administration, we have to stop weaponizing the end results of this election.”

Republican Sen. Rand Paul will win the Kentucky Senate race, CNN projects, and defeat progressive Democrat Charles Booker.

Republican Katie Britt will win Alabama’s Senate race, CNN projects, and defeat Democrat Will Boyd, the pastor of the St. Mark Missionary Baptist Church.

It’s the first time the state has elected a woman to the office.

Britt is the former chief of staff for retired Sen. Richard Shelby. The drama in this race came in the Republican primary when Britt took on Rep. Mo Brooks. Trump initially endorsed Brooks, but he rescinded the endorsement as Brooks’ campaign struggled.

Democrats last won a Senate seat in Alabama in 2017 when Doug Jones won a special election against Republican Roy Moore.

Britt’s chances in crimson red Alabama were never in doubt – the competitive race was for the Republican nomination to succeed the retiring Republican Sen. Richard Shelby.

Britt jumped into the primary race even though Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks had already earned former President Donald Trump’s endorsement.

But Brooks – who led the charge in Congress to overturn the 2020 election results – was viewed as an unreliable ally to the business community, especially compared to Shelby, who delivered federal funding for the state for decades. And Britt, Shelby’s former chief of staff and the Business Council of Alabama’s former CEO, had deep ties to that wing of the party.

Meanwhile, a self-funded Republican candidate, Lynda Blanchard, the former Trump ambassador to Slovenia, never took off and dropped out of the race. Army veteran pilot Mike Durant – of “Black Hawk Down” fame – was weighed down by his sister’s public claims that he was in denial about her allegations of sexual abuse involving their father, which Durant strongly denied.

And Britt was able to flip Trump. At a Super Bowl party, New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick praised Britt—and her husband Wesley, a former Patriot—to Trump. That sparked an invitation to Trump’s Palm Beach estate.

Britt had already cast herself as a Trump-aligned conservative, arguing that Brooks was a career politician, who had heavily criticized Trump during the 2016 GOP presidential primary. In March, after Brooks publicly accused Trump of asking him to break the law by exploring ways to reinstall him as commander in chief, Trump dropped the congressman.

In the May primary, Britt received 45% of the vote, but since no candidate received over 50%, the race turned to a June runoff election. Trump then endorsed Britt, who beat Brooks with 63% of the vote.

Republican Rep. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma will win a special election for US Senate, CNN projects, making him the first Native American to represent Oklahoma in the chamber in nearly a century.

Mullin, who currently represents the deeply conservative 2nd Congressional District, will defeat Democratic nominee Kendra Horn, a former congresswoman, in the race for the seat of GOP Sen. Jim Inhofe, who is resigning in January.

A citizen of the Cherokee Nation, Mullin was first elected to his House seat in eastern Oklahoma in 2012 and went on to closely align himself with former President Donald Trump.

He voted in 2021 to object to the congressional certification of now-President Joe Biden’s Electoral College wins in Pennsylvania and Arizona. Mullin tweeted at the time that he was objecting “due to all the fraud and uncertainty,” though there has been no evidence of fraud even close to widespread enough to have changed the outcome. Two days prior to the vote, he told constituents that he “absolutely” did not think the election was honest.

But Mullin sought to anchor his Senate campaign in more broad Republican positions, listing “RESTORE Law and Order” and “FIGHT the Liberal Biden Agenda” as priorities on his campaign website.

“I’m running to keep this seat RED, fight for our conservative values in the Senate, and Save America from Biden’s far left insanity,” his website reads.

Less prominent in Mullin’s campaign messaging was that fact he was running to be the first Native American senator from Oklahoma since Robert Owen left Congress in 1925, though he did acknowledge the historic nature of his Senate bid during a speech in September.

“I’m going to be the only true Native American in the Senate when I get elected,” Mullin told the National Tribal Health Conference in Washington, DC. “That’s crazy.”

“How crazy that we’re true Native Americans, the first Americans,” he added, “and we’re so underrepresented in the halls of Congress.”

Republican Sen. James Lankford will win reelection in Oklahoma, CNN projects, and defeat Democrat Madison Horn.

Lankford was first elected in 2014, when he won a special election to fill the remainder of former GOP Sen. Tom Coburn’s term. Horn is a Cherokee Nation tribal citizen and cybersecurity professional.

Florida voters will reelect Republican Sen. Marco Rubio to a third term over Democratic Rep. Val Demings, CNN projects, an outcome that is sure to harden arguments that the Sunshine State is no longer the purple battleground of yesteryear.

Rubio trailed in fundraising throughout the race and operated a low-key campaign with few public events and just one debate. But it was enough to defeat Demings in a state that has been trending red since the last midterm cycle, when another Senate contest was decided in a recount.

The race in Florida entered the election cycle as one to watch. The decision by Demings to challenge Rubio provided a much-needed shot in the arm to a Florida Democratic Party that has struggled to nominate strong candidates. As a Black woman and former Orlando police chief, Demings offered a counter to Republican narratives that Democrats were soft on crime. Demings also proved to be a formidable fundraiser, pulling in more money than Rubio every quarter she was in the race.

But Demings’ background in law enforcement did not deter Rubio from running ads tying her to anti-law enforcement sentiments in her party, and he often touted the endorsement of most of the state’s elected sheriffs and its police unions.

Republican voters now outnumber Democrats by more than 300,000 in Florida, a complete reversal from the last time Rubio appeared on the ballot. Under the state’s rightward lurch, Rubio embraced former President Donald Trump, his one-time rival, and he became an original cosponsor to a national 15-week abortion ban introduced by Sen. Lindsey Graham, even as Demings and Democrats tried to make the election a referendum on abortion access.

Rubio’s victory comes six years after he nearly bowed out of politics following his failed presidential campaign. As Florida’s senior senator, he will resume his post as one of the Republican Party’s most influential voices on foreign policy at a time of growing tension around the globe over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, China’s rise as a world power and widespread economic unrest over inflation.

The son of Cuban immigrants, Rubio was first elected to the US Senate in 2010 in a three-way race against Democrat Kendrick Meek and then-Gov. Charlie Crist, who ran as an independent. Rubio won reelection in 2016 over Democrat Patrick Murphy. Rubio previously served as a state lawmaker in Florida, where he rose to speaker of the state House.

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey will win reelection, CNN projects, defeating Democrat Yolanda Flowers.

Ivey first became governor in 2017 when former GOP Gov. Robert Bentley resigned.

The Alabama governor did have to fend off a primary challenge from Lindy Blanchard, the former ambassador to Slovenia in the Trump administration, who criticized Ivey for issuing mask mandates to combat the Covid-19 pandemic.

Gov. Ron DeSantis, Florida’s hard-charging Republican leader who became a household name during the pandemic, will win a second term leading the Sunshine State, CNN projects, thwarting Democrat Charlie Crist’s attempt to take back his old job.

With the campaign for reelection behind him, the focus of DeSantis’ political future will now turn to 2024. A decision is looming on whether he rides his political success in Florida into a national campaign for the White House, where he may find himself on a collision course with former President Donald Trump.

On the campaign trail, DeSantis spent little time on Crist, instead focusing on President Joe Biden and his nationalized political battles. His campaign released a series of compelling, sharply produced videos and ads geared as much toward his growing national following on social media and email as Florida voters. In one labeled “Top Gov,” DeSantis, who served as a Navy lawyer, cosplayed as a fighter pilot as he shared his “rules of engagement” for “dogfighting” with the “corporate media.” In another, his wife Casey DeSantis delivered an emotional account of her battle with breast cancer. His final ad suggested God created DeSantis to be a fighter.

En route to his victory, DeSantis built an unprecedented cash advantage over Crist and his $31 million campaign. Half of the $200 million DeSantis raised came from donations of $50,000 or more, though he also received tens of thousands of small contributions from across the country. As of November 3, DeSantis had $66 million unused between his two political committees. Sources close to the governor’s team previously told CNN that DeSantis’ political operation had explored how to leverage leftover campaign money for a federal race.

Crist struggled to gain traction after winning the primary against state Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried in late August. His campaign was further hampered by the September arrival of Hurricane Ian, which brought the race to a screeching halt and postponed a planned rally and fundraiser with Biden and the race’s only scheduled debate. Biden did Crist no favors when he complimented DeSantis’ handling of Ian during a joint appearance in Fort Myers Beach.

Crist attempted to make DeSantis’ known political aspirations into an issue in the race. During their only debate, Crist challenged DeSantis to vow to serve a full four-year term if reelected as governor. DeSantis declined. In a canned line he appeared to read off a paper, DeSantis said of his future political ambitions: “The only worn-out, old donkey I’m looking to put out to pasture is Charlie Crist.”

In a second term, DeSantis has promised to eliminate permits to carry firearms and further “expand pro-life protections,” though he has not outlined what those might be.

DeSantis was first elected to the US House in 2012. He was reelected twice, though he resigned his third term early after securing the Republican nomination for governor in 2018. DeSantis defeated a more establishment-backed candidate in that primary on the back of an endorsement from Trump.

It’s 8 p.m. ET, and polls are closing in the following states:

Polls are also closing in some House districts in Kansas, Michigan and Texas.

One thing to note: Polls in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, will stay open until 10 p.m. ET, according to an order from Judge Lesa S. Gelb. Attorneys petitioning for the extension of time cited a paper shortage at polling locations that ultimately resulted in the inability to print paper ballots and necessitated the use of emergency and provisional ballots, resulting in delays for voters.

Here’s what to know about the key races happening in Pennsylvania: The state that put President Biden over the top in 2020 is home to some of the most important Senate and gubernatorial races in the country.

Republicans are hoping to hold on to an open Senate seat with former TV personality Mehmet Oz, while Lt. Gov. John Fetterman is hoping his nontraditional appeal can help him move the seat into the Democrats’ column.

State Attorney General Josh Shapiro is trying to maintain Democratic control of Pennsylvania’s governorship in a race that has taken on added importance because the governor appoints the official responsible for elections. Shapiro’s opponent is Republican state Sen. Doug Mastriano, who was a central figure supporting Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

See an hour-by-hour guide to Election Night poll closings here.

CNN’s Priya Krishnakumar and Will Mullery contributed reporting to this post.

Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia who is locked in tight reelection race with Republican Herschel Walker, lost some support among Black and Hispanic voters in Tuesday’s closely watched election, compared with the special runoff election the Democrat won in 2021, according to the preliminary national results of the exit poll conducted for CNN and other news networks by Edison Research.

The votes in Georgia continue to be counted, but the race is widely expected to be close.

Roughly 9 in 10 Black voters and nearly 6 in 10 Hispanic voters in Georgia supported Warnock, but he lost several percentage points among each group, the preliminary exit polls found.

Warnock also shed a few percentage points of support among men who cast ballots and among voters age 64 and younger. However, the senator gained a small amount of support among White voters, who make up nearly two-thirds of the electorate, and among senior citizens.

Still, Walker was the candidate of choice among more than two-thirds of White voters, as well as among a majority of men who cast ballots.

A majority of women who voted and around 8 in 10 non-White voters opted for Warnock.

More than half of voters age 45 and older cast ballots for Walker, while nearly 6 in 10 younger voters selected Warnock.

More than three-quarters of Ohio voters said the nation’s economy was “poor” or “not so good,” according to the preliminary results of the Ohio Exit Poll conducted for CNN and other news networks by Edison Research.

And nearly three-quarters of Buckeye State voters said inflation has caused their family severe or moderate hardship, with nearly 2 in 10 saying their difficulties were severe.

More than half of those who cast ballots said that President Joe Biden’s policies are hurting, while about one-third said they are helping.

The president is not that popular among Ohio voters – more than half disapprove of him, with more than 4 in 10 approving.

The top election official for the city of Milwaukee told reporters Tuesday evening that she expects an overall turnout of 70-75% of registered voters from that area of the state.

Claire Woodall-Vogg, executive director of the City of Milwaukee Election Commission, told reporters that this is close to the same level of turnout as what was seen in 2018 and the number of absentee ballots will likely be lower than what was initially expected.

Milwaukee is one of 38 municipalities in Wisconsin that processes its absentee ballots at a “central count,” or a single location, according to the Wisconsin Elections Commission.

In Milwaukee and other central count cities, absentee votes are reported only after they are all counted, while elsewhere in the state, absentee and in-person votes are generally counted and reported at the same time.

As of Tuesday morning, more than 60,000 voters in Milwaukee had returned absentee ballots, more than in any other municipality in the state.

Woodall-Vogg said election workers at the Milwaukee central count are still on track to finish tallying the city’s absentee ballots by 10 p.m. or 11 p.m. CT on Tuesday night.

Based on early voting tallies coming in on two key races in Georgia, some voters are voting for one party’s candidate in the Senate race, but then choosing another party’s candidate in the gubernatorial race.

For example, Democratic nominee and Sen. Raphael Warnock has more actual votes than Democratic candidate for governor Stacey Abrams on the same ticket.

Early results show Warnock with about 80,000 more votes than Abrams, “meaning people are voting for Raphael Warnock, and then not voting for Abrams,” CNN’s John King explained, adding that some of those votes are going to Republican incumbent Gov. Brian Kemp.

This is visible specifically in Democratic-leaning Fulton County, which includes Atlanta, where GOP nominee Herschel Walker has fewer than 65,000 votes while Republican incumbent Gov. Brian Kemp has received about 79,000 votes so far.

The early numbers show “Herschel Walker underperforming the governor,” King said in his analysis.

Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson spent Election Day in Oshkosh with his family after casting his ballot at the Oshkosh Town Hall with his wife, his campaign told CNN.

The Republican also spent time with his grandchildren and dialed into some GOTV radio hits and teletown halls with supporters.

For his part, Democratic challenger Mandela Barnes spent the day in the Democratic stronghold of Milwaukee, hopping from college campus to college campus to greet students at Milwaukee Area Technical College, UW-Milwaukee, and Marquette University.

He tweeted: “students at Marquette are fired up and ready to send Ron Johnson packing. So inspired by all of y’all and your determination to be the change you seek.”

If elected, Barnes would be the nation’s second-youngest senator — older only than Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff.

View Barnes’ tweet:

LESS THAN 3 HOURS before polls close, Wisconsin! And students at Marquette are fired up and ready to send Ron Johnson packing. So inspired by all of y’all and your determination to be the change you seek. pic.twitter.com/jZzD74Z4Uu

Republican Gov. Mike DeWine will win reelection in Ohio, CNN projects, and defeat Democrat Nan Whaley.

It’s 7:30 p.m. ET, and polls are closing in the following states:

See an hour-by-hour guide to Election Night poll closings here.

Republicans are asking a judge in Maricopa County to keep the polls open until 10 p.m. local time and to suspend the public release of any early ballot returns until 11 p.m. local time.

The lawsuit against Maricopa County officials alleges that 36% of the county’s voting centers have seen excessive delays and long lines because of continuing malfunctions of ballot tabulation devices and printers.

Maricopa County has debunked the claims of excessive delays, CNN’s Daniel Dale has reported.

Additionally, the lawsuit claims that voters in some polling places were instructed by poll workers to discard their ballots when the tabulation device could not read their ballot and to go to another polling place where they were not necessarily registered.

The lawsuit alleges that these voters were subsequently turned away at these polling places. CNN’s Ella Nilsen reported earlier today that Maricopa County elections officials insisted that every vote would be counted, despite earlier tabulation issues that arose from a printer issue at about 60 vote centers.

“There was no one who came today with a valid ID who was turned away from the polls,” Maricopa County Board of Supervisors chairman Bill Gates told reporters Tuesday afternoon. “Even when we had this [issue] and we hadn’t figured out the solution, people were still able to vote. It was just a matter of maybe not voting in the way they wanted to.”

The lawsuit is asking the court to instruct all inspectors at polling locations to allow voters who may be recorded as previously voting, which could be in error because of earlier delays, to complete a provisional ballot for later potential processing.

The campaign team for J.D. Vance, the Republican candidate vying for the open Ohio Senate seat, is buzzing with excitement as the polls are on the verge of coming to a close.

A campaign source said they’re seeing low turnout in Cuyahoga County — a strongly Democratic county that includes Cleveland and went for Joe Biden in 2020.

“We like what we’re seeing,” the Vance campaign source said.

Vance — who is watching the results from the Ohio GOP watch party tonight — has been popping in and out of the war room that his team has set up here at the hotel as they crunch numbers.

As he arrived on site at the hotel, Vance was all smiles and told CNN when asked how he is feeling, “We’re good, we’re good.”

His campaign said they’ll start to get a better sense about 30 minutes after the polls close, but in Ohio, it’s all about three key cities: Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Columbus.

Meanwhile, Democratic nominee Tim Ryan’s team said the Cuyahoga suburbs look good, and they believe there is a potential data lag in Cleveland proper, where precincts are less staffed.

Michigan Department of State spokesperson Jake Rollow said “things are going smoothly” with elections in the state.

Asked about recent statements from former President Donald Trump calling for protests in Detroit, Rollow said “we have prepared for this long before the former president issued his statements.” (Trump called for protests after a mishap at the polls on Tuesday morning in Detroit, which election officials called a “harmless data error.”)

When asked about an Ann Arbor poll watcher who was repeatedly issuing impermissible challenges, Rollow explained that the poll watcher was challenging voters who had brought in their blank absentee ballots to surrender before voting in-person, which is the appropriate process. Rollow was unsure if the poll watcher was “removed or simply asked to stop and they stopped,” but those challenges were stopped.

“We haven’t gotten reports of many challenges at all,” Rollow told reporters. “If we had an appropriate challenges or numerous challenges taking place in the county boards, I believe the clerks would have communicated that to the bureau and we’re not hearing that.”

For months, GOP activists have clamored about sending a barrage of poll-watchers to challenge ballots in battleground states.

Separately, Detroit Election Administrator Daniel Baxton just announced to poll workers that the absentee counting board in Detroit has tabulated approximately 63,000 absentee ballots at this point.

Baxter said he is waiting for 2 more deliveries of absentee ballots to come in to this location later tonight.

More than 4 in 10 of Pennsylvania voters approve of the way Joe Biden is handling his job, but a majority disapprove of the president, who was born and raised in Scranton, according to the preliminary national results of the exit poll conducted for CNN and other news networks by Edison Research.

Voters in the commonwealth did not have a high opinion of former President Donald Trump either. Just 4 in 10 had a favorable opinion, while nearly 6 in 10 had an unfavorable opinion.

Meanwhile, just over half of Pennsylvania voters said Biden was not a factor in their vote. For those who said the president was a factor, more than 1 in 10 said they support him, while nearly a third said they oppose him.

More than half of Pennsylvania voters also said that Trump was not a factor in their vote. For those who said the former president was a factor, close to 1 in 5 said they support him, while about a quarter opposes him.

To read more on the exit polls, click here.

Georgia voters were more likely to say that Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock has good judgment than they were to say the same of his Republican challenger, Herschel Walker, according to the preliminary results of the Georgia exit poll conducted for CNN and other news networks by Edison Research.

But more said Warnock holds views that are too extreme than said the same about Walker.

Just shy of half, about 46%, said only Warnock shows good judgment, with about 28% saying only Walker does, and nearly a fifth that neither candidate does.

Voters in Georgia were close to evenly split on whether or not Warnock’s views were too extreme. Slightly more than 4 in 10 said Walker’s views were too extreme, with just over half saying they were not.

Asked which candidate quality mattered most to their Senate vote, 36% of Georgia voters said they wanted a candidate who shared their values, 32% a candidate who had honesty and integrity, 19% a candidate who cared about people like them, and 8% someone who had the right experience.

Watch CNN’s John King and Jake Tapper at the Magic Wall:

Officials in Palm Beach County, Florida, intend to keep their main elections office open “as long as we possibly can” to count ballots and deliver midterm election results, the county’s Supervisor of Elections Wendy Sartory Link said Tuesday.

Parts of the county are under evacuation orders starting early Wednesday morning, as Tropical Storm Nicole is expected to make landfall in the state late Wednesday night or early Thursday morning between West Palm Beach and Melbourne. The storm is currently expected to reach Florida as a hurricane.

“At this point, we’re thinking we can make it through without a big effect on the election,” Link said in a telephone interview with CNN.

Worsening road conditions Tuesday night could cause some delays as officials retrieve ballot drop boxes, but Link said workers “will stay here until we’re done.”

She anticipates that the county will process mail-in and Election Day ballots Tuesday night and could post the lion’s share of initial, unofficial results on the county’s website by 9 p.m.

Link said workers plan to return Wednesday to answer voters’ questions and continue processing the remaining classes of ballots, including those cast provisionally at polling places and mail-in ballots that need to be corrected in some way. Voters have until 5 p.m. Thursday to fix, or “cure” flaws on mail ballots.

Link did not know early Tuesday evening how many of those kinds of ballots still were outstanding. A little more than 1 million registered voters live in Palm Beach County.

Sen. Tim Scott, the only Black Republican in the chamber, will win reelection, CNN projects, and defeat Democratic state Rep. Krystle Matthews.

It’s 7 p.m. ET, and polls are closing statewide in these six states:

Polls are also closing in some House districts in Florida.

Here’s what to know about the races happening in the key state of Georgia: Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock won Senate seats to flip control of the chamber to Democrats. Warnock is now competing for a full term against Trump-backed football star Herschel Walker, who has maintained GOP support despite several scandals.

Republican Gov. Brian Kemp survived a Trump-endorsed primary challenger this cycle after rejecting Trump’s election lies in 2020. He won his first term in office in 2018, beating Democrat Stacey Abrams by just 55,000 votes. Abrams never conceded, and the two are facing each other again in in the 2022 midterms, but this time Kemp is coming into the race as a Republican who stood up to Trump. If Abrams wins, she would be the first female Black governor in US history.

See an hour-by-hour guide to Election Night poll closings here.

CNN’s Priya Krishnakumar and Will Mullery contributed reporting to this post.

Both Democrats and Republicans are feeling confident as polls close in Georgia.

Sen. Raphael Warnock’s campaign says they feel like, “They went everywhere.” The key to Warnock’s argument for reelection is that he has spent his time in Washington concerned about every corner of the state: rural areas, suburban areas and metro centers alike.

“The leader that he has demonstrated to be is also such a stark contrast to what Herschel Walker offers,” said a top Warnock aide.

Meanwhile, Republicans are also feeling good about their chances. One GOP strategist told CNN “I feel great.”

The state saw record-breaking early voting totals and our colleagues out in the field at polling sites around the state saw steady turnout throughout the day.

The North Carolina State Board of Elections voted unanimously to extend voting by 25 minutes at a polling precinct in Craven County on Tuesday after the precinct ran out of ballots for a short period of time.

“Fortunately, the county has a ballot-on-demand printer and was able to replenish the ballot supply,” said State Board Associate General Counsel Paul Cox.

“There was a 25-minute interruption in voting during the middle of the day, middle of the afternoon, and an estimated 15, at least, voters did not come into the voting site. They turned around and went back when they found out there were no ballots to vote on,” he said.

This was the State Board of Elections’ second meeting of the day.

The board earlier voted unanimously to allow three polling precincts, located in Columbus, Robeson and Wilson counties to close one hour later after their opening was delayed on Election Day.

Tonight will be the first time we will see the Pennsylvania Democratic nominee on an election night stage in this Senate race. John Fetterman was in a hospital bed recovering from a stroke when he became the nominee during May’s primary.

In the months following, Fetterman’s health was the topic of much conversation and analysis, much of it from political pundits and analysts outside of the state. The voters we’ve spoken to in the last few months have been far more focused on the issues than they were on Fetterman’s health.

Fetterman has made his stroke recovery central to his closing campaign message, reminding voters again and again in ads and at rallies: “I got knocked down, but I did get back up.”

A Democratic strategist with Sen. Maggie Hassan’s campaign told CNN that there is “strong turnout in the places we need it so far,” but cautioned “it is still early.”

The strategist noted that in New Hampshire, where the overwhelming majority of people vote on Election Day, the first and last few hours are typically the busiest, so they’ll be watching late turnout in blue areas closely.

The strategist said that though the team is “feeling good,” they expect it to be close.

“We have always expected this would be close. Always thought it would be,” the strategist said.

A Republican source told CNN that with between one and two hours left before polls close, “we remain confident.” The source said they were hearing about “really strong” turnout in some GOP strongholds in the Granite State.

More voters trust Republicans than Democrats to handle inflation and crime, according to the preliminary national results of the exit poll conducted for CNN and other news networks by Edison Research.

Roughly half of voters said they trusted GOP candidates on those two issues, while more than 4 in 10 voters said they trusted Democratic candidates.

When it comes to the issue of abortion, however, roughly half of voters said they trusted Democratic candidates, compared with more than 4 in 10 voters who said they trusted Republican candidates.

Roughly 8 in 10 of voters in this year’s midterms said they were at least somewhat confident that elections in their state are being conducted fairly and accurately, according to the preliminary national results of the exit poll conducted for CNN and other news networks by Edison Research.

About half said they were very confident. Only about 2 in 10 said they were not very or not at all confident.

But voters were also deeply concerned about the state of the country’s democracy. Slightly fewer than 3 in 10 said that they viewed democracy in the US today as at least somewhat secure, with about 7 in 10 feeling that democracy is somewhat or very threatened.

Slightly over 6 in 10 voters accepted that Biden legitimately won the presidency in 2020, while about one-third denied the results of that election.

It was 150 years ago this year that noted suffragette and voting rights activist, Susan B. Anthony illegally cast her vote in her hometown of Rochester, New York.

She was arrested, and then convicted for voting illegally. Nearly 50 years later, after the 19th Amendment passed on June 4, 1919, White women like Anthony were legally granted the right to vote.

On Tuesday, women and men paid tribute to Anthony’s trailblazing efforts by visiting her final resting place and leaving their “I Voted Today” stickers on her gravestone after voting in the 2022 midterm elections. It’s been a local Rochester tradition for years now to visit the site at Mount Hope Cemetery, also the resting place of abolitionist Fredrick Douglass, on election day.

New York State Sen. Samra Brouk, and Assemblymembers Sarah Clark and Jennifer Lunsford held a rally this year where supporters marched from Anthony’s home to the nearest polling station in an effort to encourage women to vote in this year’s midterm election.

“With all that’s going on with rights for women right now, and our ability to make decisions on our own bodies and healthcare eroding, it’s important for us to show up and vote,” Assemblymember Clark said.

Clark has been leaving her “I Voted Today” sticker at Anthony’s gravestone since 2016 when, like many others, she braved the long line to get a chance to place her sticker on the women’s rights advocate’s gravestone in honor of Hilary Clinton.

On Tuesday, Clark visited the gravesite to place that sticker on Anthony’s tombstone once again, as is Rochester tradition.

The headstone looks a little different than it did in 2016. For one, it’s under a plastic cover protecting the grave marker being damaged from the myriad of stickers that often get placed on it every election cycle. There’s also no throng of people waiting in line at the gravesite like in 2016.

“We want to remind people of the legacy and history that really lives on in Rochester,” Assemblymember Lunsford said.

While voters in this year’s midterm election hold negative views of President Joe Biden, their views of his predecessor are even more negative, according to the preliminary national results of the exit poll conducted for CNN and other news networks by Edison Research.

Only about 37% of voters in this year’s midterms expressed a favorable view of former President Donald Trump, with around 6 in 10 viewing him unfavorably. About 16% of voters said their House vote this year was intended to express support for Trump, with just under 3 in 10 saying it was intended to express opposition and the rest saying that Trump was not a factor.

Voters’ opinions of the GOP were slightly more positive than their views of Trump, with about 43% viewing the Republican Party favorably and just over half viewing it unfavorably. More than half, about 54%, say the GOP is too extreme.

With polls in Georgia on the verge of closing, one thing is clear in the marquee Senate race here: Herschel Walker was never disqualified by myriad allegations against him – because Republicans made a strategic decision to circle the wagons around his candidacy and take a page out of the Trump playbook in responding to a political crisis.

Yet they did it without former President Trump himself.

In the final stretch of the race – as Trump traveled from rally to rally and state to state – he steered clear of Georgia, despite having recruited Walker to run for Senate in the first place.

A visit by Trump, many Republicans in Georgia say they feared, could be highly risky to Walker’s candidacy. The two men continued to speak regularly, aides say and reached an understanding that Trump would not visit the state.

Instead of Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock being able to tie Walker to Trump, it was Walker who tied Warnock to President Biden. And that, given the President’s unpopularity, kept Walker in the ballgame and kept the race in a deadlock.

While Wisconsin’s Senate contest has drawn national attention as a race that could decide the balance of the Senate, the state’s other marquee race — the gubernatorial election — could have equal, if not greater, ramifications for Wisconsinites.

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has served as a roadblock against Republicans in the State Assembly and Senate, vetoing a record number of bills out of the GOP-controlled chambers. Since taking office in 2019, the Democratic governor has blocked nearly 150 bills from becoming law, ranging on issues around the Covid-19 pandemic, election security and abortion in the state.

When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, the state reverted to an 1849 total ban on abortion.

In response, Evers called the legislature back for a special legislative session to overturn the law. Both chambers immediately gaveled out, leaving the law on the books. At the time, Evers warned, “We cannot afford to have Wisconsin become the worst state in the union. We have a great state here, people love living in Wisconsin, but by God, if we go down the wrong path Nov. 8, this will be a worse state.”

Evers on Tuesday evening touted his veto on nine bills out of the GOP-controlled legislature that would’ve further restricted abortion in the state.

“I’ve vetoed 9 bills that would have restricted access to abortion in Wisconsin,” the Democratic governor wrote Tuesday. “As long as I’m governor, I’ll defend the right to safe and accessible reproductive healthcare. We need your support to keep this fight going. Head to the polls today.”

But even if Evers proves victorious over challenger Tim Michels, Republicans only need to flip five seats in the State Assembly and just one seat in the Senate to achieve veto-proof majorities in their respective chambers, allowing the party to push through legislation it has been trying to pass without success.

For his part, Michels has pledged to overhaul elections in the state, saying at a campaign stop last month in Jefferson County that “Republicans will never lose another election in Wisconsin after I’m elected governor.”

Polls in the state close in just a little more than two hours.

Whether you’re the most hardened of political junkies or you only tune in every other November to vote, it’s always a good idea to brush up on some of the terms you will hear on election night.

What is the balance of power? Political parties have more power when they control the House or Senate by winning a majority of the seats in that chamber. The party in power controls committees that write legislation and decides which measures will get a vote on the floor. In the House, the party with at least 218 seats has the majority and, assuming it can unite behind one candidate, selects the Speaker of the House. In the Senate, the party with 51 votes has the majority.

What is a “flipped seat” or “pickup”? A flipped seat or pickup is one in the House or Senate that voters take from one party and entrust to the other party. Because of redistricting, nine House seats – including seven new seats where there is no incumbent and two where two incumbents are running against each other – cannot be classified as pickups for either party.

What is an “incumbent?” An incumbent is a lawmaker or elected official running for reelection.

What is a special election? When a senator retires, dies or leaves office before his or her term ends, the state’s governor usually appoints a placeholder to fill the seat. Then there’s often a chance for voters to have their say, usually at the next possible federal election. That’s how Democratic Sens. Mark Kelly of Arizona and Raphael Warnock of Georgia were first elected in 2020 in special elections and why in 2022 both men are running for a full six-year term.

This year, there are special Senate elections in Oklahoma, where Republican Sen. James Inhofe will be resigning next year, and in California, where Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla, who was appointed to replace Vice President Kamala Harris, is running both to fill the remainder of Harris’ term (which ends in January) and to win the next term.

House members cannot be appointed, so when a House seat becomes vacant there needs to be a special election to fill it. This year, there’s a special election in Indiana to serve the last couple months of Rep. Jackie Walorski’s term. Walorski died in August.

What is ranked-choice voting? A number of cities and states are experimenting with ways to give voters more access to the political process and to potentially depolarize politics. Ranked-choice voting is a system in place for most elections in Maine and Alaska where voters rank their choices in order of preference instead of picking a single candidate. If no candidate gets more than 50% of the first-place votes, the bottom candidate is dropped and the second choice of the voters who selected that candidate gets those votes. That process repeats until a winner emerges.

What does “estimated vote” mean? Based on data including turnout in previous elections, pre-election ballots cast or requested, and pre-election polling, organizations can anticipate how many votes are expected in a given election. An estimated vote can under- or overestimate the actual vote, and the percentage reporting may move up or down throughout Election Night depending on how those estimates are adjusted as analysts assess real-time data. As those estimates solidify, they can be useful in predicting how many votes remain to be counted.

What are exit polls? Exit polls are large-scale polls conducted by a consortium of news organizations among early and absentee voters and voters on Election Day. They are conducted as voters leave polling stations, on Election Day and in many states at early voting locations, and also by telephone or online ahead of Election Day to account for mail-in and early voting.

What does “down ballot” mean? The top of the ticket is the race that the largest number of people in a state will see on their ballot. In a presidential year, those candidates are at the top of the ticket. Candidates in more local races are down ballot. A candidate for the House, for example, is down ballot from a presidential candidate. A mayoral candidate is down ballot from a House candidate.

What is a ballot initiative? How does a state decide to put one on the ballot? While most laws are passed by state legislatures or Congress, many states put some questions directly to voters during elections. These can range from issues like marijuana legalization to abortion or tax measures. The ballot initiatives give voters a more active role in choosing the direction of their laws.

What is a CNN “key race”? Who decides that? “Key race” is a subjective term. Most politics watchers generally agree that only a subset of races is truly competitive in November, and these are generally considered the key races. Political parties spend more money on these races. Reporters spend more time covering them.

Of the 35 Senate races on the ballot in 2022, the election forecasters at Inside Elections consider three to be true toss-ups and another four to tilt toward either Republicans or Democrats. Nineteen House races are true toss-ups, although many more could wind up being closely contested. Five governor races are toss-ups. See the Inside Elections ratings for Senate, House and governor. Key races can also be races that might be less competitive but have broader implications or feature especially notable candidates.

Ohio election officials are working to swat down disinformation about polling places and election machines that have been circulating on social media.

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose called out a post claiming that voting machines were breaking down at a polling place and a sheriff had to be called as false. The secretary of state tweeted that all machines “are working properly” and that a sheriff was called because of “an isolated instance of an individual harassing a poll worker. The situation has been peacefully resolved.”

The Cuyahoga County Board of Elections pushed back on a viral tweet alleging that there were last-minute changes made to polling locations in Ohio. The county board of elections said this tweet is false, and all locations were confirmed two months ago.

Election officials have been actively preparing for potential disinformation and conspiracy theories about the election to spread online, and they have set up rapid response teams to spot and debunk falsehoods in real time.

Officials in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania — the county seat of Pittsburgh — say there is high in-person voter turnout, as well as a signifiant mail-in and absentee vote count.

A county spokesperson, referring to absentee/mail-in ballots, told CNN that “employees continue to extract ballots from the secrecy envelopes and are flattening those ballots for scanning. Over 130,000 ballots have been scanned so far.”

That means more than three-fourths of the mail-in/absentee ballots that were filed in the county have been scanned so far. But they won’t be officially assigned to candidates until after the polls close.

Officials in Allegheny County also say of the more than 1,000 absentee/mail-in ballots that were incorrectly dated and in danger of not being counted, only about 160 people have come into the county office to “cure,” or correct, those faulty ballots. People have until polls close at 8 p.m. ET to cure their wrongly dated ballots.

CNN spoke to one voter who mis-dated her ballot who said she was thinking about her daughter’s wedding next year and was so preoccupied with that, that she put the wrong date on there. That’s the kind of simple mistake many people are making.

President Joe Biden’s top advisers acknowledge the outcome of the midterm elections will likely reshape Washington – and by extension, how the White House operates.

But on one specific issue, a senior adviser insisted the impact would be negligible: Biden’s looming decision on whether to run for reelection.

The adviser noted that Biden’s two Democratic predecessors suffered midterm wipeouts, only to go on to win reelection two years later.

But beyond that, the adviser framed it as far more about how Biden views the moment in the country and his ability to keep making progress on the issues he’s pushed to enact in his first two years in office.

Biden, of course, has said he plans to run, but no final decision has been made. He is expected to start critical meetings with family members and close advisers in the coming weeks.

Six precincts across Georgia have been ordered by courts to remain open past 7 p.m. ET, according to Gabriel Sterling, Georgia’s acting deputy secretary of state.

Sterling said two polling locations in Cobb County in Atlanta’s northern suburbs have been ordered to stay open until 7:45 p.m., two locations in DeKalb County in the Atlanta area have been ordered to stay open until 7:40 p.m. and 7:49 p.m., and two precincts in other counties will stay open until shortly after 7 p.m., when polls are scheduled to close.

Sterling said that there are more than 2,600 poll locations in Georgia, and the hours were extended at these six locations because they opened late this morning.

Sterling said that “steady turnout around the state” has continued, and there have not been any major voting issues in Georgia so far. Election Day has been “wonderfully, stupendously boring,” Sterling said during a news conference Tuesday afternoon.

Sterling said that 2.5 million people cast ballots during early voting and they had 234,000 absentee ballots as of Monday.

Former President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly and falsely alleged that there was mass voter fraud in the 2020 election, baselessly suggested on social media on Tuesday that such fraud might be happening in the 2022 midterms.

“Same thing is happening with Voter Fraud as happened in 2020???” Trump wrote Tuesday afternoon on his Truth Social platform.

There was no evidence of widespread or outcome-changing voter fraud in the 2020 election, and there was no early sign on Tuesday of any significant voter fraud in the 2022 midterms. Voter fraud typically represents a tiny fraction of ballots cast in US elections.

Trump made his claim amid a series of social media posts in which he complained about assorted technical difficulties in some states. There was no evidence that any of these issues involved intentional malfeasance, let alone “voter fraud.”

Plls for all statewide races in Indiana and Kentucky close at 7 p.m. ET, but polls in some of the states’ House districts are beginning to close at 6 p.m. ET.

In Indiana, polls are closing in the following House districts: 3rd, 5th, 6th, 7th, 9th.

In Kentucky, polls are closing in these House districts: 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th.

See an hour-by-hour guide to Election Night poll closings here.

There’s a significant partisan divide in voters’ priorities and attitudes this year, according to the preliminary national results of the exit poll conducted for CNN and other news networks by Edison Research.

Nearly half of voters who supported a GOP House candidate called inflation their top issue, with fewer than 15% picking any other issue as their priority. Among voters who backed a Democratic candidate, about 44% called abortion their top issue, with 15% or fewer picking any other issue.

Meanwhile, midterm voters were mostly opposed to the US Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, according to the preliminary national exit polls.

Slightly fewer than 4 in 10 said they felt enthusiastic or satisfied about the decision, while about 21% said they felt dissatisfied, and roughly 4 in 10 that they were angry.

About 60% of all voters said that abortion should be legal in most or all cases, up from 51% among voters who turned out for the 2020 general election.

To read more about the exit polls and the methodology, click here.

Voters in Texas’ Harris County, which includes Houston, waited in long lines at some polling places Tuesday morning, in part because of technical issues that either delayed some sites’ openings or reduced the number of available voting machines.

That included lines of up to two hours at a large Houston voting center, the Metropolitan Multi-Service Center on West Gray Street, CNN affiliate KHOU reported. Twenty of the site’s 60 machines were not operating at one point, though all were working by mid-morning, according to KHOU.

“We’re getting reports that some of our judges have had a little trouble opening their polling locations this morning,” though the process was “smoothing out a little bit,” Harris County Elections Administrator Clifford Tatum told reporters late Tuesday morning.

“There’s a process as it relates to opening the voting machines and getting them set up properly, and sometimes if the proper steps aren’t followed, then it may cause a couple of machines to go down. And our response is to send a technician out to those locations to get those machines back up online,” Tatum said.

One polling location couldn’t open on time because a supplier did not deliver a key to open the machine, he said.

Tatum urged voters to shift to a nearby polling site if the one they visited had long lines. Harris County residents can vote at any of the county’s 782 polling places.

Calls and emails to Tatum’s office for comment weren’t immediately returned.

Harris County, Texas’ most populous, has more than 2.5 million registered voters. The county had more than 750,000 voters during early voting, and Tatum said he was “hoping to see at least 500,000” voters Tuesday.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel raised concerns about “bad actors” this election season in an exclusive interview with CNN, saying the slow pace of the Justice Department’s investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election could signal they won’t be held accountable.

Nessel noted that individuals who served as fake electors for former President Donald Trump have not been charged with any crimes. She said she referred the matter to the Justice Department because she felt it was a federal matter.

“It’s two years later. No one’s been charged,” Nessel said in a wide-ranging interview on Election Day. “What action have they taken at this point? No idea.”

“The problem is, if you are going to try to ensure that bad actors are held accountable, you know, you have to actually move forward with bringing charges,” she added.

Nessel acknowledged it can take time for DOJ to build a case. But she questioned: “What’s the incentive to comply with the law if nobody’s going to prosecute you when you violate it?”

Nessel is running for re-election against Matthew DePerno, a Kalamazoo attorney backed by former President Trump who has pushed his false claims of fraud in the 2020 election.

Early indications suggest that this year’s midterm electorate may look older than the voters in the 2018 midterms, according to the preliminary national results of the exit poll conducted for CNN and other news networks by Edison Research.

Only about a tenth of voters in this election were under age 30, while roughly one-third were age 65 or older. In 2018, about 13% were under 30, and about 26% were 65 or older.

The electorate this year was split roughly between those who generally identify as Democrats (about 34%) and those who generally identify as Republicans (about 35%), with the remainder consisting of political independents and members of other parties. In 2018, Democrats made up a slightly larger voting bloc, about 37%.

About 76% of voters were White, and about 24% were voters of color. White voters with college degrees look to be a slightly larger share of the electorate this year – about 40% per the preliminary data, compared with 31% four years ago. By contrast, voters of color without a college degree look to have made up a slightly smaller share of the electorate this year.

Inflation tops voters’ list of concerns in this year’s midterm elections, with abortion a close second, according to the preliminary national results of the exit poll conducted for CNN and other news networks by Edison Research.

Approximately one-third called inflation the most important issue to their vote, with about 27% citing abortion. The remainder were roughly divided between picking crime, gun policy and immigration as their chief concerns.

The electorate’s views of the economy are largely gloomy. Only about one-quarter of voters felt positively about the current condition of the economy, with roughly three-quarters viewing it negatively – and about 4 in 10 saying it’s downright poor.

That’s more pessimistic than in the 2018 midterms when 68% of voters said the state of the economy was excellent or good, and the 2020 presidential election, when 49% said the same.

About 46% of voters in this election say that their family’s financial situation had worsened over the past two years, while only about 1 in 5 said it had improved.

More than three-quarters of voters in this year’s election say that inflation has caused hardship for them and their family over the past year, with about 20% saying it’s been a severe hardship. And about 6 in 10 say that gas prices, specifically, have recently been a hardship.

At least three poll workers in Tulsa County’s Precinct 77 were relieved of their duties Tuesday after authorities received reports that they were not handing out city council ballots to certain voters, Tulsa County Sheriff Vic Regalado said in a news conference.

The Oklahoma county sheriff said he received video with allegations that poll workers were not giving the city council ballot to Republican voters on Tuesday morning and that “they were only being given to Democrats, Independents and Libertarians.”

The Tulsa County Election Board received a report about the incident at roughly 7:45 a.m. local time, contacted poll workers to instruct them they were supposed to give city council ballots along with the state ballots to voters and “they began handing out the city council ballots … at 8 a.m.,” said Gwen Freeman, the election board secretary. The poll workers were relieved of their duties and new poll workers were assigned, Freeman said. A total of about 30 to 40 people who voted in the morning were impacted, Freeman said.

“We sincerely hope this does not have any significant effect on the outcome of this election,” Freeman said. “But if it’s a number of ballots that could potentially affect the outcome of the election, then the appropriate remedy would be for the affected candidate to file an irregularity by 5 p.m. on Friday.”

Detectives interviewed the poll workers at the precinct and confirmed the city council ballots were only being handed out to Democrat and Independent voters Tuesday morning, the sheriff said. The voters who were denied a city council ballot include 19 Republicans, seven Democrats, four Independents and one Libertarian, Freeman said. Poll workers cannot determine a voter’s party affiliation unless they ask, “which is the irregularity and where the problem exists. And that is what happened,” the sheriff said.

The poll workers relieved of their duties included one Republican and two Democrats, among them the polling judge who was in charge of giving other poll workers instructions, Regalado added.

One of the poll workers said they were aware of the mistake but said they were following the orders of the polling judge who also confirmed the mistake, the sheriff said. But poll workers all receive training and are required to sign paperwork confirming they understand the rules of the voting process, Regalado said.

“The information that we have received does indicate that there [were] voter irregularities, we … are in the process of putting together this investigation to hand to the district attorney’s office for consideration of charges,” the sheriff said. Those charges could potentially be impeding the voting process and/or intentionally impeding the voting process by fraudulent measures, he said. “That will be up to the district attorney to decide which charges are going to be filed, if any at all.”

Voters are casting ballots across the country today to determine control of the House and Senate and 36 governor races.

Take a look at some of the more unique polling places where voters went on Tuesday.

Today’s the day when voters will make their voices heard – and the composition of the next Congress is expected to be determined in states like Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin.

CNN Political Director David Chalian spoke to CNN’s Jessica Dean, Jeff Zeleny, Kyung Lah and Omar Jimenez who have all been following the key gubernatorial and Senate races in those four states for months.

Listen to this special edition of the CNN Political Briefing podcast to hear how the campaigns spent the final days, and what issues matter most to voters.

Maricopa County elections officials said that every vote would be counted, despite earlier tabulation issues that arose from a printer problem at about 60 vote centers.

“There was no one who came today with a valid ID who was turned away from the polls,” Maricopa County Board of Supervisors chairman Bill Gates told reporters Tuesday afternoon. “Even when we had this [issue] and we hadn’t figured out the solution, people were still able to vote. It was just a matter of maybe not voting in the way they wanted to.”

Gates said that people whose votes couldn’t be run through the tabulator were still given a ballot. They then had two options: Either dropping that in a box labeled “Box No. 3,” which he said will later be run through the county’s central tabulation system or having the option of going to another voting center in the county.

The problem impacted about 60 of the county’s 223 voting centers, Gates said. It was a printer issue rather than a tabulator issue, he said.

As of Tuesday afternoon, Arizona time, about 40 centers were still experiencing problems but were being fixed by technicians, Gates added.

Maricopa county’s elections chief, recorder Stephen Richer, tweeted a statement in which he apologized for the issues.

“Every legal vote will be tabulated. I promise,” Richer said in his statement.

Voters in this year’s midterms are broadly unhappy with the state of the nation and hold largely negative views of President Joe Biden, according to the preliminary national results of the exit poll conducted for CNN and other news networks by Edison Research.

More than 7 in 10 said they were less than satisfied with the way things are going in the country, with about one-third saying they were not just dissatisfied but angry with the state of the nation.

Biden’s approval rating stands at about 45% among voters in this year’s election – nearly identical to then-Donald Trump’s 45% approval rating four years ago among 2018 midterm voters. And voters in this election were more than twice as likely to strongly disapprove of Biden as they were to strongly approve of him.

Just shy of half of the voters said that Biden’s policies are mostly hurting the country, with about 36% saying his policies are mostly helping, and the rest that they’re making no difference.

Many voters didn’t see their congressional vote as a referendum on the president – close to half said that Biden was not a factor in their vote, while about 18% said their vote was to express support for Biden, and about one-third that it was to express opposition to him.

To read more, click here.

CNN’s David Chalian breaks down Biden’s approval rating here:

Maricopa County, the most populous county in Arizona, has tweeted to debunk a prominent Republican personality’s false Election Day claim about voting wait times.

This comes after Charlie Kirk, the founder and president of right-wing group Turning Point USA, tweeted Tuesday to his 1.8 million followers: “2 hour wait minimum at most polling places in Maricopa. Democrats running elections here knew this would happen. Traffic jam by design. DONT LET THEM DO 2020 AGAIN. WAIT IN LINE AND VOTE.”

The tweet was thoroughly inaccurate.

Maricopa County’s elections aren’t run by Democrats: its elections chief, Recorder Stephen Richer, and its Board of Supervisors chairman, Bill Gates, are both Republicans. And the county’s online wait-times tracker showed that dozens of voting locations there had waits of under five minutes, including many with no waits at all. County voters are permitted to cast their ballots at whatever location they choose.

Maricopa County said in its tweet in response to Kirk’s tweet: “No part of the tweet below is accurate. The vast majority of Vote Centers are seeing wait times under 30 minutes, and whether by tabulator or secure ballot box, all voters are being served.”

Maricopa County did experience Election Day technical problems with tabulation devices at about 20% of its voting locations, according to county officials on Tuesday morning. The problem prompted officials to ask affected voters to place their ballot in a secure box for counting, wait for the tabulator problems to be resolved, or go vote at another county location. (Richer issued an afternoon statement saying the Board of Supervisors had identified the problem and had “begun fixing affected voting locations.” He promised that “every legal vote will be tabulated.”)

But there was no indication of intentional malfeasance.

It’s the most closely watched, most expensive, perhaps most consequential Senate race in the country. and as the vote comes in for the Pennsylvania Senate race tonight, one John Fetterman campaign source describes the race as a “jump ball,” telling CNN the team for the Democratic candidate is confident they closed out the race as strongly as they possibly could.

“Pennsylvania is Pennsylvania, but we feel like we’ve done everything we can,” a second campaign source told CNN.

The first source pointed to strong crowd attendance at a rally in a Philadelphia suburb last week despite the fact the Phillies and Eagles were both playing as the beginning of “Fetterman strikes back.”

That was followed by an endorsement from Oprah Winfrey on Friday in which she chose Fetterman over his Republican challenger Dr. Mehmet Oz, a man she made a household name. The Winfrey endorsement may have the most effect where he needed it – with suburban women, according to two campaign sources. One source told CNN they believe there will be an “Oprah effect.”

On Saturday, Fetterman appeared with former President Barack Obama for rallies in Democratic strongholds, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, with President Joe Biden joining the Philadelphia event.

“The news cycles we’ve been through in the past couple days were really solid for us,” a source added.

And critically, the campaign believes Oz undercut his closing message of rejecting extremism by appearing on stage with former President Donald Trump and at the same rally as Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano.

However, the Oz campaign believes its closing message on the contrast of balance and extremism puts them in a good position in the race. A source tells CNN they believe that message resonated with voters and helped define Fetterman in a way that stuck with voters.

The Republican candidate’s campaign is feeling confident as it waits for the votes to be counted in Pennsylvania, believing it closed out the election on a high note with a large crowd in the Philadelphia suburbs Monday night.

Both campaigns are, however, very aware and prepared for the vote count to come in slowly and knows it could take days to determine a winner.

All the Arizona campaigns are telling aides and CNN the same thing: Tonight requires patience.

A source familiar with GOP Senate candidate Blake Masters’ campaign thinking said that while his team is tracking the Election Day turnout numbers carefully, they won’t know anything until the first release of numbers at 8 p.m. local time.

A campaign source for Democrat Mark Kelly noted that “who is ahead tonight may not win.” The so-called “late earlies” — mail-in ballots dropped off in person — will be a key factor they are watching in determining a winner, and that may take time to count.

A spokesperson for Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Katie Hobbs reiterated what the Arizona secretary of state has said on the trail: that the campaign is prepared for a recount.

A spokesman for Republican Kari Lake’s gubernatorial campaign said they “always expected to be down on initial drop due to the drop that Kari Lake voters are voting in person today.”

Former President Trump, whose shadow is long across Arizona’s Trump-endorsed candidates, is boosting Lake, his most devoted supporter in the battleground state.

Lake spokesperson Colton Duncan confirmed that she spoke with Trump twice today.

“Both the president and Mrs. Lake have teams closely monitoring the issues in Maricopa County. Spirits are high, enthusiasm is off the charts and our win will be huge. President Trump ended the phone call with ‘Go get ‘em, girl!’” he said.

Maricopa County election officials said 20% of the polling places in the county experienced an issue with the tabulators, with some of the ballots not going through the machines. By 10 a.m. MT, county officials said the problems were being addressed and that they did not anticipate delays in voting. By the afternoon, Maricopa County elections officials said they identified a solution for the tabulation issues that occurred at about 60 voting centers.

Maricopa County elections officials said Tuesday afternoon they have identified a solution for earlier tabulation issues that occurred at about 60 voting centers.

“County technicians have changed the printer settings, which seems to have resolved this issue,” the county’s elections department said in a statement. The county said some of the printers at voting locations were “not producing dark enough timing marks on the ballots.”

The elections office said changing the printer settings has so far worked at 17 voting locations and technicians across the county are working to fix printer settings at the remaining locations.

Democratic Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan’s camp said they’re seeing high turnout from the cities and suburbs, which a campaign source called a “promising” sign for the Democratic representative running for Senate.

The source also said they’ve been encouraged and excited by hearing anecdotes on the ground of Republicans who have crossed party lines to vote for Ryan, which he will need in order to claim victory here in the Ohio.

Ryan himself continues to express optimism about the race, texting CNN: “Gonna win.”

Meanwhile, the JD Vance campaign also says they’re feeling good and have seen “a lot of great energy” on the ground, with a campaign source saying voter turnout has been coming “in droves across the board in key areas.”

“JD is looking forward to a resounding victory tonight,” the campaign source added.

President Biden has spent the day behind closed doors, checking in regularly with his political team, which is set up in the building across from the West Wing.

He’s made calls to top Democratic officials, both to thank them for their work and to ply them for info about what they’re seeing.

Biden’s very aware there is no pathway to hold onto the House, but he has asked about specific House Democrats he campaigned for, one advisor said.

He does, however, remain optimistic they can hold onto the Senate – even as he’s aware it may take several days — or longer due to a possible Georgia runoff — to know for sure.

One thing advisers are assured of based on their conversations with Biden: regardless of how the night goes, he remains steadfast in his administration’s agenda and direction. There is no pivot, there is no shift. It’s full speed ahead.

It’s part of the reason Biden’s advisors circulated a polling memo this afternoon to top allies highlighting what they view as evidence that Biden’s agenda remains largely popular in isolation.

They’re very aware the blame game is about to commence in a major way – and are working to insulate the president from the arrows that will be flying in the days ahead.

Polls will remain open for one extra hour in Bell County, Texas, because of technical difficulties with check-in machines, the county’s public information officer said in a press release Tuesday afternoon.

The Bell County Elections Administrator asked the county attorney to petition a district court judge to issue a court order for polls to stay open.

Judge Jack Jones, of the 146th judicial district, ordered polling hours be extended until 8 p.m. local time Tuesday, according to the court order.

This morning, check-in machines at eight of the county’s 42 voting centers were not working due to synchronization issues tied to Sunday’s time change, Bell County Public Information Officer James Stafford told CNN Tuesday morning.

“This issue led to delays in the opening of those facilities and long waits for some voters,” Stafford said in a press release Tuesday afternoon. “To ensure that every Bell County voter is given the opportunity to cast their ballot, the Bell County Elections Office has requested and been allowed to extend voting hours county-wide until 8:00 p.m.”

Polling results will be delayed this evening as a result of this, the release said. Bell County is in central Texas and includes Killeen, Texas.

A man was arrested Tuesday afternoon after threatening voters with a knife in a Milwaukee suburb, briefly forcing one polling place to close.

Police in West Bend, Wisconsin, responded at about 12:35 p.m. CT to a report of a man armed with a knife at West Bend Community Memorial Library, which is a polling location. The man demanded that staff “stop the voting,” the West Bend Police Department said in a press release.

The 38-year-old man, who was not immediately identified by authorities, was arrested without incident, and no injuries were reported, police said.

Voting at the polling site stopped for just more than 30 minutes while officers investigated, the police said, but the location has since reopened. Police said that “charges will be forthcoming.”

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger says he expects that many counties across the state should be able to report results quicker and earlier than they have historically due to the state voting bill passed in 2021.

Improvements in SB 202 have clarified that county election officials can begin pre-processing and early tabulation of all ballots, including all early voting and absentee ballots, before polls close at 7 p.m. local time on Tuesday, he said at a press conference on Tuesday.

“We’ll be updating every 10 minutes for a period of time, and we’ll be getting those results out as soon we can, because we know that voters want to see those results as quick as possible,” Raffensperger said.

Roughly one-third of the state’s 159 counties are participating in early tabulation, including most of the largely populated counties in Atlanta and the Atlanta suburbs, according to state election officials. Any precinct election officials who are involved with tabulating will be sequestered at their county office until polls close to prevent information leaks.

Turnout across Georgia continues to be extremely strong on Election Day, Raffensperger said, adding that the average wait time to vote has been roughly two minutes across the state so far.

“What we are really seeing has been an election that has been very calm and quiet and smooth,” he added.

An outage earlier Tuesday of the Nevada secretary of state’s website has been resolved, and there is no evidence it was caused by malicious activity, Nevada officials said.

“The outage did not alter or disrupt our plans for Election Night Reporting,” the elections division of Nevada’s secretary of state tweeted Tuesday afternoon after voters inquired about the website being offline.

The outage was due to a technical issue, IT administrators said in a report that the Nevada secretary of state’s office shared with CNN.

“Once the cause was determined, service was manually restored through the device’s backup and the state is now back online,” the report said. “Service will be restored through the primary firewall after the conclusion of the election.”

If you’re just joining us, here’s what you need to know to get up to speed on the state of the midterms race and what to watch for next.

What’s at stake: The 2022 midterm elections will decide control of Congress, dozens of statewide positions and ballot measures on key issues in many states.

Take a look at CNN’s hour-by-hour guide on when polls close for each state.

What the results could mean for America: At every election, candidates tell voters that this is the most critical election of their lifetimes. This time they may be right.

A Republican wave would sweep in scores of candidates who swear by ex-President Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. The former President would likely weaponize a Republican-controlled House against Biden ahead of the 2024 presidential vote; Rep. Kevin McCarthy – who would likely become Republican Speaker if Republicans win – has not ruled out impeaching Biden, despite the absence of any evidence that he’s committed an impeachable offense.

A surprise Democratic victory would allow Biden to build upon his social, health, and climate change legislation, and to balance out the judiciary with liberal judges after four years of Trump’s conservative picks.

Joining us from abroad? If you’re following the US midterm elections from another part of the world, read this helpful guide on what to know and what to watch.

What to look for tonight: Watch Harry Enten’s quick explainer ahead of Election Night to get up to speed:

House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy and his team have been working on a victory speech for the last couple of weeks as he remains extremely confident that they will take back the House tonight.

While he has prepared remarks, he’s expected to riff a bit as well. His team expects he may take the stage in the 11 p.m. ET hour if the night goes as they expect.

It’s expected that Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel and potentially former House Speaker Newt Gingrich could speak as well.

McCarthy has raised an enormous amount of money and stumped in about 40 states in the last few months — even as late as last night and today for two House challengers in Virginia, Jen Kiggans and Hung Cao, who Republicans believe will help them take back the majority.

The goal for Team McCarthy: Picking up at least 20 seats. If they clear that bar, they will consider it a very good night, giving them a comfortable governing majority. If the party picks up fewer, Republicans won’t be view tonight as strong of a showing as they hoped. which could spell problems for getting their agenda through Congress.

There have been isolated incidents of e-poll books going down in Detroit, Michigan, according to Jake Rollow, a spokesperson for Michigan Department of State.

Rollow explained: E-poll books are laptops that have a static download of the voter registration list. When voters arrive at their polling place, election workers check them in on an e-poll book to ensure they’re registered, in the right precinct, and haven’t already voted absentee. Polling sites have hardcopy paper backups to check in voters.

Rollow said he has heard a “couple reports” that e-poll books in Detroit have gone down, but “not that many.”

Detroit NAACP sent a notice saying there are some polling locations that are “experiencing computer glitches,” but reminded voters to stay in line because they can still check in via a backup paper poll book and vote with paper ballots.

Kristina Karamo, the GOP nominee for Michigan Secretary of State, tweeted misinformation on Tuesday, claiming that there was “fraud” and a “crime” in Detroit because some voters who showed up to their precincts were told they already voted absentee.

Former President Donald Trump already picked up Karamo’s claim, and said on his Truth Social account, “the absentee ballot situation in Detroit is REALLY BAD. People are showing up to Vote only to be told, “sorry, you have already voted.” This is happening in large numbers, elsewhere as well. Protest, Protest, Protest.”

But remember: Rollow from the Michigan Secretary of State’s office has already addressed this and said the issue had already been resolved.

Every precinct should have a paper backup of the voter registration list in case there are issues with the e-poll book, Rollow said. “It obviously could take a bit longer just to look somebody up on paper rather than looking them up on your computer, but it shouldn’t impact a voter’s ability to vote in any way.”

“There’s no reason to expect that it would be, you know, taking place more broadly or in any way, you know, connected across jurisdictions,” Rollow said, adding that officials would look into the issue to make sure.

As of 8 a.m. local time this morning, 2,016,147 absentee ballots had been requested in Michigan, and 1,716,264 had been submitted, Rollow added.

Polls in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, will stay open until 10 p.m. ET tonight, per an order from county judge Lesa S. Gelb.

In the order, Gelb said voters in the county were “disenfranchised and denied the fundamental right to vote … through no fault of their own.”

Attorneys petitioning for the extension of time cited a paper shortage at polling locations, that ultimately resulted in the inability to print paper ballots and necessitated the use of emergency and provisional ballots, resulting in delays for voters.

The judge ordered that all election officials be immediately alerted to the extended voting hours.

Luzerne County is located in Northeast Pennsylvania, and encompasses Wilkes-Barre, the county’s largest city.

The North Carolina Board of Elections voted unanimously to allow three polling precincts to close an hour later in North Carolina after their opening was delayed on Election Day.

Wilson County’s Sanoca Fire Station, the Gaddys Community Building polling precinct in Robeson County and the Ransom precinct in Columbus County will all close at 8:30 p.m. ET, the board voted.

Voters would vote with provisional ballot after 7:30 p.m. ET, said the board during a meeting Tuesday on the issue.

We’re “talking about less than a half dozen precincts today and there’s over 2,600 precincts here in North Carolina. So, what we’re about to do is just to make sure that polling places are open no more and no less than the statutory. The statutes require us,” said Damon Circosta, chair of the North Carolina Board of Elections ahead of the vote.

Extending the closing “offers consistency amongst all three of those precincts and it makes sure that we’re not staying. Keeping our election workers there so terribly late at night, so it’s balancing the needs of the voters with the needs of election administration,” said the chair.

The Gaddys Community Building polling place in Robeson County “opened approximately one hour late because the building was locked and the voters did not have the correct access code to enter the building,” North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE) Executive Director Karen Brinson Bell said.

“Additionally, three sites in Columbus County were delayed in opening due to the check-in computers not being connected properly to the printers and therefore the workers were unable to print the voters’ authorization to vote forms,” she said.

NCSBE will start releasing initial results at approximately 7:30 p.m. ET for all counties where the polls close at that time.

In all less than 45 voters were impacted and several returned or were offered provisional ballots, according to the board.

An extra verification process to ensure voters didn’t vote both by mail and in person could delay counting ballots and getting election results in Philadelphia, a spokesperson for the Philadelphia City Commissioners told CNN on Tuesday.

“We’re going to go as fast as we can go; I don’t think anybody knows yet” when the count will be done, Kevin Feeley, a spokesperson for the commissioners’ office told CNN.

Philadelphia elections officials have received around 120,000 mail-in ballots so far — a much smaller number than the over 350,000 mail-in ballots they counted during the 2020 general election, Feeley said, adding that means it will likely not take as long to count and verify the votes as the 2020 election did.

Some background: Delays could happen because the city commissioners voted Tuesday morning for elections officials to do what’s known as a “reconciliation process” during the Election Day count – where elections officials check to make sure voters who voted by mail also didn’t show up to vote in person. Other counties do the reconciliation process after votes are tallied.

“That’s probably going to be sometime tomorrow, the reconciliation,” Feeley told CNN. “And that impacts when we’re finished. We’re going to go as fast as we can go; we’re going to have shifts working around the clock.”

Voters head to the polls Tuesday to elect federal and state leaders in the 2022 Midterm elections.

Here are some scenes showing voters casting their ballots and polling workers and volunteers working the voting precincts across the country.

An apparent cyberattack on the website of the clerk of Champaign County, Illinois, caused a brief delay in the clerk’s ability to access their registration information on Tuesday morning but did not prevent anyone from voting, County Clerk Aaron Ammons told CNN.

“We haven’t had to turn anyone away,” Ammons said, adding that the issue had been mitigated by early Tuesday afternoon. “We’ve had the inability for certain sites to pull up our voter registration program. It would give us an error message on connectivity.”

It’s unclear who was responsible for the apparent hack. Ammon said his IT team has been fending off hacks for the last month that try to knock their website offline. Voters should know that their ability to cast a ballot has not affected by the incident, he added. Champaign County is in east central Illinois.

“Please stay in line!” Champaign County said on its Facebook page. “Election judges and staff are doing everything they can to process voters according to the requirements of election law while navigating these attacks.”

The incident is an example of the unpredictable events on Election Day that federal, state and local officials have long been drilling for. Local government websites are not involved in tallying votes but typically provide voting information to the public.

At a briefing with reporters Tuesday, CISA officials said they hadn’t heard about the apparent attack but would look into it.

As Democrats brace for midterm losses, the intra-party blame is game set to boil over in the weeks ahead, prompting the White House to separate President Joe Biden and his agenda from the list of targets.

The White House circulated an Election Day memo to allies underscoring that more than two dozen individual poll results demonstrate the popularity of the key individual elements of Biden’s agenda, ranging from his cornerstone legislative achievements to his actions on student loans, marijuana and his administration’s response to Covid-19.

“Before all the votes have even been cast, pundits are declaring that these midterms have been a referendum on the President’s agenda – nothing could be further from the truth,” the memo, which was obtained by CNN, says in its introduction.

Yet even Biden has acknowledged that his agenda, no matter how it polls in isolation, hasn’t translated to an American public that has taken a largely negative view on the direction of the country. “We’ve passed so many good things … people haven’t realized how good they are yet,” he said at a fundraising event last week.

The effort to get in front of expected losses comes after months of frontline Democratic candidates actively seeking to separate themselves from Biden. It’s a reality advisors say Biden doesn’t take personally. After 36 years in the Senate, Biden’s view has long been that the candidates know what’s best for their state or district. But as Biden’s approval ratings started to inch up in the last few months, White House officials have bristled at the view that he was a singular drag on Democrats.

Instead, they have pointed to the combination of history and economic headwinds. Nearly all of Biden’s recent predecessors that one-party control of Washington faced major midterm losses. The fact Americans have faced persistent inflation near four-decade highs only compounds the political difficulty.

Election Day voting in Wisconsin is going smoothly, without any significant problems, said Wisconsin’s top election official Tuesday.

“As of this afternoon, there are no major issues that have been reported,” Meagan Wolfe, the nonpartisan administrator of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, said at a press conference. “Election Day in Wisconsin is going smoothly.”

The commission had received some “very minor reports earlier today of lines at the polling places around the state,” as well as “routine calls and questions,” Wolfe added.

Polls in the state close at 8 p.m. central time, and those waiting in line at the time can still vote, Wolfe reminded voters.

As of Tuesday morning, voters had requested about 815,000 absentee ballots and returned about 742,000 of them, including about 318,000 in-person absentee ballots, she noted.

Acknowledging that some jurisdictions could take until Wednesday morning to complete their tallies of absentee ballots, Wolfe said, “election officials are always going to value accuracy over speed.”

“There are observers in that same room until the very last ballot is counted,” Wolfe said. “There really is no part of the election administration process that’s done behind a locked door.”

A video of an election official explaining a problem with vote tabulations outside a polling location in Maricopa County, Arizona, earlier Tuesday morning is spreading on social media, clocking up millions of views. The video, which was posted by a Republican activist, has already been viewed more than 2.5 million times on Twitter.

The clip is largely being amplified by right-wing personalities, some of whom are claiming — without evidence — that the machine issues are a sign of fraud.

“We’ve anticipated legitimate mistakes and issues with election infrastructure being reframed as fraud,” Kate Starbird, an associate professor at the University of Washington who studies the spread of disinformation, told CNN.

The video shows an election worker in the Phoenix suburb of Anthem explaining a problem with tabulation machines rejecting ballots.

Election officials quickly responded, saying they were working on the issue and that voters whose ballots were not being accepted by a tabulation machine could put their ballot in a secure box and they would be counted after the polls close.

“No one is being disenfranchised. And none of this indicates any fraud or anything of that sort. This is a technical issue,” said Bill Gates, chairman of the county’s Board of Supervisors and a Republican himself.

A county spokeswoman added that the poll worker in the viral video did what they were supposed to. “That poll worker at Anthem was doing their job, providing voters the information they need to participate in this election, and the options they have. He was calm and transparent,” said Megan Gilbertson of the county’s election department.

CNN’s Bob Ortega contributed to this reporting

Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff stopped at John O’Groats restaurant on Election Day, joining Los Angeles mayoral candidate Rep. Karen Bass to greet diners inside.

“Today’s Election Day, so please do vote,” the vice president said to a table.

“Oh you voted, thank you for voting,” she said to another table.

At one point, when the vice president entered the second room of the restaurant, a woman stood up and pointed to an “I voted” sticker on her chest, prompting Harris to cheer.

“Remind everybody you know about the stakes,” Harris said. “Lots at stake.”

Harris and Emhoff went around taking photos with diners, and Emhoff was overheard telling one diner to “get the pancakes.”

The vice president ordered two dozen biscuits, saying, “I am not playing around with biscuits” and joking that Emhoff could have only one. She got butter and jam on the side before going into the kitchen to thank the cooks.

The voting hours at two precincts in Cobb County, Georgia, were extended by a state court judge after the election sites opened later than expected Tuesday morning.

One precinct will be open until 7:06 p.m. ET and another will be open to 7:45 p.m. ET, according to the Cobb County government website, which said the hours were extended by Superior Court Judge Gregory Poole.

Poll workers across Michigan are reporting higher voter turnout than expected, said Michigan Department of State spokesperson Jake Rollow.

“We’re just hearing from election workers across the state that they’re pleasantly surprised by how many people are showing up to vote in person,” he said.

Rollow said he still expects all ballots will be counted by 8 p.m. local time on Wednesday, which is within 24 hours of polls closing.

As of 11:30 a.m. local time today, 2,018,929 absentee ballots had been requested in Michigan, and 1,758,987 had been submitted, according to Rollow. As of 12:30 p.m. today, there were 3,666 same-day registrations across the state, he said.

A mother and son were removed as poll workers in Johns Creek, Georgia, minutes before polls opened this morning, after a social media post surfaced showing them attending the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

“I stood up for what’s right today in Washington DC. This election was a sham. Mike Pence is a traitor. I was tear gassed FOUR times. I have pepper spray in my throat. I stormed the Capitol building. And my children have had the best learning experience of their lives,” one Facebook post shared with CNN by state election officials read.

“I am aware that it occurred. That really is a Fulton County internal issue. They have to mitigate the risk the way they see fit given that information,” said Gabriel Sterling, chief operating officer for the Georgia Secretary of State’s office, when asked about it by CNN’s Erin Burnett Tuesday.

“I think it would have been better if they found out earlier potentially and worked with the people, but since it was so last minute and it came to light so late, I leave it to Fulton County. But yes, that did happen earlier this morning,” Sterling said.

The social media post is under “investigation for concern,” Nadine Williams, Fulton County interim director of registration and elections, said at a press conference earlier on Tuesday.

“We decided to remove them until we could complete the investigation,” Williams said.

“We just want to make sure the election is secure,” she added.

Social media posts and a comment made during a poll worker event was brought to the Fulton County board’s attention by a peer. Williams said the secretary of state’s office was consulted on the matter, and the state office agreed that there was a concern.

Williams said she was not at liberty to comment on the nature of the social media post when asked by a reporter, but she confirmed that it included a threat about election security.

“There were some things in there that were not allowed. You cannot take videos or photos in the election. That’s what brought it to our attention,” Williams said.

In eight US states, voters are sent a mail-in ballot automatically. Across the US, more than half of states require that mail-in ballots be received by Election Day. In 19 states, ballots can be counted if they are postmarked on or before Election Day.

The five most expensive Senate races of 2022 have seen nearly $1.3 billion in spending across the primary and general elections, according to OpenSecrets, a staggering sum that speaks to the massive amounts of money flooding the political system.

Leading the way is the Pennsylvania Senate race, where Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz are squaring off in the general election. All told, nearly $375 million has been spent on the race this cycle, OpenSecrets found.

Here’s how the other races in the top five stack up in terms of total spending:

Pennsylvania was also the most expensive Senate race of the 2016 cycle, when Republican Pat Toomey was running for reelection. Total spending in that race was around $179 million, according to OpenSecrets — less than half the amount spent on the 2022 contest.

What numbers like these suggest is that attempts — earlier this century — to lessen the impact of money in politics have failed utterly. There is more money than ever before, and it’s difficult to track where some of the money, spent by nonprofit groups that aren’t required to disclose their donors, comes from.

Gabriel Sterling, chief operating offer for Georgia’s secretary of state’s office, says voter turnout across the Peach State has been “steady,” although it’s hard to “it’s always difficult to know in the middle of the day how it’s going.”

Majority of polling locations have no lines, with average wait time of about two minutes, he told CNN Tuesday. “It’s been a very efficient process.”

Sterling also pointed to the record number of absentee ballots received in Georgia. It stands at about 234,000 ballots as of this morning, which is up from 2018’s record of 213,0000 ballots, he said, adding that it takes a lot of pressure off officials when they start counting.

“We set records for early vote turnout. Between early vote and absentee — and absentee set a new record as of this morning of 234,000 for a midterm. That really takes away pressure off Election Day, because … when we start today, nearly 37% of all our active voters had already cast a ballot,” he said.

Sterling said that new laws passed in Georgia clarified that early in-person votes and absentee votes can be tabulated early, “which will hopefully get us some earlier returns in the 7:15, 7:45 and 8:00 hour from even some of our larger counties.”

Watch:

Poll workers are keeping Americans voting on Election Day. Take a look at some photos from today showing poll workers keeping poll locations going.

Wall Street is confident the midterm election will lead to gridlock in Washington, but traders say this week’s inflation report may prove to be far more consequential to markets.

Markets have rallied in recent days as investors bet Republicans will take control of at least one chamber of commerce, leading to divided government. Traders typically believe gridlock is good – because it means one party can’t push through legislation that messes things up.

In this case, that means Republicans can’t enact unfunded tax cuts and Democrats can’t push through unfunded spending programs, both of which would worsen inflation and lift interest rates.

“Less government, complete gridlock, will probably benefit the stock market,” Peter Tuchman, a veteran New York Stock Exchange floor trader, told CNN on Tuesday.

If Republicans win control of at least the House of Representatives, markets may have a “muted” reaction because that is widely expected, Goldman Sachs told clients in a report Monday.

Andrew Frankel, co-president of Stuart Frankel, warned that a surprisingly strong night for Democrats that allows them to retain control of both the House and Senate would cause a “meaningful move lower” for stocks.

Multiple NYSE traders told CNN that the midterm election may be overshadowed by Thursday’s consumer price index, an inflation gauge that has become arguably the most important economic metric of the month.

Maricopa County, Arizona, officials said that tabulating machines at about a fifth of their 223 voting locations were rejecting ballots as voting got underway on Election Day.

According to county officials, the problem related to passwords being entered too many times, activating built-in security features. By 10 a.m. local time, county officials said the problems were being addressed and that they did not anticipate delays in voting.

“We’ve got about 20% of the locations out there where there’s an issue with the tabulator where some of the ballots, after people have voted them, they try and run them through the tabulator and they’re not going through,” said Bill Gates, chair of the county’s Board of Supervisors.

Gates said the elections division was working to fix the problem, but that in the meantime voters could put ballots that aren’t properly read into a secure box on the tabulator machine.

Gates said that bipartisan teams will bring the ballots to the county’s election center, where they will be counted after the polls close at 7 p.m. local time.

“No one is being disenfranchised. And none of this indicates any fraud or anything of that sort. This is a technical issue,” said Gates.

The tabulator problems blew up on social media and right-wing media after a post showing an election worker in the Phoenix suburb of Anthem explaining the problem to voters. Figures like Donald Trump Jr., among others, reposted tweets raising concerns about problems in Arizona and in some cases suggesting it meant that the election might be “stolen.”

Here is a message from Chairman Bill Gates and Recorder Stephen Richer with an update for @maricopacounty voters on Elections Day. pic.twitter.com/OkQczCklGb

Stephen Richer, the Maricopa County recorder, expressed disappointment rather than surprise at the notion the problems were being misrepresented in such a fashion.

“Obviously, some people will exploit it for that purpose,” Richer said. “We’re very concerned about that.”

A county spokeswoman added that the poll worker featured in the viral video did what they were supposed to. “That poll worker at Anthem was doing their job, providing voters the information they need to participate in this election, and the options they have. He was calm and transparent,” said Megan Gilbertson of the county’s election department.

Hear more from CNN’s Sara Sidner:

In a public appearance at a political event in Suffolk County, New York gubernatorial hopeful Rep. Lee Zeldin talked about his plans to tackle crime in the state and how his approach differs from that of his competitor, Gov. Kathy Hochul.

Zeldin took a shot at his competitor, saying that her campaign is solely for re-election while he runs on issues.

“It’s really only been in the last few days that, all of a sudden, (Hochul) says that now she has a plan to fight crime,” Zeldin said, according to WCBS. “But, then, she followed it up with trying to ridicule New Yorkers who want to lock up criminals, saying that it’s a conspiracy, that it’s data denying. And she’s kept digging deeper and deeper a hole over the last couple of weeks.”

He encouraged young Republicans who might eye public office in the future to stay true to themselves.

“It’s not by us making believe we’re someone else or something else,” Zeldin said. “The reason we’re going to win this race and make history, the reason why we’re going to paint all of Suffolk County red in the House races, the reason why we’re going to paint Suffolk County red in these state legislative races, the reason why we’re going to make history is by all of you being true, all of us being true to exactly what got us involved in the first place.”

Zeldin said his ideas will ensure the state government rolls back pro-criminal laws, holds district attorneys responsible if they refuse to enforce the law, and back New Yorkers in law enforcement, he said.

“(New York City Mayor Eric Adams) says that he wants judges to have discretion. He’s right. … We need district attorneys doing their job, we don’t have a recall in this state — but, what we do have, is the New York State Constitution says that a governor can remove a DA who refuses to enforce the law. I pledge that on the first day that I’m in office, I’m going to tell the Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg that he’s being removed for his refusal to enforce the law.”

It’s Election Day in America. Here’s everything you need to know about when polls close and how to watch CNN’s special coverage.

How to follow CNN’s election coverage

CNN’s Election Night in America Special Coverage will stream live started at 9 a.m. ET on today and will run through midnight ET on Thursday, Nov. 10, without requiring a cable log-in via CNN.com and CNN OTT and mobile apps under “TV Channels,” or CNNgo where available.

CNN’s decision desk will be monitoring results and will make projections accordingly.

Election resources

CNN has numerous election-related resources available to readers:

How to follow election night in America | CNN Politics

Hear CNN political director David Chalian explain how CNN projects winners:

As America heads to the polls, voters have been receiving election stickers after casting their ballots.

Check out these images showing a variety of election stickers around the country.

Florida officials warned the US Justice Department that federal election monitors are not allowed inside polling places under state law, pushing back against federal plans for monitors in the state.

In a letter to DOJ dated Monday, Florida state elections officials argued that federal officials are not included on the list of people allowed inside polling places, and even if they did qualify, it “would be counterproductive and could potentially undermine confidence in the election.”

The Justice Department announced plans to send elections monitors to 24 states, including three counties in Florida – Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach. The practice of sending federal election monitors to local jurisdictions dates back decades.

But the department did “not detail the need for federal monitors in these counties,” Florida Department of State General Counsel Brad McVay wrote to DOJ in the letter.

The Florida Department of State will send its own monitors to the three jurisdictions, according to the letter, to “ensure that there is no interference with the voting process.”

Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd, an appointee of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is running for reelection, told reporters Tuesday morning that the request by DOJ to go inside polling places was a deviation from years past when the agency sent monitors to Florida. The DOJ under former President Donald Trump sent monitors to six Florida counties in 2020, but Byrd said they kept tabs from outside the polling location.

“This is not to be confrontational in any way,” Byrd said. “They sent a letter to the counties asking for permission to be in the polling places. We told them that under state law, that is not permitted, and we asked them to respect state law, and that they can go there and do their job, but they have to do that job outside of the polling place.”

Asked why the state didn’t send a similar letter in 2020 when Trump’s DOJ monitored six Florida counties, Byrd said there was no change in policy.

The Justice Department told CNN it has received the letter but declined to comment.

Read more here.

Former President Donald Trump confirmed Tuesday that he voted for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, predicting a “great night” for Republicans.

“Yes, I did,” Trump told reporters when asked if he cast a ballot for DeSantis outside a polling location in Palm Beach where he voted.

“I think we’re going to have a very great night and it’s exciting,” he added.

Trump cast his ballot shortly after 11:30 a.m. ET at the Morton and Barbara Mandel Recreation Center in Palm Beach, just minutes away from his Mar-a-Lago estate where he plans to watch election returns this evening with dozens of aides, allies, and local Republicans. He arrived with former first lady Melania Trump and briefly took questions outside after voting indoors.

The former president’s political future may largely depend on Tuesday’s midterm outcomes, as he looks for his handpicked and endorsed candidates in key federal and statewide races to prevail. Major losses for Trump-backed candidates could create obstacles for his 2024 presidential campaign, which Trump is eyeing to announce one week from today.

At a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, Trump referred to the Florida governor as “Ron DeSanctimonious.”

Attorney Lin Wood tells CNN he will appear before the special grand jury that is investigating efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia as a material witness tomorrow morning.

The Special Purpose Grand Jury that is being led by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis returns tomorrow after taking a roughly one-month hiatus around the election.

Wood, a staunch Trump supporter, is a veteran defense attorney who focused on civil litigation and has worked on high-profile cases in the Atlanta-area.

He pushed a series of cases after the 2020 Presidential election that were rapidly dismissed by the courts, and described as disinformation by state election officials.

Investigators are also interested in hearing from Wood about a meeting he held at his South Carolina home with other supporters of the former president working on election challenges after the 2020 election.

CNN has reached out to the Fulton County DA for comment.

You might hear that word — “wave” — thrown around this week if Republicans take some power from Democrats on Election Day. They’ll argue they have been given a mandate from American voters.

Republicans could seriously underperform their potential, considering President Biden’s approval rating and the historical precedent, and still pick up five seats and the House majority.

Is that a wave? Power will have changed dramatically. But it feels closer to a course correction than a major change in government. Here’s a full list of House majority changessince the start of the modern party system just before the Civil War.

Sean Trende of RealClearPolitics and the American Enterprise Institute argued back in 2018, just before Democrats reclaimed the House from Republicans, that it’s a wave election if there is “a sharp, unusually large shift in the national balance of power, across multiple levels of government.” You’d need GOP victories in multiple governor’s races and a Senate majority to make the change in power be reflected across multiple levels of government.

Trende added some statistical criteria to argue an election is a wave election if it is outside the shift in power during an election. It might be easier to put a round number as a baseline and argue a swing of 50 or more House seats is a wave.

By the 50-seat rule, the 2010 midterm election was certainly a Tea Party wave with a change of 64 seats in the House. The 1994 Republican revolution was a wave when the GOP gained 54 seats.

The 2006 midterm where Democrats gained the majority with a 32-seat gain would not be a wave, even though it made Nancy Pelosi speaker of the House and gave Democrats a Senate majority. Trende argued 2006 could be viewed as a wave in conjunction with 2008, when Democrats gained an additional 21 seats in the House.

But the 2018 midterm, when there was a 42-seat change, would not have been a wave, even though it restored Pelosi as House speaker. In any event, with this year’s election, Republicans seem poised to once again take back control of the House.

While the White House is bracing for possible Election Day loses, Vice President Kamala Harris woke up this morning in rainy Los Angeles after telling a groups of organizers Monday night that Democrats would “see victory.”

Harris started Tuesday with her normal routine, a senior Harris adviser tells CNN, maintaining her daily morning workout and attending her normal meetings, which means receiving some form of the president’s daily briefing while in Los Angeles.

The vice president will receive regular updates on election news throughout the day from a host of staff in California, the Executive Building in DC, while aides stay connected with officials at the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and other Democratic Party officials who track midterms results closely.

Harris is scheduled to spend Election Day calling into radio stations for quick interviews meant to drive turnout at 11:00 a.m. ET and 4:30 p.m. ET while her husband, second gentleman Doug Emhoff, joins NARAL Pro-Choice America for a virtual political event on reproductive rights.

Aides are also actively discussing if and how Harris could make an in-person and public Election Day stop somewhere in L.A., but are cognizant of how the vice president’s large footprint could impede ground organizers during crucial voting hours.

The vice president and second gentleman voted by filling out mail-in-ballots, which Emhoff said he would drop off after a rally on Monday.

In the evening, Harris will watch the returns come in, but her location to watch return remains in flux and aides would not disclose exactly what the options are.

Voting rights advocates in key states said the first hours of voting in Tuesday’s midterms appeared to be going smoothly with only isolated problems reported.

“What we are seeing are things that we usually see on Election Day,” said Susannah Goodman, director of election security at Common Cause. “Sometimes voters are going in and one of the voting machines isn’t working or lines are a little longer.”

The key battleground state of Pennsylvania is “not experiencing anything systemic,” Khalif Ali, executive director of Common Cause Pennsylvania, told reporters late Tuesday morning.

He said there were a handful of calls about polls opening late in eastern parts of the state and some isolated incidents of electioneering occurring too close to polling places in Allegheny County. He said poll workers quickly addressed the problem by moving the people farther away.

A key issue in Pennsylvania remains the thousands of mail-in ballots are risk of being rejected because of missing or incorrect dates on the return envelope. Ali said he does not know how many ballots are affected statewide.

In Florida, Common Cause’s Amy Keith said more than 15,000 mail-in ballots had been flagged across the Sunshine State for signature problems or other issues as late last week.

Under state law, voters have until 5 p.m. ET Thursday to fix problems with those ballots. But Keith encouraged voters to go online to track their ballots and quickly resolve any issues before potential disruptions from tropical storm Nicole, which is bearing down on the state.

2020 election lies have officials on edge for problems at polling places and lawsuits Tuesday | CNN Politics

An election official in Philadelphia on Tuesday told CNN nearly 3,600 mail-in ballots risk being rejected because of incorrect information, missing dates or missing secrecy envelopes.

The increase of roughly 200 ballots was added over the weekend. Roughly 250 of the 3,600 mail-in ballots have been cured. People who weren’t able to cure their ballots at city hall can still vote provisionally today.

On Saturday, election officials in Philadelphia said more than 3,400 mail-in ballots risked being rejected because of incorrect information, missing dates or missing secrecy envelopes.

Philadelphia City Commissioners’ Chairwoman Lisa Deeley released the affected voters’ names and urged them to take immediate steps to get replacement ballots.

The action by Deeley came after the state Supreme Court last week barred local election officials from counting ballots with missing or incorrect dates on the return envelope.

“I am extremely disappointed in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision with regard to undated and incorrectly dated ballots,” Deeley said in a statement. “Handwritten dates are not material and the lack of such a date should not be a reason to disenfranchise a voter.”

Pennsylvania’s requirement that voters sign and provide a handwritten date on their ballot return envelope has been the subject of litigation for months. And on Friday, several Pennsylvania groups, including the state branches of the NAACP and the League of Women Voters, filed a lawsuit in federal court, challenging the state’s plan to not count undated ballots.

The lawsuit calls a missing or incorrect date “a meaningless technicality” and argues that throwing out a ballot on those grounds violates federal civil rights law.

As voters head to the polls on Election Day, more than 45 million pre-election ballots have already been cast across the 47 states where figures were available, according to data from elections officials, Edison Research and Catalist.

Pre-election voting has been ahead of the 2018 pace across the states where data is available for the last three cycles. However, it’s still too early to know if overall turnout will reach 2018 levels, as voting patterns may have changed in the last few years.

Texas still has the most pre-election votes, with more than 5.4 million ballots cast. Florida has had more than 4.9 million ballots cast, and California has more than 4.7 million. Georgia, with more than 2.5 million ballots cast, and North Carolina, with more than 2.1 million, are the only other states with more than 2 million ballots cast so far.

The number of ballots cast will continue to increase as more mail is delivered, voters drop off their ballots and election officials update their tallies.

Some voter data comes from Catalist, a company that provides data, analytics and other services to Democrats, academics and nonprofit issue-advocacy organizations and is giving insights into who is voting before November.

Lavonne Cobb voted today with her economic future in mind – and that’s why she said she cast her ballot for Democratic candidates.

“Social Security is a big issue when it comes to voting,” said Cobb, 50, pausing to talk for a moment as she left the county civic center in Marietta, Georgia. “I came out to make sure that I put in my vote so that my generation will have some type of security in the future.”

For all the millions of dollars in TV ads – about a quarter billion in the Senate race alone during Georgia’s primary and general elections – Cobb expressed exhaustion and excitement at Election Day.

“It’s entertaining,” she said of the barrage of ads, “but I am so ready for it to be over.”

She supported Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, as she did two years ago.

“He hasn’t seemed to let me down,” Cobb said. “You know when you go to a restaurant, you stick with what you know, then you don’t have to worry about being disappointed? I stuck with what I know.”

Watch here:

Some check-in machines at voting centers in Bell County, Texas, are not working due to synchronization issues tied to Sunday’s time change, according to an official.

“Some of our check-in machines … did not automatically update to the time change and as a result, because of the security involved with these things, they were not allowed to come online because the computer detected there’s a synchronization issue,” Bell County Public Information Officer James Stafford told CNN Tuesday morning. “Out of security, they were not allowed to come online, so we weren’t able to check people in at those locations.”

Stafford stressed that the issue only affected check-in machines and not any voting tablets or voting tabulators, he said.

Check-in machines at eight of the county’s 42 voting centers were affected by this issue before polls opened, Stafford said. Two hours later, after polls opened, there are two voting centers still having this issue, he said.

Voters in Bell County may vote in any of the 42 voting centers in the county. People who came to locations affected by the check-in machine issues were told about alternate locations nearby, Stafford said.

CNN’s Caroll Alvarado contributed to this report.

US officials “continue to see no specific or credible threat to disrupt election infrastructure” as polls open across the country for the midterm elections, a senior US cybersecurity official told reporters Tuesday morning.

Officials have not seen any significant hacking activity on Election Day that they can attribute to any given hacking group, an official from the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency told reporters in a background briefing.

Officials are expecting the possibility of low-level cyberattacks that may temporarily knock state and local websites offline, but nothing that will prevent voters from casting a ballot, the CISA official said.

“We continue to remain in high confidence in the security or resilience of the elections,” the official added.

US Cyber Command, the Defense Department’s hacking unit, and the National Security Agency are “sharing real-time” intelligence with government agencies to help defend the midterm elections from foreign threats, the four-star general who heads both operations said in a statement Tuesday.

“We continue to refine what we learned from the 2018 and 2020 elections,” Gen. Paul Nakasone said. “We generate insight to enable defense of the homeland, and ultimately impose costs by degrading and exposing foreign adversary capabilities and operations.”

Cyber Command has taken a much more active role in defending US elections from foreign interference since Russia’s 2016 intervention. That included an operation during the 2018 midterm elections that temporarily blocked internet access for a notorious Russia troll farm.

Nakasone reiterated what US intelligence officials have said for weeks: They are wary of foreign influence campaigns that continue after Election Day as the vote tallies come in.

“Our work does not end on Nov. 8,” Nakasone said.

Twelve states activated National Guard troops for local and state-level cyber election support, according to a Defense Department spokesperson.

Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Iowa, Illinois, Louisiana, North Carolina, New Mexico, West Virginia and Washington state activated National Guard troops for cyber election support. A total of 92 members were activated across the 12 states to assist, the spokesperson added.

During election primaries in May and June, the National Guard provided cyber support to eight states, the spokesperson added.

CNN’s Barbara Starr and Ellie Kaufman contributed reporting to this post.

Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson cast his ballot with his wife, Jane, at a polling location in Oshkosh on Tuesday. Afterwards, he spoke to reporters, saying his message to every Republican voter is to “get out and vote.”

“I just want to encourage every Republican to get out and vote. Assume this is a dead even race,” he said. “I’d like to win by a wide margin — not for partisan purposes, but literally, so we’ll send a very strong signal to our Democrat colleagues that their policies aren’t working.”

The Wisconsin Republican, who’s been locked in a dead even race with Democratic Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, told reporters he’s “cautiously optimistic” about his chances on election night.

“But again, my message to Republican voters is assume this is a dead even race, get out and vote,” he said. “Get every one of your friends, family members that are going to vote for Republicans, get there get out to vote.”

Watch his comments in full:

A federal judge barred poll workers at an election site in Beaumont, Texas, from engaging in certain conduct that Black voters said was intimidating.

US District Judge Michael J. Truncale, of the Eastern District of Texas, issued the temporary restraining order Monday in a case brought by Beaumont’s chapter of the NAACP, which alleged that White poll workers spoke aggressively to Black voters, hovered too close behind Black voters while the voters operated voting machines, and declined to help Black voters cast their ballots.

Truncale prohibited poll workers in Jefferson County from engaging in the specific behaviors outlined in the NAACP complaint. However, he rejected the NAACP’s request that he remove the official who is presiding as the election judge at the voting site where the conduct allegedly occurred.

The lawsuit put forward declarations from several poll workers, voters and a local pastor who had been at the election site, a community center where a vast majority of voters are Black. They said they witnessed White poll workers aggressively demand that Black voters loudly recite their addresses, even after those voters’ identities had been confirmed, while making no such demands of White voters.

They also alleged that the White poll watchers and workers were following Black voters to the voting machines and standing close enough behind the votes that they could watch them mark their ballots. Additionally they said that the White poll workers refused to help Black voters insert their ballots into a ballot scanning machine, while giving that assistance to White voters.

“I witnessed White poll watchers standing so close to voters at the polling booth that they could watch the voters marking their ballots,” a poll worker said in a declaration. “The poll watcher was not even two feet away from the voter. This happened twice over the course of the afternoon. On each occasion, the voter was Black and appeared intimidated by the behavior of the poll watchers. I had to ask the poll watcher to step back and stop looking at the voter’s ballot as it was being completed.”

Airon Reynolds, a pastor of a local church who is Black, attested that he had tried to talk the Mary Beth Bowling, the election judge, and county clerk Laurie Leister last week about the alleged behavior. He said Bowling refused his request that she change her behavior and that Leister would also not direct Bowling to stop the conduct.

Attorneys for the county officials did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.

Voters in Bensalem, in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, told CNN what motivated them to get out and vote in today’s midterm elections, including issues around the economy, crime and abortion.

Rosanne and Jack Payson have lived in the Philadelphia suburb for 45 years.

“I don’t like Donald Trump. Voting for a Republican like Mastriano means that we’re going to have more trouble,” Jack Payson told CNN’s Jason Carroll.

GOP gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano is facing Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro in the governor’s race.

Rosanne Payson said the Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade is one of the issues that motivated her to vote.

“The Roe issue bothers me. I think women should be able to choose. … It is not simply that they don’t want the child and they want an abortion, there’s other issues involved,” she said.

Pennsylvania voter Brittany Castor said she identifies as a Republican and has voted for candidates in both parties in her life, but the issue of a woman’s right to choose “absolutely” drove her to the polls this year.

Joseph and Susan O’Rourke said that crime, the economy and the border are the key issues for them.

Joseph O’Rourke said that GOP Senate candidate Mehmet Oz has spoken well about those three issues. On the gubernatorial side, he said while “I don’t think we have a good selection,” he voted for Mastriano.

“If you listen to Mastriano, he is all law enforcement and everything, but then Josh Shapiro was the attorney general so, you know, it’s a difficult choice to make,” he said.

He added that, like other swing voters in Bucks County, he voted for former Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, and then voted for President Biden.

On swing voters in Pennsylvania, voter Jack Payson said, “I really think that it is good that people are flexible, that they should take into account all of the issues, that they should have the right to change their mind.”

Voter William Castelberg Jr. said that crime and the economy brought him to the polls.

“Crime is big, you know, it’s really big in the city of Philadelphia. I would hate to see it come to the suburbs here in Bucks County. The second thing is inflation. You know, there’s so many people that can’t afford day to day, it’s sad,” he told Carroll.

Here are some demographics of the state:

Moving to the state of Georgia changed how former New York resident Andy Hill perceived the importance of his vote.

“I lived in New York previously, and it never seemed urgent to vote for my own rights in New York. But it seems urgent here,” he told CNN, acknowledging the important of voting in the battleground state.

Hill voted at an Atlanta polling station on Tuesday morning.

As a seminary student, he said what drives him to vote is whether or not the government protects basic human rights.

“I saw what the Supreme Court did to women’s right in the last term, and it made me really concerned as a gay man that they’re not going to be standing up for my rights in the next term if that comes up for debate,” he said. “So I want to make sure the people who are in the office both at the state level and federal level have my rights in mind and are interested in protecting my rights.”

Watch here:

During her first public campaign event on Election Day, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul stumped with local leaders at an Upper East Side subway station in New York City, where she talked about one of the hottest-button issues: crime.

Hochul said crime — a major point in opponent Rep. Lee Zeldin’s campaign — is ultimately not a campaign issue for her because she’s been working on it during her tenure as governor already.

“The difference is soundbites versus actually sound policy. It’s real easy to get out there stand on a street corner and scream about crime, but when you oppose every single sensible gun safety piece of legislation that we have put forward here in the state, but also when you had a chance to stand up in Congress for the first meaningful gun safety legislation bipartisan – other Republicans voted for this – he could not even do that. He didn’t bother to show up in Congress to vote to fund the police – so the record is clear,” she said, according to CNN affiliate NY1.

“We’re working on it; he talks about it,” Hochul added.

“If they are thinking Lee Zeldin is going to defend democracy when he had a chance to stand up and call out the insurrectionists, what did he do that day? He went and blamed the Democrats and voted against certifying Joe Biden as our president. That’s how you subvert democracy. That’s exhibit A of subverting democracy,” Hochul said.

Hochul also said she and New York City Mayor Eric Adams are “partners” in fighting crime.

“This is not an election issue for me. … We said we’re going to partner together, for the first time the governor of New York will actually be engaged in helping the mayor of the city. That relationship has only grown stronger; you can ask Mayor Adams himself,” she said.

Hochul appeared with Rep. Carolyn Maloney, Rep. Jerry Nadler, state Sen. Liz Krueger, Assembly member Rebecca Seawright and Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine at the 86th Street station.

Asked if there is anything New Yorkers might not know about her, she said it might be “how tough I am.”

“I call myself a street fighter from Buffalo. I have had to come up through a lot of tough knocks, as a lot of women do. You have to break down a lot of barriers, but that makes you stronger, makes you tougher to be able to handle the challenges,” Hochul said.

“There is nothing I can’t handle” she continued, adding the election has “elevated” her strength and desire to serve New York.

Philadelphia election officials voted Tuesday morning to reestablish a process that’s intended to catch double votes – in a move that is likely to slow down reporting of election results from the largest city in this battleground state.

The decision to reinstitute the often-tedious process, known as poll book reconciliation, could focus national attention on Philadelphia if the consequential US Senate race between Democrat John Fetterman and Republican Mehmet Oz is close.

The process compares mail ballots with poll books from Election Day to ensure people have not voted twice.

The 2-1 vote by the Philadelphia city commissioner early Tuesday follows a lawsuit from a Republican group that alleged Philadelphia was inviting double votes with a plan to scale back on poll book reconciliation. Although Judge Anne Marie B. Coyle ruled against the Republican organization, she also criticized the move by city election officials to change the poll book process as “erroneous.”

A Philadelphia city election official told CNN that the elections board voted to reinstate the process Tuesday out of an abundance of caution in order to avoid any appearance of impropriety.

The official said they had intended not to use the process because they had not encountered any double votes over the course of the last three elections, and they wanted the process to move along more quickly.

Although they were not required to reinstate it because of the Republican lawsuit, the official said, but chose to do so to quell any questions that may arise after the fact. They did not want even the perception that they are doing anything wrong, the official said, but they questioned why Philadelphia was the only city to be sued by the Republican group.

During Tuesday’s meeting, Seth Bluestein, the sole Republican on the commission, said that when questions arise about delays in Philadelphia results, it’s because “Republicans targeted Philadelphia … to force us to do a procedure no other county does.”

Bluestein and Lisa Deeley, the Democratic chair of the board, voted to reinstate the procedure. Democrat Omar Sabir voted against it.

The action comes as Philadelphia and other jurisdictions in Pennsylvania grapple with another Election Day issue: The risk of thousands of mail-in ballots being rejected because of missing or incomplete handwritten dates on the return envelope.

Voters in Mercer County, New Jersey, are having to vote manually Tuesday morning due to a problem with the voting machines. The county is home to Princeton, Trenton, Ewing and Lawrence Township.

“No one will be disenfranchised and we are working on fixing the issue at present. It may delay results but we will make sure everyone votes,” said Mercer County Clerk Paula Sollami Covello in an email to CNN.

The results will likely be tallied later than usual, but Covello did not rule out the possibility that the ballots voted manually could still be tallied Tuesday night.

The county has Dominion, the machine maker, and other IT professionals coming to fix the problem. Poll workers are on hand to walk voters through the process.

“There is an issue with our Dominion scanners not reading throughout the county. There is a slot on the top of the scanner and voters can vote — and are voting manually,” Covello added. “No voter should walk away. They can vote manually.”

Voters can and should still go to their respective polling locations. Their ballot will be inserted into the “emergency slot” in the machine, according to an alert posted by Princeton, a town in Mercer County.

This is a round-up of images showing early scenes around the country on Election Day. Check out what it looks like as voters on the East Coast begin to cast their ballots:

See more photos from today here.

Democratic Senate candidate Tim Ryan arrived Tuesday morning at a polling location in Ohio to vote.

He spoke to reporters about campaigning in his home state.

“When you grow up here, it is always, you know, it’s home. It’s home. And the best part of the campaign really has been meeting people who are just like us — Different town, names, you know, different cities, different jobs, but the people are the people. They’re the same, they’re gritty, Ohio is just filled with gritty workers. Good people. You know, who just want a government who works for them. And it would be an honor to serve them,” he said.

Watch:

Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman was seen arriving at a polling location in Braddock, Pennsylvania, to vote on Tuesday morning.

Republican Senate candidate Mehmet Oz arrived in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, to vote Tuesday morning. He is running against Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman.

“I’m very proud of how I’ve run this campaign. Pennsylvania is sending a very clear message to Washington — we want less radicalism, and more balance. So I encourage everyone to vote. It is your duty,” he told reporters Tuesday.

Tuesday’s midterm elections come at a time of economic vulnerability for the United States. Recession predictions have largely turned to “when” not “if” and inflation remains stubbornly elevated. Americans are feeling the pain of rising interest rates and are facing a winter filled with geopolitical tension.

The results of Tuesday’s election will determine the makeup of a Congressional body that holds the potential to enact policies that will fundamentally change the fiscal landscape. Here’s a look at what policy issues investors will pay particular attention to as they digest election results.

President Biden enters Election Day bracing for losses, with his advisors privately acknowledging they don’t see a viable path for Democrats to hold onto their House majority.

But Biden and his senior team start the day with the view that the prospect of Democrats holding on to their Senate majority is real – even if it’s one that may take days, or longer, to be fully realized.

Biden is planning to remain behind closed doors throughout the day, but aides say he’ll stick to his regular morning schedule that includes his daily workout, morning meetings with his senior team and his daily intelligence briefing.

The White House political team will set up a short walk away from the West Wing in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, where they will be in close contact with the Democratic Party committees running point on the midterm races, as well as monitoring the legal and security issues that may develop.

Biden’s predecessors often spent Election Day popping up in radio interviews designed to drive turnout in particular states or among specific critical demographic groups – something Biden is likely to do as well.

In the evening, Biden is planning to watch the returns with his close advisors, according to an official. While the official didn’t detail where Biden planned to be when the polls closed, in big moments over the course of Biden’s first 21 months in office – like the late-night House passage of his $1 trillion infrastructure bill, he’s invited his closest advisors to the residence to watch the events play out.

The most important thing to remember for Nov. 9, the day after Election Day, is to be ready for the likelihood that the broad outcome – which party will control the House and Senate – may not be known for days or weeks.

CNN did not project that Joe Biden would win the 2020 presidential election until four days after Election Day.

It was not clear Democrats would control the Senate until two months later, on Jan. 6, 2021, when Jon Ossoff was projected to win the second of two runoff elections in Georgia.

There could be another “red mirage”: Projecting results can take time, and not because of any widespread fraud or conspiracy. Rather, it’s partially because a large portion of US voters are again casting their votes early and by mail.

While that’s far fewer pre-election votes than two years ago and the counting of these votes should go quicker in most states than it did in 2020, that doesn’t mean it will be instantaneous.

Back in 2020, multiple states had large portions of the vote uncounted as of noon the day after Election Day. That delay in 2020 was partially due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but it’s also because some states just take longer. California conducts elections mostly by mail and routinely has more than 30% of its vote uncounted by the next day.

If the race to control the House is close and certain California races are close, it’s entirely possible those races will need to play out to determine control.

Read more about what happens after Election Day here.

Overall, there are 309 women running for House, Senate or governor on midterm ballots across the country this year. Here’s how it breaks down:

Political parties have more power when they control the House or Senate by winning a majority of the seats in that chamber. The party in power controls committees that write legislation and decides which measures will get a vote on the floor.

In the House, the party with at least 218 seats has the majority and, assuming it can unite behind one candidate, selects the Speaker of the House. In the Senate, the party with 51 votes has the majority.

The Democrats’ majority in Congress is currently razor-thin: The Senate is a 50-50 split (with Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote giving them the advantage) and Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s control of the House rests on a slim margin. In 2022, all 435 House seats and 35 of the 100 Senate seats are on the ballot.

Why are only a third of senators up for election? Senators serve six-year terms, and there are federal elections every two years. The seats are broken up into three classes, and about a third of the Senate is on the ballot every two years. The 2022 election features Class III senators. See the race ratings by Inside Elections.

Why are all 435 House members up for election every two years? The House of Representatives is the piece of the federal government that is closest to the people. Putting House members up for election every two years allows voters more direct and immediate control of the direction of their government.

Read up on other key terms to know for election night here.

Pennsylvania Democratic Senate nominee John Fetterman’s campaign has gone to a federal court to try to have Pennsylvania voters’ mail-in ballots counted if they weren’t signed with a valid date. A divided Pennsylvania Supreme Court recently ordered counties to refrain from counting mailed ballots with missing or invalid dates on their outer envelopes. But Fetterman is hoping the federal court will supersede the state court’s decision.

The question of whether mailed ballots with incorrect or missing dates can be counted is one of the hottest voting disputes in the pivotal state leading up to Election Day.

“The date on a mail ballot envelope thus has no bearing on a voter’s qualifications and serves no purpose other than to erect barriers to qualified voters exercising their fundamental constitutional right to vote. This unnecessary impediment violates the Civil Rights Act and the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution,” attorneys for Fetterman and the Democrats wrote in their new lawsuit filed Monday in the US District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania.

Republicans have advocated for strict rules around mailed-in voting that would force ballots with missing information to be rejected.

Remember: Fetterman’s race against Republican nominee Mehmet Oz is one of the year’s marquee Senate races. Republicans view holding on to the seat of retiring GOP Sen. Pat Toomey as key to their hopes of capturing the Senate majority, while Democrats see flipping seats in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, both states carried by now-President Joe Biden in 2020, as the best way to gird against losses elsewhere.

CNN’s Jessica Dean contributed to this report.

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President Joe Biden offered a bluntly dire assessment during a fundraiser last Friday in Chicago. “If we lose the House and Senate, it’s going to be a horrible two years.”

Biden himself has been projecting optimism in the final days of the campaign, but reality is setting in for Democrats: their majority rule in Congress could soon end, and Biden’s ability to get his top priorities passed could go with it.

Here are four areas that are at stake this Tuesday for Biden and his administration:

GOP investigations: Republicans on Capitol Hill have made abundantly clear that if they take control of Congress, Biden should brace for investigations targeting him, the White House and even members of the his family.

GOP lawmakers including Reps. James Comer and Jim Jordan, who are likely to chair the House Oversight and Judiciary committees respectively, are getting ready to probe a range of issues, from the business dealings of Biden’s son, Hunter; to what Republicans allege is political interference by the FBI and Justice Department; to the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Agenda: If Republicans gain control of one or both chambers, the era of big, progressive bills will likely end. Instead, Biden will be on the defense as Republicans work to undo much of what he accomplished in the first two years of his term. The GOP has already vowed to roll back elements of Biden’s signature legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, including its new, higher taxes on corporations. And they could work to roll back or challenge some of the president’s climate initiatives that are included in the package.

Biden’s 2024 decision: As soon as the 2022 midterm election results are in, national attention will immediately turn to 2024 – including on the question of whether Biden will seek a second term. For weeks, the president and his advisers have maintained that his intention, for now, is to run again. They’ve also said that no decision is final until the president has had ample opportunity to discuss his political future with his family. But Biden’s 2024 decision won’t just be a family affair – there will also be strong political dynamics at play.

Staffing changes: Biden has seen remarkably little turnover in the first two years of his tenure among his Cabinet and senior team. His inner circle remains mostly intact. That includes chief of staff Ron Klain, senior advisers Mike Donilon and Steve Ricchetti, deputy chiefs of staff Bruce Reed and Jen O’Malley Dillon, communications director Kate Bedingfield and top communications adviser Anita Dunn. Officials have said changes are possible both to the president’s Cabinet and his senior White House staff later this year, though no moves are guaranteed. Should Biden announce his decision to run in 2024, several of the members of his core team are considered likely to shift over to the political operation.

The 2022 midterms have arrived and here are seven things to watch in Tuesday’s midterm elections:

Who will control the House: Of all the major storylines on Tuesday evening, this is one that few Democrats dispute: It is unlikely the party will control the legislative chamber come January. Given Republicans only need a net gain of five seats to take the majority, the odds of the GOP taking back the House are high. The party is on offense in House race across the country, but most notably in districts Biden won handily just two years ago, including once seemingly solid blue districts in Rhode Island, New York and Oregon.

Who will control the Senate: If control of the House feels like more of an unavoidable loss for Democrats, control of the currently evenly divided Senate offers a surprising bright spot for the party — aided by voters harboring unfavorable feelings about Republican candidates while also disapproving of Biden’s job performance. The most vulnerable Democratic incumbents are on the ballot are in Nevada, New Hampshire, Arizona and Georgia, where polls show each of those races are tight. The party is on offense in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, two states Biden won just two years ago.

Election deniers in key swing states: Republicans who have parroted former President Donald Trump’s lies about widespread voter fraud are seeking to take charge of some swing states’ election machinery. The outcomes in those states could have dramatic consequences in 2024, with Trump on the verge of another presidential bid and candidates in crucial swing states seeking positions that they could attempt to use to undercut voters’ will.

Will Latino voters continue rightward shift: Republicans will watch whether they built on the gains that Trump made among Latino voters two years ago. Three House races in the heavily Hispanic Rio Grande Valley in Texas will tell part of the story. Latino voters also make up crucial portions of the electorate in Arizona, Nevada and Miami-Dade County in Florida.

The impact of presidential politics: “If we lose the House and Senate, it’s going to be a horrible two years,” Biden said at a fundraiser on Friday. It’s an argument former President Barack Obama, who stumped for candidates in Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona and Pennsylvania over the last few weeks, made explicitly during his final rally in Philadelphia on Saturday.

The wave-makers (or breakers): The shape of Congress over the next two years could become pretty apparent within the first few hours after the polls close on the East Coast – even if a handful of big races are too close to call. For Democrats, defeat in even two out of three of the contests would portend a very, very bad night. The party, both nationally and in certain states, has increasingly invested its electoral fate on the notoriously fickle suburbs. If a Republican wave is coming, the first sighting of high tides will be up and down the Atlantic seaboard.

The wait: As most Americans learned two years ago, Election Day can be a misnomer. Tuesday is when voting ends. But, in many states, it’s also when counting begins. That means a lot of hotly contested races could take into the wee hours or even later this week to be decided. That’s partially the nature of counting — and sometimes recounting — but it’s also due to state laws that instruct poll workers how to do their jobs and, in some states, make them hold off on doing them until later in the day.

In the contentious Georgia Senate race, Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, the first Black senator from Georgia who, along with Jon Ossoff, delivered control of the chamber for Democrats in a pair of January 2021 runoff elections, is once again on the ballot. Now, though, the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church is trying to win his first full term against Trump-backed football star Herschel Walker.

Walker’s campaign has been dogged by scandals, including past allegations that he threatened women with violence, claims he has denied. The race was further rocked by a report in early October that Walker paid a woman to have an abortion in 2009. CNN hasn’t confirmed that allegation and Walker has also repeatedly denied it. Walker also has a made a series of verbal stumbles on the campaign trail, like when he criticized efforts to reduce air pollution by saying China’s “bad air” “moves over to our good air space.”

Despite Walker’s struggles, Georgia only recently shifted towards Democrats, so the race is expected to be close. If no candidate wins a majority, the top two will compete in a Dec. 6 runoff.

There are also key House races happening in the state:

Poll times: Polls close across the state at 7 p.m. ET.

Political landscape: Atlanta and its inner suburbs are the most solidly Democratic regions of the state. The city’s outer suburbs have historically supported Republicans, but many of these affluent areas have moved towards Democrats in recent years.

Americans head to the polls today for an election that has state and local officials across the country on edge as they brace for potential problems at the polls, contentious legal fights over ballots and fighting disinformation about the vote itself.

The hyper-polarized political climate has seen the vote itself come under a sustained barrage of attacks and disinformation for the better part of two years amid repeated false claims from former President Donald Trump that the 2020 election was stolen.

Early voting has provided a preview of the potential issues both big and small that could arise on Election Day, from armed ballot box watchers in Arizona accused of conspiring to intimidate voters to a legal fight over technical errors invalidating mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania.

Legal fights: In all, there have been about 120 legal cases surrounding voting filed as of November 3, compared to 68 before election day in 2020. More than half of the cases have sought to restrict access to the ballot, according to the Democracy Docket, a liberal-leaning voting rights and media platform that tracks election litigation.

In Pennsylvania, some counties are urging voters to correct absentee ballots with missing or improper dates that the state Supreme Court ordered to be set aside, while a federal legal challenge over is still looming. In Michigan, meanwhile, a judge rejected a lawsuit Monday from the GOP secretary of state candidate seeking to throw out absentee ballots in Democratic-heavy Detroit.

Georgia’s Cobb County on Monday extended the deadline for roughly 1,000 absentee ballots to be turned in until Nov. 14, after the ballots were not mailed out until just days before Election Day due to procedural errors in the election office.

Possible conflict with election deniers: In Arizona, the secretary of state’s office has sent 18 referrals to law enforcement related to drop-box intimidation, including a threatening message toward a government worker and several voters reporting being filmed at drop box locations in Maricopa County last week. A federal judge earlier this month imposed new restrictions against a right-wing group in the state following complaints about aggressive patrols of ballot boxes in the state, including blocking the members from openly carrying guns or wearing body armor.

CNN’s Jason Morris contributed to this report.

Democrats are hoping to hold on to power, while Republicans yearn to gain control of both the House and the Senate. And while we all have guesses of what will happen, the truth is that we don’t know what will play out.

With that uncertainty in mind, here are three different scenarios that could be key to how the battle for control shakes out.

Georgia runoff determines Senate If you follow politics to any degree, you certainly have. Unlike other states with close Senate races, Georgia requires candidates to receive a majority of the vote to win on Election Day. If no candidate does, then a runoff between the top two candidates is held in December.

The conditions are fairly ripe for such a scenario. Neither Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock nor Republican Herschel Walker is at 50% in the Georgia Senate polls. Libertarian Chase Oliver is pulling in 3% to 4%.

If every other race goes exactly as the polls predict, Democrats will have 49 seats, not including Georgia. Republicans will have 50 seats. This means that whichever side wins in Georgia would control the Senate.

The Senate actually gets projected early Then there’s the other side of the spectrum. Most people are anticipating that we won’t know who wins the Senate until days, if not weeks, after Election Day. That may be the case, but it’s far from a certainty.

There are a few ways we could conceivably get a fairly fast call. The easiest way for it to happen is if the Republicans win both Georgia (with a majority to avoid a runoff) and Pennsylvania. That way, we’re probably not reliant on what could be longer counts in Arizona and Nevada.

Another way this might happen is if there is a surprising result in the east. If Republicans have a very good night, they could win the New Hampshire Senate race, where Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan is running for reelection against Republican Don Bolduc. If Democrats have a very good night, they could win the Ohio Senate race, an open seat where Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan is facing off with Trump-endorsed J.D. Vance.

An early call of the House Just weeks ago, the race for both the House and Senate looked close. While the Senate still does, it’s easy to see how the House could turn into a relative blowout.

If that happens, we won’t have to wait for the West Coast. We won’t have to wait for the results from ranked-choice voting races.

Instead, we’ll get a pretty good idea from even the earliest of poll closings. Consider a race like that for Virginia’s 2nd District, a swing district centered in Virginia Beach. Rep. Elaine Luria would likely win if Democrats are to be competitive in the House. If she’s defeated, Republicans are probably on their way to House control.

If it’s a big Republican night, we could also see Democratic Rep. Frank Mrvan go down in Indiana. Indiana, unlike a lot of other states, requires voters to have an excuse to vote absentee.

The bottom line is that if Republicans end up with close to 240 seats (as they did in 2010), then the race for House control won’t be drawn out.

Read more potential Election Day scenarios here.

Democrats won the Senate after flipping Georgia last year and the state could be pivotal once again in the 2022 midterm elections.

For the second time in less than two years, the Peach State, which elected two Democratic senators in the last election cycle, is home to a contest that has gripped both national parties and potentially holds the key to the fate of President Joe Biden’s agenda.

This time around, though, at least one key characteristic of the race has been reversed: Democrat Raphael Warnock has gone from challenger to incumbent, trying to fend off Republican nominee Herschel Walker. The former football great, recruited and endorsed by former President Donald Trump, has run an uneven campaign and spent the past month beset by controversy, but is still running neck-and-neck with Warnock with early voting in high gear and Election Day nearing.

A Warnock victory would likely foreclose Republicans’ path to a majority in the Senate, which is currently split 50-50 with Vice President Kamala Harris casting a decisive vote. That reality, coupled with headwinds – in the form of economic angst and Biden’s low approval ratings – familiar to Democrats across the country, has helped coalesce Republicans behind Walker.

Underscoring his party’s mix of ambivalence and political practicality, former Vice President Mike Pence, after not mentioning Walker during his remarks at a rally in Cumming, Georgia, on Tuesday for GOP Gov. Brian Kemp, told reporters he is “supporting the whole (Republican) ticket here in Georgia.”

The most recent polling of the race, from the New York Times and Siena College, showed no clear leader, with 49% of likely voters supporting Warnock to the 46% backing Walker – a difference well within the survey’s margin of error. Another poll, from Fox News at the end of October, also found a remarkably close contest, with Warnock at 44% and Walker at 43%. If neither candidate notches a majority of the vote, the race would be decided in a December 6 runoff.

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Six states will be at the center of the political universe in the 2022 midterm elections: The five President Joe Biden flipped in 2020: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — plus Nevada.

These states all have multiple critical races that will determine control of the Senate, the House and state governments. What happens in these states will impact issues like abortion rights, economic policy, education and the climate crisis — not just within their borders, but across the country.

Here’s the “too long; didn’t read” on what you need to know about the biggest states — and key races — ahead of the midterms.

The first statewide polls will close tonight at 7 p.m. ET, and it could take some time until we learn results.

CNN political director David Chalian breaks down what to watch for as polls close:

How to watch election night like a pro: CNN's @DavidChalian has a look at some of the early bellwethers to watch as polls close on Tuesday.Follow key races: https://t.co/fB3nFV5TCb pic.twitter.com/woYMb4BiF1