Not much new to report. No new state calls, so the score remains Trump 277-224, but it seems likely that the final score will be Trump 312-226. Harris has not conceded yet, but the rumor is that she will deliver her concession speech this evening at 5pm Central.

No new Senate calls, either. Slotkin has pulled ahead of Rogers by 10K, and Baldwin’s lead over Hovde is now 28K, while Casey has pulled to within 50K of McCormick. Further west, where the vote count is less mature, Rosen is several hundred votes behind Brown, and Gallego is 60K ahead of Lake. So, maybe a Republican majority of 53 is looking more likely than 54 now, and 52 is not out of the question.

As of right now the NYTimes is showing the House as 198-178 for the Republicans, in called races. If I counted right the Democrats are currently ahead 35-24 in the uncalled races, which if it holds would give Speaker Johnson a working majority of 4 seats, at 222-213. As such, it is looking like total control for the Republicans.

Trump’s lead in the national popular vote is currently substantial, at about 4.8 million votes, or 51.0 – 47.5. However the California vote is still very incomplete, and there may also be pockets of uncounted urban vote in eastern cities. Nevertheless, it is very conceivable that in the fullness of time Trump will have won the national popular vote. While Silver’s model had Harris as the favorite to win the national popular vote, she was only something like a 76% favorite, and one of the last major polls released before the election (from NBC) had the national popular vote in a 49-49 tie. As such last night’s results, while favorable to Trump, are hardly in the extreme end of the antebellum bell curve.

And honestly, as much as I dislike the results of the election and fear for what may lie ahead, at least we have a clear and uncontroversial outcome. Trump and the Congressional Republicans will have 2 years of unchecked power, without questions about the legitimacy of their victories; and all of us will get to see what they do with that power, and react accordingly. And, one hopes, a new generation of Democratic leadership will rise from the ashes and find new arguments that resonate with the American people. I don’t think the Great Resorting of the electorate is done quite yet.

I’ll make some additional posts in the days ahead to wrap up the final numbers for posterity, but for the most part this post marks the end of this 11-month blogging project. The road has had so many twists and turns, and the destination is thoroughly unappealing; but these have, indeed, been interesting times.

I woke up to discover than, around 4:30am Central, the AP called the election for Trump. While I slept he won both Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, getting him to 277 EV. Michigan remains uncalled, as do Arizona and Nevada, as well as Maine. If current trends in the Western states continue, Trump is poised to have swept all 7 swing states. Which was certainly a plausible scenario, and one consistent with an electorate in which the national popular vote was evenly split rather than giving Harris a 2-point advantage.

More recently the AP has called the Montana Senate race for Sheehy over Tester. Right now things are looking promising for Baldwin to hold on in Wisconsin, and less promising for Casey in Pennsylvania. The Slotkin-Rogers race for the open seat in Michigan is very tight, as is Rosen’s re-election bid in Nevada; Gallego is ahead of Lake in Arizona. So 54 seats for Republicans sounds about right – a large enough majority that they can afford to lose Murkowski and Collins here and there.

Minnesota was called for Harris overnight although it was closer than one might have thought; right now she’s ahead 51.1 – 46.7. (Our precinct went 59-38 for Harris, compared with 54-45 Biden in 2020, but the nature of this precinct has been evolving rapidly in recent years due to new housing tracts.) Craig won re-election in the Minnesota 2nd more handily than one might have expected, and is currently ahead 55.6 – 42.1. She tacked pretty hard to the middle in her TV ad strategy, so much so that we took down the yard sign we’d had up for her, but she seems to have known what she was doing.

While Harris did win Omaha’s EV, it was by a smaller margin that most had expected, with the margin currently at 51.2 – 47.5. Her coattails do not appear to have been enough to drag Vargas to victory over Bacon; while the race remains uncalled the Democrat is currently behind, 48.6 – 51.4. Also uncalled as of yet is the Wisconsin 3rd, where Cooke is currently behind by the same margin. While there’s still a lot of vote to be counted, the Democrats’ failure to unseat Bacon and Van Orden would not bode well for their ability to retake the House.

NBC just called Georgia for Trump, giving him a 246-189 EV lead.

The Nebraska Senate race has been called for Fischer, who is now up 51.9 – 48.1 with 74% of the vote in; this guarantees the Republicans 51 seats in the Senate. Only 16% of the Montana vote is in, and Tester is currently behind 39.4 – 58.9; a Sheehy win there makes it 52. Baldwin (WI), Casey (PA), and Slotkin (MI) are all currently behind in their races, so the Republicans could easily get to 55 before all is said and done, even assuming that Gallego beats Lake in Arizona.

In the House, there is no race in the NYTimes’ “Republican expected to win” column in which the Democrat is currently ahead. The closest such races are the Wisconsin 3rd, where Cooke is behind 48.4 – 51.6, and the Colorado 3rd (Boebert’s former district before she sandbagged over to replace Buck in a safer seat), where Frisch is behind 47.2 – 49.9.

As such, while the Presidential race has not yet been called and while it may be days before the House sorts itself out, we need to steel ourselves to the very real notion of unified Republican government under a President Trump, the main pillars of whose platform includes mass deportation of immigrants, widespread tariffs, and radical shifts in U.S. foreign policy.

God help us all.

Weirdly, almost none of the vote from my own county – Washington County, MN – has come in yet. Despite that, enough Minnesota vote has come in that Klobuchar’s Senate race has been called, and Craig (whose district only has a small portion of Washington County) is up 56.1 – 41.7 with 84% of the vote in although the race has not yet been called. Over the river from me, Van Orden’s margin over Cooke has widened to 51.9 – 48.1 with 74% of the vote in.

With polls having closed in the West Coast by now, the current score is 230-200 for Trump. Of the blue-leaning states Minnesota, New Hampshire, and New Mexico have yet to be called; Maine and Nebraska, with their unique methodologies for allocated EVs, are still also up in the air.

The NYTimes live model thinks Trump is a strong favorite in Georgia and the favorite in each of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Osborn has now fallen behind Fischer. 49.3 – 50.7.

NBC has called the Ohio Senate race for Moreno over Brown, which gets the Republicans to 49 with all of the swing-state races and Montana still uncalled.

North Carolina has been called for Trump. He is ahead 50.8 – 48.1 with 89% of the vote in.

Right now Harris is trailing in Georgia (48.3 – 51.0), Pennsylvania (47.9 – 51.2), Michigan (46.0 – 52.2), and Wisconsin (47.7 – 50.8). Some are speculating that Trump will win the national popular vote, but it will be a long time before we know that.

While the AP has not yet made a call, NBC has called Iowa for Trump, who is currently leading 55.7 – 43.0 with 51% of the vote in; so much for the Des Moines Register poll.

The swing states are not looking particularly good for Harris, and the NYTimes’ live model is up to 87% for Trump.

The Republicans are already at 48 seats called in the Senate, and Brown is behind 45.5 – 51.1 in Ohio with 82% of the vote in. While Osborn is ahead of Fischer 51.3 – 48.7 in Nebraska with 54% of the vote in, a surprise victory here might not be enough to keep the Senate out of Republican hands.

In the House, with 54% of the Wisconsin 3rd’s vote in, Cooke is behind the Republican incumbent Van Orden, 49.4 – 50.6. Down in the Nebraska 2nd, with 76% of the vote in Vargas is ahead of the Republican incumbent Bacon, 51.5 – 48.5.

Pennsylvania is behaving differently than it had four years ago, from a timing standpoint. Much of the early vote has actually been counted already, so with 33% of the vote in Harris has a 51.6 – 47.5 lead; but, per the NYTimes’ Nate Cohn, the race should tighten from here and Trump may yet come back. Contrast that with last year, where Trump was 8% ahead at noon the day after the election, but Biden eventually won as the early vote was very late to count.

NBC just moved GA, MI, PA, and WI from “too early to call” to “too close to call”, while NC remains “too early to call”. The Senate races in MI, PA, and WI are also now “too close to call.”

The NYTimes live model thinks Trump is now a 69% favorite to win.

Florida was called for the Republicans in both the Presidential and Senate elections, closing one of the paths to the Democrats retaining control of the Senate. One of the other paths is in Texas, where right now Cruz is ahead of Allred 51.1 – 47.0 with 53% of the votes in. Allred is at least running ahead of Harris, who is currently trailing Trump 45.1 – 53.6, and as I was writing this NBC called Texas for Trump.

Georgia and North Carolina are both looking more likely for Trump than for Harris at this point, but it is still early.

Four non-competitive states whose polls close very early have been called: IN, KY, and WV for Trump, and VT for Harris. Early vote is starting to filter in from Georgia, but it’s too early to form any conclusions. Of the swing states, Georgia and North Carolina are the ones for which the vote is expected to be counted relatively swiftly.

The one thing we do know so far that we didn’t know before polls started closing is that miracles are not forthcoming in Florida. With 73% of the vote in (largely early vote), Trump leads Harris 54.1 – 45.1, and Senator Scott leads Mucarsel-Powell 53.7 – 44.9, although neither race has been called yet. The abortion amendment in Florida is currently ahead 58.3 – 41.7, but it would require 60% to pass.

It’s about 4pm the day before the election, and while Nate Silver may yet push through one more additional run of his model, I thought this would be a good time to memorialize the state of the race going into tomorrow, as his model sees it.

Right now he has Trump as the narrowest of favorites, with a 50.4% chance to win 270+ EV, versus a 49.2% chance for Harris to win 270+ EV, and a 0.4% chance of a 269-269 tie. This is in spite of Harris having a 2.3% projected edge in the national vote share, as well as a 5 EV edge in the weighted-average outcome, 271.5 to 266.5.

As I had done back in August, I’ll start by listing the “very safe” states, namely those for which Silver’s model projects at least a 95.5% (two-sigma) chance of victory for one party or the other. In most cases, these states’ probabilities are closer to 1.0 than they had been in August, presumably reflecting a reality that the extreme things that would have had to happen to get those states to break the other way haven’t occurred. Italicized states are ones that have moved into “very safe” territory between August and now; none have defected from “very safe”.

Very Safe Democrat (191): California (100.0%), Colorado (97.3%), Connecticut (99.7%), Delaware (99.9%), District of Columbia (100.0%), Hawaii (96.4%), Illinois (99.9%), Maine-1 (99.3%), Massachusetts (99.8%), Maryland (100.0%), New Jersey (99.4%), New York (99.8%), Oregon (97.2%), Rhode Island (99.3%), Vermont (99.8%), Washington (99.7%)

Very Safe Republican (116): Alabama (99.8%), Arkansas (99.6%), Idaho (99.9%), Indiana (99.9%), Kansas (99.8%), Kentucky (99.9%), Louisiana (99.3%), Missouri (99.9%), Montana (98.0%), Nebraska at large (99.8%), Nebraska-1 (99.8%), Nebraska-3 (99.9%), North Dakota (99.2%), Oklahoma (100.0%), South Carolina (98.7%), South Dakota (99.2%), Tennessee (100.0%), Utah (99.1%), West Virginia (99.7%), Wyoming (99.9%)

Now, from Trump’s perspective, the path to get from 116 towards 270 starts like this, in descending likelihood order:

• Ohio, 95.1% (133)
• Texas, 95.0% (173)
• Mississippi, 94.9% (179)
• Florida, 92.5% (209)
• Iowa, 83.2% (215)
• Alaska, 76.9% (218)
• Maine-2, 76.2% (219)

Whereas from the Harris perspective, the path from 191 towards 270 starts like this:

• Virginia, 93.9% (204)
• Nebraska-2, 93.0% (205)
• Minnesota, 90.7% (215)
• Maine at large, 87.3% (217)
• New Mexico, 87.0% (222)
• New Hampshire, 73.5% (226)

As such, before we get into the 7 canonical swing states, if everything breaks according to expectation Harris would have a 226-219 lead.

The 7 swing states, ordered from Trump’s perspective:

• Arizona, 71.7% (230)
• North Carolina, 61.3% (246)
• Georgia, 61.0% (262)
• Nevada, 53.1% (268)
• Pennsylvania, 52.8% (287)
• Wisconsin, 40.9% (297)
• Michigan, 38.5% (312)

And the same 7 states, but ordered from the Harris perspective:

• Michigan, 61.5% (241)
• Wisconsin, 59.1% (251)
• Pennsylvania, 47.2% (270)
• Nevada, 46.9% (276)
• Georgia, 39.0% (292)
• North Carolina, 38.7% (308)
• Arizona, 28.3% (319)

For 6 of the 7 swing states, the expected margin of victory from Silver’s model is 1.2% or less; the exception is Arizona, where Silver now sees Trump as a 2.4% favorite. As such, if we posit a 1.5% “uniform swing” towards Harris relative to the model’s expectation, Harris would win 308-230 (with Trump’s only swing-state victory being Arizona). On the other hand if we instead posit a 1.5% uniform swing towards Trump, then Trump would win 312-226 (with Harris losing all 7 swing states).

I’ll end with a fantasy scenario for Harris… Silver’s model has Trump as a 5.2% favorite in Iowa, whereas the Des Moines Register poll has Harris by 3 in Iowa. If there’s something systemic, rather than Iowa-specific, behind that result, then we’d be talking about roughly an 8% uniform swing towards Harris relative to the model; and at that point she’d be winning not only the swing states and Iowa, but also Florida, Maine-2, Ohio, and Texas for a 413-125 landslide. As much as I’d like to believe Harris ought to be competitive in all of those states, that seems pretty rich.