Dan, I concur that not seeing wins by Yesli Vega, Hung Cao, or Allen Fung represent pretty stinging defeats for Republicans who had visions of a massive, 40-seat gain in the House this year. Yes, Jen Kiggans looks like a winner in Virginia's second district, but that was the lowest hanging fruit in Virginia this year. So far, I think the story of the night is the split between Florida – which is now turning so red, it's crimson – and the not-quite-as-good-as-hoped results in the other early-called races and states.
So we have more actual exit poll data in, and one interesting finding that pops out at me is that it appears that the abortion issue was effectively a wash.
According to CNN:
— 60% of voters said they wanted abortion to be legal, and they went Democratic 72%-26%.
— 36% of voters said they wanted abortion to be illegal, and they voted for Republicans 90% to 9%.
If you put it together, basically what we see is that while more of the electorate support legalized abortion overall, Republicans did a lot better among pro-lifers than Democrats did among pro-choicers.
Watching MSNBC, and the commentators believe this election is more about abortion than people realize. I do worry propositions will go in the wrong direction for life. But it's because people don't actually know how radical California and Michigan are. We have so much work to do.
Spanberger and Wexton re-elections in Virginia, combined with RI-2, suggest some real limits to the red wave in the House. Remains to be seen how that plays out in statewide races.
I was just texting with a GOP operative who says they think Walker gets over 50% as the Election Day vote comes in, FWIW.
Appears now that Allan Fung lost his race in RI-2. First major call of the night for a race Republicans saw as a wave win but wasn't.
Some interesting things in the exit polls. Half of respondents said that our society's values on gender identity and sexual oreintation are changing for the worse. Only a quarter said getting better. Really looks like the Democratic share favors the status quo.
This is disappointing. Henry Olsen thinks Spanberger may eke it out in VA7:
“VA 7 is coming down to the wire. Vega still leads but that's from the ED vote. There are only 14 precincts left, 10 in Dem-heavy Prince Williams. Then you have the EV in-person and mail vote from PW. If Spanberger wins those like she's won PW elsewhere, she'll pull it out.”
I’m told the results so far in OH are heavily early vote. The Vance camp still thinks he’ll win handily.
I refuse to get too high or too low on partial results. J.D. Vance does seem to be running very weakly compared with Mike DeWine, or with expectations. That may well be entirely a function of where votes are reporting, but if Vance were to win in a squeaker (or lose), that would be a pretty big and unexpected polling failure, not just because he was up 8 points and almost to 52 percent in the final poll average, but also because Vance supporters in Ohio are sort of the textbook case of the type of voters one expects to be underrepresented in polling these days.