It is still early – or, rather, the votes are being counted slowly – but Donald Trump’s overperformance relative to his vote totals in 2020 is almost entirely uniform in every rural county where the returns are in. Harris is improving on Joe Biden’s margins primarily in urban areas and their more affluent suburbs (in and around Atlanta, most notably). That is a formula that could make for some nail-bitingly close races in the Rust Belt states she needs to win. And yet, given the uniformity of the pattern we’re starting to see, even if she overperforms in and around cities like Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Madison, and Milwaukee, that might not be enough for her.
GOP Senate candidate Bernie Moreno has to be feeling pretty good in Ohio. The state has been called for Trump already, and Moreno is leading by 2 points over Democratic incumbent Sherrod Brown, with 55 percent reporting.
The NYT needle has switched to the presidential race from “tossup” to “leaning Trump,” giving him a 66% chance of victory. I would expect some volatility in the coming hours given how little we have from the three pivotal states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
Right, Phil: It seems highly unlikely the Florida abortion amendment would have failed absent DeSantis’s leadership.
NBC has now also called a defeat for the radical pro-abortion ballot measure in Florida. This is a huge victory for pro-lifers after a string of defeats in state-level ballot measures. Gov. Ron DeSantis deserves a lot of credit for putting his political operation behind the effort to reject the measure when a lot of Republicans (including Donald Trump) were running for the hills.
Independent Nebraska Senate candidate Dan Osborn has almost exactly the same number of votes as Kamala Harris in Douglas County (Omaha) with about half of precincts reporting. The much-hyped yet improbable upset of Republican incumbent Deb Fischer would require a lot of ticket-splitting in a state that has already been called for Trump, and it’s not happening yet.
Despite Miami-Dade County breaking for Trump 55-44 and breaking for Rick Scott 54-44, it still voted 59-41 in favor of the pro-abortion referendum. Broward County, Miami-Dade’s northern neighbor, voted 58-41 for Harris, 59-39 for Mucarsel-Powell, and 69-31 for the pro-abortion referendum. (Those are all based on around 90 percent reporting, so the final tally will be pretty close to that.) While the referendum will fall short of the 60 percent needed to pass, and pro-lifers should celebrate the victory, it remains the case that there are far more pro-choice Republicans than there are pro-life Democrats, even in Florida.
I know that elections are serious business, but if you can’t laugh at the nervous-Nellie energy on the MSNBC panel right now, then do you even have a sense of humor?
ABC has called a defeat for the sweeping abortion-right amendment in Florida: It failed to meet the required 60% margin. Florida becomes the first post-Dobbs state where the pro-choice side did not prevail in a referendum.
And right after I report that, DeKalb reports — with an estimated 59.8 percent of votes reporting, 211,556 votes for Harris, 42,470 votes for Trump, a margin of 169,086 votes for Harris.