Tarisai Ngangura: Madison Cawthorn has just won his North Carolina congressional race. The 25-year-old Republican defeated Democrat Moe Davis, a 62-year-old retired Air Force colonel and former prosecutor at Guantánamo Bay, to win chief of staff Mark Meadows’s old seat. After his victory was announced, Cawthorn hopped on Twitter to write, “Cry more, lib.” Notably, he has been in the news following allegations of racism and support for white nationalists. Cawthorn was endorsed by Trump during his campaign.
9:48 p.m. ET
Gabriel Sherman: A Trump campaign adviser says the campaign is very happy that the economy is the number one issue in exit polls. Trump is apparently not being knocked out of the race by his coronavirus response.
9:38 p.m. ET
Chris Smith: Former governor Ed Rendell on Joe Biden’s prospects in Pennsylvania: “It looks very good. Same-day voting was excellent in Philly and the surrounding counties. He will probably win mail-in votes by 1 million. Those votes should be enough to take him over the finish line.”
9:34 p.m. ET
Chris Smith: Favorite reply, maybe ever, from a source on why he has been slow to weigh in tonight: “I’m drinking. The election won’t be over for a couple of days.”
9:32 p.m. ET
Trump is projected to win South Carolina, per NBC News.
9:29 p.m. ET
Joe Hagan: When I talked to people at the Lincoln Project last summer, their theory of the race was that Joe Biden’s route to 270 was through the Sun Belt, where demographics have trended Democratic in recent years, and not through the industrial Midwest, where demographics favored Trump in 2016. That’s not working out. Florida and Texas look like they’re lining up for Trump, which is probably a bad sign for Arizona too. That means Biden is back to battling for the white working class in the Midwest—Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. As my colleague Chris Smith noted earlier, this election may well end up coming down to Pennsylvania, which will mean we’re in the very vote-counting legal quagmire that Trump has hoped for because it could push the election to the courts. We don’t know what’s going to happen tonight, especially with Ohio, but the possibilities are narrowing.
9:23 p.m. ET
Nick Bilton: The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel just reported that Julietta Henry, the Milwaukee County Board of Elections director, announced that the final results from them won’t be completed until at least 5 a.m. on Wednesday morning. Depending on what happens with states like North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Arizona, that could mean we don’t know who the winner is tonight.
9:18 p.m. ET
Biden is projected to win Colorado, per NBC News.
9:14 p.m. ET
Chris Smith: The political gods are setting it up to be karmically perfect, or painful, for Pennsylvania to decide it for son of Scranton Joe Biden.
9:10 p.m. ET
Trump is projected to win Wyoming, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, and Louisiana, per AP. Biden is projected to win New Mexico.
9:06 p.m. ET
Gabriel Sherman: A senior Trump adviser just texted with the mood from Trumpworld so far: “Tense but optimistic. Focused on OH, PA & NC.”
9:00 p.m. ET
Chris Smith: It’s up to you, New York, Newwww—okay, not up to us at all. But Biden wins the Empire State.
8:57 p.m. ET
Abigail Tracy: After winning her Senate seat by casting her opponent as out of touch with regular Iowans, Ernst now find herself in a similar position. In a recent debate, Ernst—the Republican incumbent—flubbed a question on the price of soybeans. Greenfield, conversely, answered a question on the price of corn correctly. As a native midwesterner, I can tell you: people give a shit about that.
8:53 p.m. ET
Chris Smith: A favorite Biden sleeper state win among Democratic insiders has been Iowa. And that’s still possible. Looking more likely, and possibly even more satisfying, is a Theresa Greenfield defeat of Iowa incumbent Republican U.S. Senator Joni Ernst. It’s going to be close, but I’m hearing a fair amount of optimism.
8:49 p.m. ET
Joe Pompeo: Most people watching TV right now are biting their fingernails in terror, their hearts skipping a beat every time one of those dramatic projection alerts flashes across the screen, the blue and red electoral college totals tilting to and fro like compounds on an antique apothecary scale. Then there are people like John King, who live for this shit, which is what makes CNN’s coverage so addicting. There’s King breathlessly relaying the minutiae of the network’s “Magic Wall,” emphasizing teensy-tiny margins in major battleground states, drilling down on the tallies in random counties you’ve never heard of (“The suburban revolt and rejection of Donald Trump continues”), gaming out potential paths to victory (“If Joe Biden flips this state blue, Donald Trump has no path to reelection. If Joe Biden flips this state blue, Donald Trump has no path to reelection.”) As King gushed at the top of one such segment, “It’s a lot of fun!” Fun isn’t necessarily the word I’d use, but I’m not changing the channel either.
8:48 p.m. ET
Charlotte Klein: Trump favorite Tucker Carlson popped into Fox News’ coverage, touting the president’s popularity among Hispanic voters in Florida and knocking the polls and analysis from the “smart people” who “have access to all the data,” like Nate Silver. “It’s not what people thought it was last night. Again, you have to ask yourself, why is that? Why is the demonstrated reality so different from what purportedly smart people said it was going to be?” said Carlson, adding, “This is the second election in a row that people paid to get it right apparently got it wrong…in effect lied to people. How did that happen?” What if Trump loses, asked anchor Bret Baier. “When you lose, blame yourself first,” Carlson said. He then cited the coronavirus—the administration’s response and politicization of it—and noted that “generally, things are very out of control.” Whether or not that was Trump’s fault is up for debate, Carlson said, but reflected that the collective feeling of chaos “will always hurt the guy who is up for reelection.”
8:46 p.m. ET
Chris Smith: Dems in North Carolina believed that if election day turnout was under one million, Biden would win. So far, the math is looking good.
8:44 p.m. ET
Nick Bilton: All week, pollsters have been fretting about how off the results will be, and those I’ve spoken to have pointed to Nate Silver’s constant hedging, even as the FiveThirtyEight site gave a high likelihood of a Biden landslide. Right now, as my phone lights up with text messages about how off some of the predictions were (specifically in Florida and Georgia so far), the consensus is pretty even on both sides of the aisle: that Silver should be sent to a gulag. If he was a financial analyst, he’d give you a slew of data about how the well the markets were going to perform, and then tell you to hide your money between a mattress.
8:31 p.m. ET
Donald Trump is projected to win Arkansas, per AP.
8:23 p.m. ET
Chris Smith: Democratic insiders are liking what they’re seeing in Ohio—encouraged, but not getting carried away. Though Senator Sherrod Brown did guarantee a Biden win of the state to our old friend Stephen Rodrick.
8:15 p.m. ET
Chris Smith: Mike Bloomberg’s theory was that because Florida reports its mail-in count on election night, winning it would allow Biden to stop Trump from constructing a “red mirage”—that is, declaring victory tonight and trying to delegitimize the counting of votes during the next week, which are likely to favor Biden.