We’ve starting a new live blog to follow the results of the elections as they trickle in late into the night, with my colleague Tom McCarthy (@teemcsee) at the helm.
Will the Republicans win the Senate as predicted? Will Georgia and Louisiana go to runoffs? Will Greg Orman tell somebody how he’ll vote if elected?
Mainers will not only choose a governor today – they’ll decide whether it’s fair to hunt bears with barrels full of doughnuts as well.
A black bear. Photograph: Getty
A ballot question in the state asks whether hunters should be allowed to use bait, dogs and traps to hunt bears. Supporters of a ban call it the “fair chase” question, calling the methods unsportsmanlike and saying the measure is long overdue for a state that has the most permissive bear-hunting rules in the country.
Hunting groups oppose the ban call it “a direct threat to the future of hunting in Maine and across the country”, and state wildlife biologists have also campaigned against it, saying a larger bear population would push bears into residential areas and have more bears starving.
The Guardian’s Gary Younge and Mae Ryan traveled to Florida for a closer look at gerrymandering as it affects elections on the ground – and to bring you the finest political analysis you’ll ever hear coming from a Florida swamp:
Exit polls from eastern starts are imminent, but no matter what apparent surprises they hold – they should be taken with a hefty portion of salt.
They are rarely precise enough to mean much about actual election results, Nate Cohn of the New York Times explains that they have just too large a margin of error, and aren’t weighted until late in the evening – by which point much more reliable data should be rolling in.
Washington state could enact tighter gun control measures today, just over two weeks after a school shooting left four people dead – and over the vociferous opposition of the NRA.
FiveThirtyEight’s thinks the measure, which would expand background checks to firearms bought privately, such as at gun shows or on the web,is “entirely likely” to pass. My colleague Chris McGreal reports from the Pacific north-west:
Being about guns, it’s no surprise that outsiders have poured millions of dollars into shaping the result of the ballot. Two-thirds of the nearly $20m raised to campaign for ballot measures in the state this year is being directed to the gun initiative.
What is perhaps a little less expected is that the National Rifle Association appears to have been outspent by gun control advocates, such as former New York mayor, a Michael Bloomberg-led group has injected close to $1.3m, Bill Gates and his wife have donated $1.1m to the cause. The NRA by comparison has spent a relatively measly $490,000 to defeat the expanded background checks.
But lurking in the wings is a rival measure, Initiative 591, which would block any gun controls not imposed by federal law. And just about everyone recognises that the US Congress is not going to go down that path any time soon.
Final updates on the New York Times and FiveThirtyEight’s Senate models have come in, with the forecasters putting Republicans’ chances of taking the Senate at 75% and 76%, respectively.
But probabilities being what they are, neither group of analysts will proclaim any sort of certainty, which should let mathematically-minded Democrats hold onto hope.
The largest non-partisan voter protection coalition in the US has received more than 12,000 calls from people struggling to vote in states with new voter-ID laws.
The calls have come from around the country, but especially from Florida, Georgia and Texas, my colleague Ed Pilkington, in Raleigh North Carolina, reports:
In Georgia, almost 1,500 calls had come in over the past two days and long lines were reported in several towns and cities. Many were from people who are among the 40,000 “disappeared” people who were registered to vote but whose details have not been transferred to voting rolls, a problem that was exacerbated today by the state’s own voting website crashing, leaving voters in the dark about the location of their polling stations.
A steady stream of calls has also come in from Texas from people trapped by the new voter-ID law. Surprisingly, the callers included several military personnel who reported difficulties using their military ID cards at polling stations even though such identification is recognised under the new rules.
In Ferguson, Missouri, scene of the recent riots following the police shooting of Michael Brown, there were several reports into the hotline of individual voters being asked to show their ID cards by police officers at polling stations. Janaye Ingram of the National Action Network said that election protection volunteers were monitoring the polling stations in Ferguson. “Even one or two instances of that happening could be a deterrent to vote,” she said.
in California, North Carolina, New York and Kentucky, voters also made calls about the lack of interpreters at polling stations, and about discourteous election officials to Americans who know English as a second language.
Normally polite Wisconsin has descended into partisan strife as controversial governor Scott Walker campaigns for re-election – and to keep his dreams of higher office alive.
Walker. Photograph: Scott Bauer/AP
Walker clashed with unions early in his first term, but finally won that battle and a recall election. He made drastic cuts to collective bargaining rights for unions and trimmed $2bn in taxes, but Wisconsin’s economy has continued to struggle. Backed by Republicans in the state legislature, he’s also frozen public university tuition and expanded rights to concealed weapons.
Controversy continues to follow him, though: conservative groups are being investigated for illegal coordination with his 2012 campaign. His opponent, Democrat Mary Burke, sets portrays herself as a financial whiz (she was commerce secretary and graduated from Harvard Business school), has made jobs her biggest talking point, and favors raising the minimum wage. Walker’s projected to win by a tiny margin.
FiveThirtyEight sees five likely scenarios tonight – “GOP landslide 30%, solid GOP win 35%, GOP squeaker 10%, Dem squeaker 10%, Dem shocker 15%” – just like Washington bureau chief Dan Roberts saw five likely scenarios earlier today.
1) Southern cliffhanger: Theplot to this nail-biting cliffhanger would be written in Louisiana and Georgia, two states with unusual voting rules requiring a runoff if no candidate wins at least 50% of the vote on 4 November.
2) Kansas wild card: Even if Republicans clinch Louisiana, hold Georgia, and pick up the five other easy wins, the indecisive independent in Kansas could still give the Democrats an upset. there is still another way that control of the Senate won’t be determined by Tuesday’s voting, and that’s if they lose Kansas.
3) Dawn drama: If the GOP picks up all three plus the four safest targets of Montana, West Virginia, South Dakota and Arkansas, it can afford to lose a state like Georgia or Kansas. This scenario would mean Colorado, Iowa and Alaska become central to their plans of capturing the Senate – all of which report late, especially the close, strange race in Alaska, where independent polling notoriously unreliable.
4)Eastern meltdown: None of this may matter, of course, if North Carolina or New Hampshire fall to the Republicans. NC’s Kay Hagan is expected to cling on by the skin of her teeth, but NH’s Jeanne Shaheen has barely held her precarious lead of around a percentage point.
5) Kentucky consolation: The best-case scenario for Democrats on Tuesday also probably comes with an added bonus: unseating Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky. Though still unlikely since challenger Alison Lundergran Grimes has fallen an average of 6.5 points behind in the polls, it remains high up the party’s target list, and nothing would symbolise a grassroots revolt against the notion of a McConnell-led Senate
New voter ID laws slashed early voting and drawn the ire of civil rights activists n North Carolina, where my colleague Ed Pilkington (@edpilkington) is reporting.
The Republican state legislators who passed the law – including Thom Tillis, who is vying for a US senate seat - have been accused of trying to suppress the voice of the overwhelmingly Democratic-supporting black community.
Well, if that was the intention it doesn’t seem to have worked. When the polling station opened at 6.30am at the Ivy Community in a largely black area of Durham, there was already a line of about 50 voters that stretched back to the road. By 10.30am poll volunteers estimated that about 500 had passed through – a striking number in this district compared to past elections.
Thom Tillis. Photograph: Chuck Burton/AP
“We are already close to passing the number who voted on election day in 2010, and its still morning,” said Thelma White, precinct chair.
White is a member of the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People, a historic support group for the city’s 41% African American population. She believes the state’s Republican-controlled general assembly has been playing “mind games” with black voters by altering the voting rules. “But a lot of people are saying, ‘I’m not going to fall for it this time.”
According to figures from early voting, about 200,000 more North Carolinians voted early this year than four years ago, despite Republicans having lopped off seven days of early polling. Within that, the proportion of early voters who were black rose by several points to 25%.
Have a story about voting mismanagement or obstacles you’ve witnessed today? Our Opinion desk is asking for stories here.
A sampling of the stories collected so far:
In Ohio, names have vanished from the voter rolls. In Georgia, 50,000 registration cards have reportedly gone “missing”, and a polling center is charging parking despite the “free parking” signs all around it. In Texas, a woman was told “Your vote won’t count” by an election official and a request for an absentee ballot turned into an argument about China and addresses. Even the “I voted” stickers ran out.
At Kentucky State University, voters have steadily streamed in, Megan Carpentier reports, hearing that the sheer number of races has left some people surprised:
Kentucky State University, the historically black public university of about 2,500 students in the state capital of Frankfort, is host to not one but two voting precincts – one at either end of campus. Beverly Standiford explained that they’d been unusually busy for a midterm election. “We’re well over 10%, and we never get that,” she said around 11.30am ET.
“They don’t purge people like they used to, and we have students that register to vote here and then they move away but they’re still in our books, so our percentage at the end of the day is higher than it seems.”
Standiford explained that, in the recent past, “If they didn’t vote once in four years – that’s eight elections [including primaries], they’d have to go down to the courthouse and re-register.” Now, student voters might still appear on the rolls even a decade later, particular in the moved out of state and registered there.
As she spoke, people trickled into the precinct in ones or twos, where Tonya Davis, who was working this precinct for the first time (but has been a poll worker in past elections elsewhere), recognized some people by name … but still checked their identification – including university-issued student IDs and drivers licenses – before having them sign the voter rolls, as required by Kentucky law. “It’s amazing how, when you work, you get to know everyone.”
Though the precinct has one electronic voting machine, most voters opted for paper ballots, distributed by Standiford with a smiling reminder to turn it over and vote for the county commissioner race on the backside of the form. “Usually, we don’t have this many races,” she told one new voter apologetically. Kitty Austin, another poll worker, said, “It’s amazing, though, many of the races are uncontested – just look, there’s only one choice for coroner.”
Many people simply asked which method was faster, and Standiford and Austin told them the paper ballots were faster. “It takes longer on the digital [machine],” Standiford told The Guardian, “because it’s a rotary dial.”
Celebrities, just like regular Americans, don’t get out to vote much – even if they appear in ads telling you to “rock” that very same vote.
The Washington Post looked into LA County and New York City records and found that Lena Dunham, Whoopi Goldberg and Natasha Lyonne (Orange is the New Black) were among the five actors who appeared in the pro-voting PSA but did not actually vote in the 2010 midterms. The Post couldn’t find records for six others in the ad, including rapper Lil Jon, who often fronts the ads.
But Lil Jon will not be discouraged, posting on Instagram: “6AM FLIGHT TO ATL TO VOTE BECAUSE GA NEVA SENT MY BALLOT AFTER NUMEROUS CALLS!!!”
If Lil Jon’s account of having never received his absentee ballot from Georgia is true, he has only a few hours to vote before polls close at 7pm ET there.
Jon Stewart, meanwhile, who professionally satirizes politics and much of the apathy and cynicism surrounding it in American culture, also didn’t vote.
“No, I just moved I don’t even know where my thing is now. I just moved to a different state,” he told CNN. He added, “I’ve got a whole thing going on.”
What happens if Republicans win control of the Senate and keep their majority in the House? “Joy for Republicans” and even more problems for the president, among other things.
Adam Gabbatt, Mae Ryan and the Guardian’s video team can answer some of your questions in a colorful, three-minute video of the midterms in brief, from the strangest campaign ads to the peculiar habits of the American electorate halfway through presidential terms.
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