Welcome to the one day a year when half the country pretends they were always this invested in off-year Senate races and the other half refreshes the same three tabs like it’s a sports app. The polling this cycle has been a particular delight (yeah, that's it): some of it was ordinary noise, some of it was later described as a “social experiment,” and almost all of it will look slightly different by tomorrow morning.
Classic.
Democrats remain unpopular. Republicans are not what we'd call popular either, but the favorability gap has held and enthusiasm on the right has been steadier than the models wanted to admit. Not a wave year. Just a year where a few seats can still move the needle a little.
On the Senate side the real toss-ups are Texas, Ohio, Maine, Alaska, Iowa, and Michigan. Michigan has been the most entertaining of the bunch — late endorsements, open party friction, and the usual last-minute scramble. If Rogers pulls it off, the map gets a lot less interesting for the other side and a lot MORE interesting for us. In a good way.
Alaska has the added charm of the name collision subplot; voters have already said the Decoy Dan business moved some of them, which is a sentence that should not have to exist in a serious election but here we are. The rest of the list is the usual mix of close and slightly-closer-than-advertised. None of them are settled until the ballots are counted, which is why the people who treat early polls as prophecy tend to look a little sheepish the next day.
And by a little sheepish we mean irretrievably stupid and out of touch.
Ahem.
The House has its own collection of genuine toss-ups — CA-22, the Florida pair, Iowa’s 2nd, a few in Michigan, Virginia’s 1st, and the rest of the familiar list. VA-1 is the one that tends to get cited as a temperature check. Because of course. If Kiggans holds, it usually means the night is trending better for Republicans than the pre-election chatter suggested.
A handful of these can still flip the math; most of them will not. That’s the fun of a no-wave midterm: everything stays competitive longer than anyone’s patience prefers.
Governors are quieter but not irrelevant — Alaska, Georgia, Kansas, Nevada, Ohio, Wisconsin. These are the races where education fights, crime policy, and budget priorities actually show up in daily life instead of just cable-news graphics. Worth a glance once the Senate and House numbers start moving.
Get minute-by-minute updates in the brand new super rad Twitchy Election section, where you can watch all Senate, House, and governors' races, as well as track the balance of power as seats are called.
And of course, we’ll have even more election coverage starting at 7 PM ET, with our live blog and additional stories hitting the Twitchy site. So grab a snack (we suggest popcorn and lots of it), your favorite beverage (it is a BYOB kind of night) and come hang out with us tonight.
Do it. It's a moral imperative.