The first states with polls to close are mostly in the Eastern Time Zone. In the early states, we have two governor’s races (Georgia and Florida), four Senate races (Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Ohio), and seven House seats (1 in North Carolina, 3 in Ohio, and 3 in Virginia) that could be close. There are also several seats that are likely to flip solely because of the new maps (4 flipping red in Florida, 1 flipping red in Georgia, and 2 flipping blue in North Carolina).
But the big closing time is 7 p.m. Central ST. The remaining polls will close in Florida, and most of the polls will close in Kansas, Michigan, South Dakota, and Texas. And all of the polls will close in Alabama (except for a very small portion that closed an hour earlier), Connecticut, Delaware, D.C., Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Tennessee. In short, when added to the states that close before 7 p.m., the polls will be closed in roughly half of the country by 7:01 p.m. (Of course, polls closed merely means that individuals need to be in line to vote at 7 p.m. Because there are typically people in line to vote, voting might actually continue in some urban precincts for a very long time after 7 p.m. which will delay counting in those areas.)
Starting with Alabama, there are no races that are likely to be close at the state or federal level. If the Supreme Court follows the Voting Rights Act, Democrats will probably pick up an additional seat in 2024, but the current maps which a district court correctly held violated the Voting Rights Act is in place for the 2022 election, and the 6-1 Republican advantage will remain in place for the next Congress. There are a lot of propositions on the ballot in Alabama, the most significant of which requires changes to election law to be adopted at least six months prior to a general election.
In Connecticut, the status quo is most likely to be the end result. Republicans have an outside chance at picking up the Fifth District. And Connecticut is likely to approve a constitutional amendment authorizing early voting.
There is unlike to be any close races in Delaware at the state or federal level.
No changes are expected in D.C. (and, of course, the federal elections are still for non-voting representation in the House).
Illinois is likely to see some switches in the aftermath of redistricting. Democrats are likely to keep the state-wide offices and the Senate. Heading into the election, Democrats have a 13-5 advantage in the House delegation. With the state losing a seat, the new districts currently look likely to result in a 14-3 delegation. In a red wave, the Sixth, Thirteenth, and Seventeenth might go Republican. There is also a constitutional amendment creating a right to collective bargaining on the ballot.
Kansas has several interesting contests. Democratic governor Laura Kelly has done a good job for the past four years, but Kansas is still a Republican state. She won mostly because her opponent was Spawn of Satan Chris Kobach. She will be facing current state AG Derek Schmitt. Her best chance of survival is that a Trumpist is running as an independent candidate and might get just enough votes to allow Governor Kelly to win re-election. The big race for Congress is in the Third District. The Republicans reshuffled the lines to split Wyandotte County (the more urban of the Kansas City suburbs in Kansas) to move a good chunk of Democrats to the Second District and to expand the district into more conservative suburbs. However, the gradual drift of the suburbs from the Republican Party keeps this district aas slightly favorable for the Democrats, and Representative Davis could hold on. But this race is going to be close. If the Democrats do better than expected, there is an outside chance at picking up the Second District, but that is a real longshot. Kris Kobach is making an attempt at a comeback in the open race for Attorney General which gives the Democrats a real shot at picking up that slot.
Maine could get interesting. The Second District is more Republican than the rest of the state. While Maine is not overwhelmingly Democrat, the use of ranked-choice voting should allow the Democrats to hold off the Republicans as the independent candidates are frequently somewhat progressive and their supporters should rank the Democratic candidates ahead of the Republicans.
In Maryland, the current Republican Governor is term-limited. Given that the Republicans have opted to a nominate a Trumpist rather than a Republican for Governor, the Democrats should pick up the seat. After some court intervention, the new lines create a potential swing district in a seat currently held by the Democrats (the Sixth District). The Democrats will need to hold that seat if they wish to have any chance at keeping a majority.
Massachusetts is another state where the fact that a popular Republican governor is not running for re-election creates a likely flip to the Democrats. Otherwise, it is unlikely that Republicans will pick up any of the House seats which are currently all held by Democrats.
Michigan is a real battleground. Trumpists are going hard to win state-wide offices in order to preselect the winner of the 2024 presidential election. At the present time, it seems that these efforts will fail, but this state will need to be closely watched. As in 2020, it will take several days to count the votes, and the Trumpists brown shirts are likely to try to disrupt the count and will file multiple frivolous challenges in court. The courts may have to certify the results as the state election board is, by law, split 50-50, and the Republicans may not vote to certify the results. Michigan’s congressional delegation is currently split 7-7, but Michigan lost a seat. Right now, it looks like a 7-6 split in favor of the Democrats is likely, but that will require Democrats to win the races in the Third District and the Eighth District which could be very close. There are also two ballot issues — one on voting changes (which seems to be a mixed bag with some good provisions and some bad provisions) and one protecting the right to choose — which could be interesting.
With only federal races on the ballot, and no competitive districts, there is not much of interest in Mississippi, and all of the races could be projected by 7:15 p.m. CST.
In Missouri, while there will be several new faces in Congress in 2023, unfortunately, the Republicans did their best to lock in a 6-2 advantage. Missouri is just red enough that it would be a major upset for the Democrats to win either of the two state-wide races (one for U.S. Senate currently held by Republican Roy Blunt, and State Auditor currently held by the Democrats) which are both open seats. The big issues are likely to be the state-wide propositions. The first big one is to allow recreational marijuana. This proposal represents a failure of the state legislature. While it is pretty clear (based on the 2018 vote on medical marijuana) that the majority of voters want to legalize marijuana, the General Assembly has failed to act. As a result, the voters will get a chance to amend the state constitution to solve the issue (which is a bad way to handle this as it locks in certain provisions which are poorly written and will create a monopoly on distribution of marijuana).
The other proposition requires understanding Missouri’s history. Back in the 1930s, the state took over the management of the police force in Kansas City. While the city funds the police force, the day-to-day decisions are lodged in a board appointed by the (currently Republican governor). In the early 1980s, Missouri adopted its version of Proposition 13 which also includes a provision against the state using unfunded mandates to shift state responsibilities to local governments. Current state law requires Kansas City to spend 20% of its budget on the police, but traditionally Kansas City spends around 23-24% of its budget on the police. In recent years, the Kansas City City Council has questioned how the police force is spending that money and has made moves to reduce or reallocate the funding. (The City’s spin is that it is simply attempting to reduce the non-law enforcement responsibilities of the Department or trying to negotiate how the Department spends its money to shift more resources to those efforts that are most likely to produce improvements in the crime rate. The Department’s spin is that this is an effort to defund the police.) In response, the Republican majority in the General Assembly has proposed to change the law to increase the mandatory funding to 25% of the city budget, but doing so requires the voters to exempt the funding requirement from the ban on unfunded mandates. So this race will come down to whether suburban and rural voters see this proposition as a chance to stick it to Kansas City and support the police or as an attempt by the state to micromanage local government.
New Hampshire could get interesting, but the end result will likely be the status quo. The Republican governor is popular enough that he is likely to be reelected. While a strong Republican candidate might be able to pick up the Senate seat currently held by Maggie Hassan, the Republicans opted to nominate a Trumpist instead who has been unable to decide if he wants to tack toward the center or stay on the far right. And the Republcian governor decided that two swing seats in Congress were better than locking up the state as a 1-1 split. Thus, while there is an outside chance of the Republicans picking up the Second District, it is more likely that both Democrats will be reeelcted.
New Jersey only has federal races on the ballot. The current split is 10-2. The race most likely to result in a flip is New Jersey’s Seventh District where Tom Kean (the sone of the former governor) is probably ahead of the Democratic incumbent. This seat is one of the seats that Republicans need to flip in order to win the majority. So if the Democrats hold here, there odds of winning the House would significantly increase.
In Oklahoma, the race of interest appears to be the governor’s race. It looks like the Republicans will keep all of the House seats and win both of the Senate elections (one the regular eleciton, and one a special election). On paper, the Kevin Stitt should be reelected Governor. However, one of the downsides of being governor is that you have to govern, and the past four years have been a bad time to be a governor in any state. The problems of the last four years might be just enough for the Democrats to pull the upset here, and the race seems to be close.
Pennsylvania may be ground zero for this election cycle. The Republicans nominates a seditious conspirator for Governor and a charlatan for Senator. As such, the Democratic Attorney General — Josh Shapiro — is a strong favorite to keep the Governor’s office in Democratic hands (and since the Governor appoints the Secretary of the Commonwealth, that is important for a free and fair election in 2024). Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman is favored to pick up the Senate seat for the Democrats (their top target of 2022), but his stroke earlier this year have allowed the Republicans to make his health an issue. While this is a red herring (as even if John Fetterman had to step down, any replacement would be better than “Dr.” Oz), it is an opening that the Republicans are attempting to exploit. As in Michigan, the current Congressional delegation is an even split (9-9 in Pennsylvania) but the state is losing a seat. The Republicans are currently favored in eight seats and the Democrats are favored in seven seats with control of the delegation coming down to two toss-up races in the Seventh and Seventeenth districts.
Rhode Island would typically be a state that could be ignored as it is firmly on the blue side of the divide. However, the Second District is an open seat, and, unlike most other swing districts, the Republicans actually nominated a moderate who is a good fit for this seat. Whether a Republican can, in the long term, keep Republican primary voters happy without annoying the general election voters in this district remains to be seen, but, at least for 2022, it seems likely that the Republicans will pick up this seat. As in New Jersey, a Republican loss here would be a big setback on the Republican efforts to gain a majority in the House.
In South Dakota, the state-wide and federal races are likely to be called for the Republicans as soon as the polls close in the entire state (which will not be until 8 p.m. CST), but the big interest is on the ballot propositions. Voters in South Dakota will be approving Medicaid expansion and legalizing marijuana. These votes will unfortunately be the latest example nationally in the difficulty that Democrats have in getting people who support Democratic issues to realize that the best way to succeed on those issues is to elect Democrats to state legislatures and Congress, but at least there will be some progress in South Dakota as a result of these propositions.
Tennessee is weird as, despite being split in two time zones, all the polls in the state close at the same actual time. In redistricting, the Republicans passed an aggressive gerrymander to split Nashville between multiple districts. As a result, it seems likely that Republicans will gain a seat in the state, although Democrats have an outside shot at holding the redrawn Fifth District despite the Republican attempts to steal this district through redistricting. Tennessee also has a “right to work (for less)” provision on the ballot which will hopefull fail.
Texas is another big state with lots of potential action. I would love to see Beto O’Rourke defeat Governor Bill Abbot. And Attorney General Ken Paxton belongs in prison on his pending charges rather than in state office, but I am just not convinced that Democrats can pull off these races. Texas is one of those states where the lean Republican voters flirt with flipping to the Democrats every cycle but come home at the last minute. In the battle for Congress, the Republicans currently hold twenty-four of the state’s thirty-six seats, and Texas gained two seats after the 2020 Census. For the most part, the Republicans opted to protect seats that were at danger of slipping away in redistricting rather than undermining the seats that are currently held by Democrats. Republicans are likely to win twenty-five seats and Democrats are likely to win eleven seats. The two toss-up seats are in the lower Rio Grande Valley in southeast Texas (the Fifteenth and the Thirty-fourth). The Thirty-Fourth features the current Democratic representative from the old Fifteenth and the Republican who won a special election earlier this year in the old Thirty-Fourth).
To summarize this part of the evening, the big races are both in Pennsylvania — Governor and Senate, While both parties have some statewide races in other states that they hope to win, the status quo is most likely to prevail (other than Democrats expected to win open seats in Maryland and Massachusetts). Adding the race in Pennsylvania to the earlier contests in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Ohio, these early races will clarify the picture for the Senate. If the Republicans can pick up Georgia and hold their Senate seats in the other four states, they will probably hold Wisconsin too (later in the evening) and gain control of the Senate. If Democrats can win three or four of the states, the Democrats will keep their majority and may even gain seats (if they can hold Nevada later in the evening).
The big races for control of the House will be Connecticut Fifth, Illiniois Sixth, Illinois Thirteenth, Illinois Seventeenth, Kansas Third, Maine Second, Maryland Sixth, Michigan Third, Michigan Eighth, New Hampshire Second, New Jersey Seventh, Pennsylvania Seventh, Pennsylvania Seventeenth, Rhode Island Second, Tennessee Fifth, Texas Fifteenth, and Texas Thirty-Fourth. While some of these seats are more of a reach for Republicans then others, if the Democrats can sweep this races, they will gain two seats and Republicans will lose three. This group includes two races that are near the top of likely Republican gains, so a Democratic sweep here would be a very good sign that the Democrats could narrowly eke out a win in the House. Since most of these seats are pure toss-ups or lean Democrat, if the Republicans sweep this group, they are almost certain to have the majority in the House.
