11:30 – Right now, it looks like we’re heading into a stall in Nevada (see below) and a lull in developments. We will all be back in the morning to cover any changes overnight in these races. In the meantime, John Sexton is still keeping up with the Western races and any other significant developments. Be sure to keep up there and to come back in the morning for more live blogging!

By the way, the RCP map shows the GOP up six so far in House races. Even if this isn’t the kind of red wave they’d envisioned (and that we’d envisioned too), it’s still almost certain to be a GOP-controlled House. And there’s still a chance for a Republican Senate, but the margin on that may be thin now.

10:58 – Interestingly, the NYT’s dashboard still shows a 73% chance of GOP control of the House and still shows the likeliest Senate outcome a 51/49 split for the GOP. It hasn’t budged at all during the evening.

10:55 – Aaaand there it is — NBC News calls it for Vance. It’s a hold — a good hold — but a hold that was long predicted. In this case, Vance and DeWine performed about how pollsters saw the race in the end.

10:51 – Just checking the Ohio Senate widget and it looks like Vance is pulling well ahead of Ryan. Might see a call on this soon, as 82% of precincts are reporting and Vance is up by about seven points.

10:37 – I had forgotten about this, so we may need to revisit Nevada in the morning:

As a reminder, Nevada doesn't report any results until the last voter in line has voted. That'll probably be around 1am ET. https://t.co/hT8PzuLvQn

— Nathaniel Rakich (@baseballot) November 9, 2022

Or on Thursday:

Same goes for Washoe County, our @RenoKimBurrows has confirmed.

Mail ballots dropped at polling places today won't be counted tonight. https://t.co/yZ9RJ0SXEA

— Ben Margiott (@BenMargiott) November 9, 2022

10:34 – Looking nationally, Maggie Hassan apparently succeeded in executing the Akin Strategy in New Hampshire. DDHQ just made that call a few minutes ago. That limits the potential for a Senate majority, but it doesn’t eliminate it. Bolduc was an underdog, but he turned out to be more competitive than Democrats anticipated.

10:27 – CBS flags a potential upset in a CO House race — Lauren Boebert is trailing Democrat challenger Adam Frisch with 71% of the vote in:

Team just flagged possible upset brewing out West…#Midterms2022 pic.twitter.com/CTJwOMSqzP

— Kabir Khanna (@kabir_here) November 9, 2022

10:07 – Not a great omen for the GOP in Virginia, where it appears Spanberger won her race.

9:49 – Good news for Republicans in Oklahoma, where Kevin Stitt will win re-election. Both NBC and ABC are calling that race. For much of the midterms, polling suggested Stitt would lose tonight.

9:36 – Well, that didn’t take long. NBC called the CO Senate race for Bennet too. Again, these were long shots for the GOP, so no one counted on these races in the first place, but it’s still disappointing. O’Dea ran as good a race as possible there.

9:32 – RCP shows five seats picked up by the GOP in the House, which would be barely enough to flip control. There are still 250 House races to call, however.

9:28: No surprise here at all, but Colorado’s being called for Polis. It would have taken an extinction-level event for Polis to lose. This bodes ill for Joe O’Dea and his bid to unseat Michael Bennet in the Senate race, but O’Dea was an underdog here anyway.

9:18: Good news in two Senate races — both Budd and Vance are now leading, per CNN:

Ted Budd and JD Vance jump ahead in their races https://t.co/i2MMrRgeGB pic.twitter.com/EfKr4ZoP6Q

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) November 9, 2022

9:06: New data in GA and NC shows Election Day votes getting counted now. Walker is actually up in GA (that could change still!) and Ted Budd is within a couple of points in NC. Same is happening to a lesser extent in Ohio for Vance. Be patient.

8:58: Speculative wave-watch out of VA:

Major barometer for a major wave. https://t.co/KjZ4e1VIay

— jeremysenderowicz (@senderowiczj) November 9, 2022

VA-07 is an R+3 district, though. Spanberger won it from Dave Brat in 2018. A narrow GOP win may not mean as much as this posits.

8:46: Henry Olson makes the point about looking at the early-vote returns getting counted first:

I'm not tweeting as much tonight because the massive bifurcation between D-heavy mail and R-heavy ED makes it much harder to extrapolate from partial returns. Will keep following and let you know as races start to take shape when plenty of both types of votes are in.

— Henry Olsen (@henryolsenEPPC) November 9, 2022

Worth noting: The DeWine call was made even while DeWine slightly trailed the early-vote counts.

8:37: It’s early in Nevada, but Jon Ralston sees signs of a massive Republican wave there:

Others still turning out in greater numbers than Dems in in-person voting in Clark.

Does this make any sense?

Of course not.

There's mail out there. Only question is how much, and can it offset red flood in rural Nevada and Washoe for GOP today?

— Jon Ralston (@RalstonReports) November 9, 2022

I had thought that the statewide Rs — or some of them — would probably win rural Nevada by 50,000 votes. That would be in line with 2018. But every rural county I have seen shows eye-popping numbers for the GOP, the latest one being Nye.

It could be much higher than 50,000. pic.twitter.com/LjAJ4XJpS5

— Jon Ralston (@RalstonReports) November 9, 2022

8:35 pm ET: Right now it looks pretty good for the GOP in Ohio. Nationally, though, the Senate picture looks murky. We’re seeing the early vote first in places like North Carolina, Georgia, and New Hampshire, but that North Carolina race looks worrisome. Follow updates on that one from Beege.

The NYT has its dashboard back, too. They show a 77% chance of GOP control of the House, and the Senate too close to call.

=====

Catch a wave, and you’re sitting on top of the world …

Will Republicans sing that Beach Boys song at the end of the evening? Will Democrats cry the blues as a red wave sweeps across the country? Both parties appear to expect that kind of outcome tonight, with Republicans getting more cheery and Democrats offering more excuses as the day wears on.

Tonight, I’ll cover races in Ohio, Nevada, and Colorado, as well as watch the overall results while live-blogging developments. In both states, all of their constitutional offices are up for grabs, but we’re mainly looking at the Senate races in both states and Nevada’s gubernatorial contest.

Here’s a briefing for readers on the status in these three states:

Ohio

• Gubernatorial: Mike DeWine will likely blow out Nan Whaley. ABC News has already called it for DeWine, which is no surprise considering that he’s leading the Democrat challenger by over 22 points in RCP’s polling aggregation.
• Senate: Rob Portman retired from this seat, and the fight to replace him looked close until recently. Republican J.D. Vance has ten-point leads in polls from the Right (Trafalgar) and Left (Data for Progress) in the last week of the campaign. Tim Ryan’s political career is about to hit a Biden-sized speed bump.
• House: Three House seats could be up for grabs, two of them in the Democrat column. Sabato’s Crystal Ball rates Marcy Kaptur’s OH-9 seat as only leans Dem, and that loss would be huge. The open seat in OH-13 is listed as leans GOP, as is Republican Steve Chabot’s re-election bid in OH-1.

Colorado 

• Gubernatorial: The portents look better for Democrats here than in most places in the country. The gubernatorial race looks like a lock for incumbent Democrat Jared Polis, who has never trailed or even come within the margin of error in any polls aggregated by RCP. His average lead is in double digits over Republican Heidi Ganahl, who’s run a good campaign against a popular governor and will come up short, unless the red wave turns into the Sweet Meteor of Red Death. In which case, our night will be a lot shorter and happier than we thought. If Polis comes out of this cycle with a large win, he instantly gets into the 2024 presidential primary mix.
• Senate: Republican challenger Joe O’Dea is more competitive against Michael Bennet, but polling still shows him coming up short. RCP has him trailing 5.7 points, but Bennet’s lead seems soft. A very big night could carry O’Dea into the Senate, but it would have to be a red tsunami. FiveThirtyEight sees Bennet as having a 92% chance of winning.
• House: Analysts have their eyes on three House races in Colorado — open seats in CO-7 and CO-8, and Lauren Boebert’s CO-3. Sabato’s Crystal Ball projects that the GOP will pick up two of the three with CO-7 leaning Dem. That would leave these seats in their current party status.

Nevada

• Gubernatorial: Republicans should have an easier time in Nevada than Colorado. Incumbent Democrat governor Steve Sisolak has never shown enough polling support to give the impression that voters want him back, while Republican challenger Joe Lombardo has led narrowly but consistently for months in RCP’s aggregation. Sisolak’s leads in this race have mainly been a reflection of low voter familiarity with Lombardo early in the race; Sisolak’s RCP average ran in the low 40s all along and is only hitting 45% in the final. That’s bad for an incumbent. FiveThirtyEight forecasts a 61% chance for Lombardo.
• Senate: Speaking of bad for incumbents, Catherine Cortez Masto is trailing her Republican challenger Adam Laxalt by a slightly wider margin (3.4 points in RCP). Polls began giving Laxalt leads at the end of September and he’s been ahead ever since — although RCP believes that pollsters may underestimate Dems in the Silver State. FiveThirtyEight also sees this as a closer race than the gubernatorial race, with Laxalt only getting a 51% chance to win it. A big wave may change that calculus, of course.
• House: Three House races look close, all three currently held by Democrats. Sabato’s Crystal Ball has NV-1 and NV-4 leaning toward the incumbents, but they see NV-3 leaning toward the GOP. A pickup here on the south side of Las Vegas would look pretty sweet for Republicans in a district that Biden narrowly won two years ago.

We can expect lots of drama, anyway, and perhaps a couple of surprises from these states. I’ll be live-blogging the developments, posting them to the top in reverse chronological order — latest update on top.

Don’t forget to scroll down, however, to keep up with election returns and results. I’ll have the national maps for House and Senate control, as well as the gubernatorial map, provided by our partner Decision Desk HQ. You’ll want to check back regularly for those results.

Let’s hope we all surf a red wave tonight!

And here are the trackers for the national results:

Don’t forget that we’re not just covering the midterms tonight but are preparing for the all-important 2024 presidential cycle as well. We need to make sure Democrats are one and done in the White House, too. If you want real in-depth analysis and exclusive content and wish to support the long-term mission, join HotAir VIP today and use promo code VIPWEEK to receive 45% off your membership!