Well, technical difficulties persist on the needle. But the basic outline of the night seems to be clear: A rehash of the 2016 election, but with more Democratic strength.
Conversation
What's the consequence of this? Well, the "big" dem map always supposed being able to breakthrough in a long list of red districts. That may yet happen, but so far it's tough to see
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Instead, we get the piece-meal, district by district battle where the GOP basically has to run the table in a lot of districts.
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The southeastern US included *very* few of the races where the Dems really were clear favorites. There was VA10/FL27, but after FL26/VA02/VA07/KY06 were sort of on the back half of the tossups. At the moment, all of those districts look close and basically in line w/forecasts
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That isn't to say that, overall, things are in line. I'm not sure about that--flying blind w/technical issues. But in the tossups of the southeast--which I'd say are somewhere between like 27 and 40 on the Dem pickup list--it's not that different and Curbelo seems in big trouble
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VA2 and VA7 may also be big trouble for the Republicans, but hard to tell without precinct data.
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So, as I look at the southeast in isolation, I would still see the Dems on track to take the House. Not D+40. But more like our polls, which added up to D+32 with a ton of super close races.
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But now we're coming up to the Midwest/Northeast. Here's where there were *a lot* of races where Dems were clearly favored.
So if GOP outperforms now, it's a lot more threatening to the Democrats
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That said, these early results in the Northeast/Midwest don't look horrible for Democratic chances in those districts. And Dem strength in VA2/7/FL26 all should make Dems feel ok about the suburban districts that represent the key to their path
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Basically, the pattern so far--greater polarization--was the GOPs ticket to a good night in the Senate and close race for the House, as I wrote on Monday.
But this gets GOP to a closer race, not to a majority without *more* strength than they have so far
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