What to Watch on Election Night

Miles Coleman is the associate editor of Sabato's Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, one of the foremost election handicappers in the country. In an interview with The Caucus he walked through what he's watching for on election night as results come in, as well as what we won't know until after the dust settles days, or potentially weeks, later.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Could you walk us through the beginning of election night? I'm thinking here about early bellwethers, key races that we might know early.

Looking for early signs, I would look at Kentucky. They close the polls there at 6 o'clock, which is obscenely early but convenient for us.

District Six in Kentucky, which is like the Lexington area plus a bunch of rural counties, that is like Trump plus 15 or 16 districts. It is Congressman Andy Barr's seat, who's running for Senate. This is a district that, even though it is Republican at the presidential level, down the ballot it's more Democratic. Gov. Andy Beshear has always carried it. He's campaigning for the Democratic nominee, a guy named Zach Dembo. If you look at polling, the Democrats appear to be in good shape. If they could get that district, I think that would kind of set the tone off well for Democrats.

In 2018, Amy McGrath, who was more of a fresh face then, held Barr to three or four points. So the Democrats came close there but they didn't win it, which was kind of consistent with 2018 overall. A solid night but not an exceptional night for Democrats.

Even though Florida isn't really a tossup state anymore it does count its votes quickly. I would look at if the statewide races there are at least within single digits. That might be good for Democrats. One of the districts I'm watching is in the Tampa area, where longtime Congresswoman Kathy Castor, a Democrat, got a much tougher seat in redistricting. If she can hold on, that's a good sign for Democrats.

One of the races that Democrats are targeting in the Miami area is Maria Elvira Salazar in District 27. If she hangs on comfortably, that might show that some of the trends with the Cuban vote being really Republican are still holding up.

Then in North Carolina, I'm expecting Roy Cooper to win comfortably, but it could be one of those things where, if it takes a couple hours to declare Cooper the winner, it would not be a good sign for Democrats.

Sticking to my state of Virginia, the Democrats are probably going to pick up at least one seat in the Virginia Beach area. If they get two or three flips out of Virginia instead of just one, that would be a sign of a Democratic wave.

In terms of the Senate, Texas and Ohio would be the ones that I would look at early in the night. Something to keep in mind for Ohio is that it's a state where they tally up early and mail in the vote first. The results usually look more Democratic and they get more Republican as the night goes on.

We've just covered a good number of bellwethers, but is there anything in particular you're watching that we should get some results for on Tuesday night, but they won't necessarily be early in the night? Races that could paint us a picture of where things are going. For a lot of this campaign, people talked about California's 22nd as the median district in the House. It's changed some with redistricting, and we won't have results out of California on Tuesday, but are there any similar races?

One that I would flag is Wisconsin's First in the southeastern part of Wisconsin, near the Milwaukee area, which is the median district this year by '24 presidential partisanship. It's also Paul Ryan's old seat.

The Republican is a guy named Bryan Steil and he has this Democratic opponent, Mitchell Berman. This is one of those races that it seems to have come on the radar within the past month or so. The Democrats have been spending more there. This is one where Steil has done well for himself as an incumbent even though the district has been marginal on paper. If he loses, that would speak to Democrats beating some of these established incumbents who have overperformed.

In the Senate, I'm most interested in Kansas. In terms of vibes and how everything has panned out, Roger Marshall seems like he's flailing. That's one that's come onto the board relatively late too. So if Democrats have some momentum these are the areas I would look at.

I think people already know it's not worth trying to stay up for results from California or Alaska, because a lot of this is going to take days or even a week to count, but I'm wondering what you think the last races worth staying up for on election night are?

The governor's race in Nevada is one. The early vote looks really bad for Joe Lombardo and Republicans in Nevada. But at the same time it's just hard to beat an incumbent governor, and especially an incumbent governor who doesn't really have any obvious scandals. If he loses it's probably because one of the groups that Democrats are going to have some upside with this year compared to '24 is Hispanics. They would probably be a big part of his loss, and if James Talarico wins or comes close in Texas that would be a key ingredient in that race as well.

Colorado's governor race is one as well. The Republican gubernatorial candidate there, Victor Marx is one of the most weird, off-the-wall candidates Republicans are running this cycle. He's probably going to lose to state Attorney General Phil Weiser by 25 points plus, and this is where we sometimes talk about coattails.

I would look at Lauren Boebert's seat, who's a big underperformer to begin with. If she loses, that would be maybe a silent mega-wave. With that there are really three seats in Colorado that the Democrats would like to pick up. They're probably already going to pick up District Eight, which is already kind of purple as is, but also District Four, which is Boebert, and District Five, which is Colorado Springs. If they pick up any of those seats I wonder if coattails have an effect there.