Swing State Project

Let’s continue this discussion over here. The fun never stops.

Let’s continue this discussion over here.

A few key resources for election night:

• Our color-coded map of poll closing times and key races to watch.
• In the diaries, calwatch has a list of official election night results websites (secretaries of state and the like).
• County-by-county baselines in key swing states (and races with tight Senate races).
• Crisitunity has a list of ballot measures worth watching.
• County-by-county baselines for IN-03 and KY-02 — two of the first key House races to watch tonight.

Polls are closing in Indiana in a few minutes — we’ll be up with our first liveblog thread shortly.

Two of the first House races that will begin reporting this evening are Indiana’s 3rd District and Kentucky’s 2nd. These are two incredibly tough districts — IN-03 is R+16, and KY-02 is R+13. If Democrats can defeat GOP Rep. Mark Souder in Indiana or pick off the open seat in KY-02, tonight is going to be a huge night. If we fall short in either, well, it still could be big.

Just as Crisitunity did yesterday in his county-by-county baseline analysis of key statewide battlegrounds, let’s take a look at how the Republicans fared in each of these districts in 2006. Here’s IN-03:

And KY-02:

As the early returns come in, these baselines should be helpful in order to determine just how strong of a shot Democrats Mike Montagano and David Boswell have. For what it’s worth, I’m expecting a 2006-style defeat in KY-02, but that shouldn’t get us too down — Boswell hasn’t run a particularly impressive race.

A roundup of all the independent expenditures filed by the DCCC and the NRCC from October 27th through November 2nd — essentially the last real week of expenditures:

As you can see, the DCCC outspent the NRCC by a greater than 2-to-1 margin int he final week of the campaign, and by a greater than 3-to-1 margin over the entire campaign. Would I have preferred to see some of this money spread out more? Of course. But it’ll only take us a few more hours to pinpoint the races that got away from us.

So this morning, I woke up bright and early and strolled over to my polling place, Clara Barton High School in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.

   I got there around 8:30, and already there were about 50 people in each of the 3 district’s lines. I have lived in this neighborhood for 3 1/2 years and never have waited in a line to vote. Ever.

   It was the MOST organized I’d ever seen my polling place– they had a system down of checking everyone’s names while they were in line, then signing the book, then getting into another line to actually vote. Great job, guys!

   There were loads of people there who’d obviously never voted before, and the excitement in this overwhelmingly African-American neighborhood was palpable. People were taking photos of each other in front of the polling booths, and everyone was thrilled to see so many of their neighbors out making history.

  By the time I voted, each of the three lines were going all the way out of the Auditorium.

My photo album of mostly lousy camera phone pictures

Well, this is it — election day. It’s been an enormous pleasure covering all the downballot races with you over the past couple of years. Let’s hope we have a lot of reasons to celebrate tonight.

We’ll be rolling with liveblog coverage of the House and Senate races later this evening, so go vote (if you haven’t already) and strap yourselves in for one long night.

Feel free to use this as an open thread.

UPDATE (David):

Man that felt good!

Our final House race ratings chart of the cycle:

Safe D:

     NY-13 (Open)

Races to Watch:

Things have changed — a lot — since our first entry back in March.

Our final race ratings chart of the year:

Safe D:

     VA (Open)

Races to Watch:  

     NE (Open)

     NJ (Lautenberg)

     OK (Inhofe)

     SC (Graham)

     TX (Cornyn)

We’ve come a long way since April.