Partiers at GOP headquarters cheer defeats of Grayson and Perriello.
Just after 9:30 here’s what we’re seeing so far. There are a lot of races still out but it seems clear that Republicans have taken the House. Indeed, it looks like the GOP is every so slightly over-performing in the House — if you consider the baseline a pick up of 50 seats or just over. On the other hand, the Dems are holding on so far in the Senate. And it looks like they may actually end up over-performing in the Senate. Far from clear. But they pulled out the critical West Virginia race and so far Pennsylvania, Illinois and even Wisconsin are too close to call. I’m not figuring any of those for Democratic wins. But they are at least still in the fight in a few races that didn’t even look possible. And they could well end up picking up one unexpected seat on that side.
That’s what it looks like so far. About what the polls were telling us — with GOP over-performing in the House and the Dems, possibly, doing the same in the Senate.
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More than half the votes in and Sestak is actually holding on to a 4 or 5 point lead. It’s starting to close. All depends on where the remaining votes are.
I know that the early exit polls showed Toomey by 2 points.
Late Update: Our numbers guru Eric Kleefeld just looked at the county by county in Pennsylvania. And the short answer is: damn, this one’s gonna be close. It looks like there are probably more Toomey precincts outstanding and probably, though not as clearly, more Toomey votes. But Sestak has an almost 4 point lead at the moment. So he’s got something like a 90k vote lead at the moment.
About half the vote in in Illinois, and Alexis Giannoulias has a 6 point lead.
The pattern is continuing: really rough for the Dems in the House, maybe not quite that rough in the Senate. Getting some word from New Jersey and it’s looking pretty rough for the Dems. Here are the district by district numbers for New Jersey.
Looking really rough for Rush Holt, which would be a big loss. About 900 votes ahead of the GOP challenger with 376/537 precincts reporting.
So in PA, it’s like 80% of the vote in, it’s a 51-49 race. Alleghany county, which is Pittsburgh, is almost totally in. Philly has about 92% reported.
Basically what that means is that the Democratic bastions are about all tapped out. But Sestak isn’t that far from the finish line. It’s going to be really, really close.
Watch the latest numbers right here.
Hearing from the ground in Kentucky that with 100% reporting, Chandler’s up by 600 votes. The AP results have one precinct left to report. But I’m hearing this from very reliable source.