First Senate Pickup Called For Rand Paul (RAND PAUL!!11!!) Paul wins easily, as expected.

Also, Jim DeMint defeated Alvin Greene. In case you were worried.

[Ace, filling in for Andy as he gets settled.]

[Update]: Returns starting to come in now. I'll update the races below as the wave rolls in.

....

Send updates to andy dot moron at yahoo dot com or @TheH2 on Twitter

RCP has the following house races in these states picked as potential GOP pickups:

Virginia
VA-2 (Nye-D, Rigell-R)
VA-5 (Perriello-D, Hurt-R)
VA-9 (Boucher-D, Griffith-R)

[Updates]
8:12p: GOP ahead in all 3 races. None called yet.

North Carolina
NC-2 (Etheridge-Douchebag, Ellmers-R)
NC-7 (McIntyre-D, Pantano-R)
NC-8 (Kissell-D, Johnson-R)
NC-11 (Shuler-D, Miller-R)

[Updates]
8:16p: Etheridge is ahead of Ellmers. The rest are tight and not many precincts in.

South Carolina
SC-5 (Spratt-D, Mulvaney-R)

[Updates]
8:20p: Not enough precints in to matter.

Georgia*
GA-2 (Bishop-D, Keown-R)
GA-8 (Marshall-D, Scott-R)

[Updates]
8:20p: GOP in the lead with ~10% of precincts in.

Tennessee
TN-4 (Davis-D, DesJarlais-R)
TN-6 (Carter-D, Black-R)
TN-8 (Herron-D, Fincher-R)

[Updates]
8:30p: Ahead in all races. None called.

Alabama
AL-2 (Bright-D, Roby-R)

Mississippi
MS-1 (Childers-D, Nunnelly-R)
MS-4 (Taylor-D, Palazzo-R)

Bold = incumbent
* My home state - no return engagement for Roy Barnes as governor, I beg you!

Also, I live in MA-4 and will be watching that race like a hawk from Sean Bielat's Command Post. Updates may be a little slow until I get settled in there.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 03:00 PM | Comments (129)
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You can call Colorado voters and urge them to vote for Buck.

Posted by: Ace at 02:25 PM | Comments (119)
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Should be a good night.

Also, on Drudge, the exit polls say some Senators are now former Senators. But this is what you figured:

Arkansas: Boozman (R) defeats Lincoln (D)
Ohio: Portman (R) defeats Fisher (D)
North Dakota: Hoeven (R) defeats Potter (D)
Wisconsin: Johnson (R) defeats Feingold (D)

OH and WI were sorta close, I guess, but we already assumed those wins. It will be interesting to see the margin -- if it's greater than the 8% we were figuring, it's on like Donkey Kong.

Exit in FL: Massacre! The Rick Wilson says exits have Rubio ahead by +21.

More Exits: Bear in mind how very, very off 2004's exits were -- showing Kerry, for example, with a 20+ point lead in PA (and John Kerry's so called "five hour presidency," when everyone therefore expected him to win).

These are likely way off-- and off in favor of liberals! But if you haven't voted, you should. Take Fiorina (for example) being behind as an extra reason to vote.

Blumy +8
Boxer +8
Kirk + 6
Johnson +5
Bennet +2
Murray +6
Toomey +4
Manchin +7
Reid even

Posted by: Ace at 02:16 PM | Comments (171)
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UPDATE: Awwww, the Anchorage Daily News left out that the NY Times Reporter thought he was joking.

BWAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

...as the Murkowski family showed up at the poll to, presumably, write in the incumbent's name on their ballots. First, Sen. Lisa Murkowski left her ID in the car; then, Murkowski's husband, Verne Martell, asked from his voting booth, "Hon, how do you spell your last name?"

All I can say about that is BWAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Posted by: DrewM at 01:57 PM | Comments (69)
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I'm watching only MSNBC tonight for maximum Schadenfreude value. Just a few minutes into Hardball I got this marvelous "unbiased" quote from Matthews. (talking about Senate races) "... Colorado where Michael Bennet is fighting a Heroic Fight..."

Please share other choice tidbits in the comments.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 01:17 PM | Comments (308)
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Low in Maine cities. Democratic strongholds, I assume.

In Connecticut, low in Democratic areas, high in Republican areas. Do you smell what Linda McMahon is cookin'? The People's Upset?

In Wisconsin, Democratic turnout isn't what they need it to be.

Via a tipster, in Florida, turnout is over +15 advantage for Republicans. That's not as high as I'd like Republican turnout (come, guys, Jeeze). But it's a big advantage.

Also, R's have reversed the D advantage in early voting from 2008, and now lead in that category by nearly as big a margin as D's led in 2008.

Update: Based on my tipster: You can expect all the people you thought would win in Florida to win... I guess the next question is, "Can we expect the longshots like Karen Harrington to win too?"

In Colorado, 74,000 more Republicans have already voted than Democrats.

It's low overall in Virginia, which I take to be a good sign, as my operating assumption is that conservative voting is higher than normal and Democrat voting is much lower than normal. That's an assumption, but I'd say it's a strong one.

That means that Patrick Murray has a real shot to knocking off Jim Moran.

It's too early for Victory Ewok but here's Big Kahuna Ewok.

Posted by: Ace at 12:59 PM | Comments (268)
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Just to let you know, the cobloggers and I are splitting up the country into groups of states we'll have primary responsibility for covering. We'll keep updating these threads -- constantly -- and will bump them to the top if there's something important, too. So make sure you scan down the page.

We've got the states pretty well divided I think but I'm crap for organization so I do expect we'll have left a few states off. Let me know, we'll figure it out.

Also, please note each coblogger's email (which should be in the post). If you have a tip for one of those states, send it to the appropriate person to get it up quickly. You can also cc each tip to me (at aceofspadeshq, at the google based mail system) and at morontips (also at the google based mail system), which is an account that all of the cobloggers have access to.

Posted by: Ace at 12:48 PM | Comments (152)
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Smart liberals. Educated liberals. Liberals who know more about stuff than everyone else. Liberals who are saner than everyone else.

Gettin' punked.

Note the sign asks if Obama is a "Keynesian" -- a follower of the Keynes economic program of spending big in deficits. The interviewer does say "Keynesian."

But these smart liberals freak. more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:40 AM | Comments (339)
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Patrick Ishmael is trying to use the blogosphere to construct a good guess as to national turnout trends.

Answer honestly, not "Freep this poll"-ishly. This is so we know before the media does, so lying about it-- doing the Ron Paul! thing, freeping it, etc. -- is directly contrary to this purpose.

Average Turnout in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland)? Cuyahoga is on track to post just-above-average turnout. This is a Dem bastion that provided the lion's share of Obama's 2008 margin in the state of Ohio.

Two things:

1) The somewhat elevated turnout is due entirely, in all probability, to increased conservative turnout here. That is, assuming the enthusiasm gap is real (and it is), the slightly increased turnout here isn't due to D's coming out in greater numbers, but R's.

2) The D's needed big turnout here to offset big turnout in all the red areas of the state (which is most of them). They're not getting it.

Posted by: Ace at 11:18 AM | Comments (131)
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Uh-oh.

I take my humble pie with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Posted by: Ace at 11:03 AM | Comments (253)
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