Election 2023 results and analysis: Democrats excel in Kentucky, Ohio, Virginia

There's one race in New Jersey I've been particularly interested in, because it's taking place in a district that has no right being competitive: the 30th Legislative District, which voted for Trump by 35 points in 2020 and for GOP gubernatorial nominee Jack Ciattarelli by 28 points in 2021. But Democrats landed a top recruit in Avi Schnall, who's a leader in the district's sizeable Orthodox Jewish community. Schnall, who only recently left the Republican Party, is running for one of the district's two state assembly seats. In New Jersey, each legislative district has two assemblymembers, so the top two vote-getters in the race win. In the assembly race, the AP estimates 76 percent of the expected vote has been counted, and Schnall is currently in second place with 25.3 percent. While Republican Sean Kean is in first with 38 percent, the other GOP nominee, Ned Thomson, is in third with 24.7 percent.

—Jacob Rubashkin, Inside Elections

It is way early in vote counting in Houston’s mayoral race, but the two candidates who have been widely expected to progress to a runoff are also way ahead. If no candidate receives 50 percent of the vote, the top two compete in a Dec. 9 runoff. With 31 percent of the expected vote in, according to the New York Times, Democratic state Sen. John Whitmire is leading with 43 percent, followed by Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee with 36.5 percent. The third-place candidate lags far behind, with 7 percent of the vote. Although it’s a nonpartisan race with two Democrats in the lead, Whitmire has received support from more Republican and independent candidates, according to recent polling.

—Leah Askarinam, 538

Democrats are looking good in two key districts in the Virginia state Senate, but there's another one in Northern Virginia where Democrats were favored that could be very close. In the 30th Senate District, Democrat Danica Roem leads Republican Bill Woolf by about 4 percentage points. But the Virginia Public Access Project reports that all early votes are in, so the fact that all four remaining precincts are at least somewhat GOP-leaning could give Woolf a narrow path to overtake Roem. Woolf's campaign took a hit earlier in the campaign when The Washington Post reported that the former police detective would have been fired back in 2017 for working another job while reporting hours worked for the Fairfax County police department. Roem, meanwhile, is a member of the House of Delegates and made history as the first transgender woman ever elected to Virginia's General Assembly when she first won in 2017.

—Geoffrey Skelley, 538

Ohio is projected to vote “yes” on Issue 1, a proposed constitutional amendment that enshrines abortion rights in the state constitution. The courts had previously blocked Gov. Mike DeWine’s six-week abortion ban, and the new constitutional amendment protects the right to abortion through fetal viability, around 24 weeks of pregnancy.

—Leah Askarinam, 538