Election 2024 updates: With Arizona, Trump sweeps all 7 swing states

Trump and Harris get most of the attention, but today is also a big day for JD Vance and Tim Walz, who will find out if they will become the 50th vice president of the United States. Just as they are on the presidential candidates, Americans are pretty divided in their opinions of the VP aspirants, but one is narrowly above water with the American people and the other is not.

According to 538's averages, 41% of Americans have a favorable opinion of Walz, while only 39% have an unfavorable opinion of him. By contrast, only 38% of Americans have a favorable opinion of Vance, while 45% have an unfavorable one.

With the resurfacing of some of his old comments (like calling liberals "childless cat ladies"), Vance made a bad first impression with the public, and his image never really recovered. However, Republicans can take solace in the fact that vice presidential candidates rarely affect the outcome of the election. Virtually everyone makes their decision based on the names at the top of the ticket, not the bottom.

As I mentioned earlier on the blog, women make up 41% of Democrats' members of Congress, but just 15% of Republicans' members of Congress. That gap is unlikely to shrink after all the races today are projected, because the GOP nominated fewer women to run this cycle, compared to the last two cycles, and only a handful were nominated to run in safe districts.

There are seven other non-incumbent Republican women we will be watching tonight, but they are running in races that our forecast rate as "Likely Democratic" Of these, only two are in open races, while the rest are challenging Democratic incumbents: Kari Lake, who is running in the open Arizona Senate race and wins just 22-in-100 simulations in our forecast against Ruben Gallegos, and Caroleene Dobson, who wins just 9-in-100 simulations against Shomari Figures.

We will be watching these races, and a handful of others where Republican women could win, today:

From taxes to abortion, from immigration to health care, the policy stakes for this presidential election are large. But there is a consolation prize that is likely to go to the party that loses this presidential election: control of the House of Representatives in two years' time.

Political scientists have documented that American electoral politics is subject to powerful, often predictable tides. And as I wrote back in 2016, midterm elections, and especially midterm elections for the U.S. House, offer a clear example of that. Particularly in an era of close margins in the House, whichever party loses the presidency today will become the immediate favorite to retake the House in the next election.

Dating all the way back to 1980, there has only been one presidential election in which the losing party didn't wind up in control of the House of Representatives after the subsequent midterm, regardless of whether they controlled the House at the start of their president's term. In the other 11 elections since then, the party that lost the White House either regained the House or held control in the subsequent midterm. Democratic Presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden all saw their party lose control of the House in their first midterm election; Republican Donald Trump did in 2018 as well.

The only exception came in 2002, when 9/11 had reshaped the political landscape and helped Republicans gain seats in the House while George W. Bush was president. But even Bush was not immune from this pattern — in 2006, two years after his reelection, his Republicans lost control of both the House and the Senate.

Ted Cruz has established quite the reputation as a rabble-rouser; but his confrontational, and often unconventional, politicking has earned him yet another competitive general election challenge.

This isn't the first time that the two-term senator has faced a serious challenger. In 2018, Cruz narrowly eked out a win against onetime Democratic sensation Beto O'Rourke, and it's likely tonight's race will be similarly close. 538's final average of polls gives Cruz only a 4-point lead over his opponent, Democratic Rep. Colin Allred.

Part of the reason why Cruz finds himself here again is because he's one of the most loathed members of Congress. He was among several Republican senators who tried to cast doubt on the legitimacy of President Biden's victory in 2020 and has refused to answer whether he'll accept the results of his own race tonight. And despite his largely unsuccessful attempts to rebrand himself as bipartisan, Cruz has repeatedly leaned into red meat and culture issues to fire up his base of Texas' most staunch conservative voters.

Texans have taken notice: According to an October poll from the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, Cruz was viewed as more ideologically extreme than Allred. Just 26% of likely voters said they'd describe Allred as "extremely liberal" compared with 44% who rated Cruz as "extremely conservative."

Allred has worked to take advantage of this perception. During a spirited debate on October 15, the former NFL player made repeated reference to the fact that he's been rated Texas' most bipartisan member of Congress. He's also tried to paint Cruz as someone who won't work across the aisle, citing, for instance, that Cruz was among a group of Senate Republicans who torpedoed a bipartisan border legislation package in February after former President Donald Trump came out against it. Allred has also laced into Cruz for refusing to say whether he agrees with Texas' near-total abortion ban and for taking that infamous trip to Cancún in 2021 amid a weeklong storm that left many of the state's residents without power or water.

Cruz's attempts to fight back have mainly been focused on comparing Allred to Democratic bogeymen like Nancy Pelosi. And in the home-stretch to Election Day, Cruz has amped up attacks focused on Allred's support for policies supporting transgender Americans. (Allred in 2023 voted against the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, which would've cut off federal funds for athletic programs that allow transgender men to compete in women's or girls' sports.)

538's final election forecast gives Cruz about an 84-in-100 shot at winning the Senate race. And in a lean-Republican state like Texas, the race remains his to lose. But the Republican's vulnerability for a second go-around is an interesting sight to see and raises questions about whether Democrats might be closing the gap on flipping a statewide seat there — something the party hasn't accomplished since 1994.