Another county that looks close to fully reporting in Kentucky is Elliott. Beshear is winning it 53 percent to 47 percent, which is worse for him than in 2019, when he carried it 59 percent to 39 percent. Elliott County is in the middle of coal country, which used to be staunchly Democratic but has realigned harder than perhaps any other part of the country. Famously, Elliott County voted for the Democratic presidential candidate in every election from 1872 (!) to 2012, but then Trump carried it in 2016 and 2020 as part of his gains with working-class whites.

So it’s not too surprising that Beshear is doing worse there than he did four years ago. The only question is, will it doom his reelection chances?

—Nathaniel Rakich, 538

Galen mentioned that state-level concerns can sometimes trump national politics when it comes to state races, and Kentucky could be a good example of that. Democratic incumbent Gov. Andy Beshear is running for re-election in the deep-red commonwealth. Would a win for him there mean anything for 2024? It's hard to say. Beshear is an unusual case, the popular governor who also happens to be the son of a popular former governor. His Republican opponent, Attorney General Daniel Cameron, has been working to nationalize the race and tie Beshear to President Joe Biden and Biden's low approval ratings, but reporting from our ABCNews colleague, Tal Axelrod, shows that the commonwealth's voters don't necessarily buy that. Beshear's job helping rural areas recover from tornadoes and floods could boost his performance in Republican areas. Cameron, on the other hand, is known in the state for deciding not to prosecute the police officers who shot Breonna Taylor in her apartment. That may play a role in how voters cast a ballot in her home city of Louisville. These local issues could matter more to voters tonight than what's going on in D.C.
—Monica Potts, 538

Virginia's polls have closed, and we should start getting some vote totals from there shortly. However, be careful interpreting the numbers in key races as the night wears on. There may be some districts where there is an early red mirage because mostly Election Day votes are reported first, whereas more heavily Democratic mail-in and in-person early votes will be reported second. But this won't be true in every locality, so we'll be keeping an eye out for important differences in districts as we report what's happening.
—Geoffrey Skelley, 538

We now have 16 percent of the expected vote in from Kentucky's gubernatorial race, and a couple counties have reported about 90 percent or more of what we expect to see from them. In south-central Kentucky, deep red Taylor County has 94 percent of its expected vote, and Cameron leads Beshear by 18 points there. However, Beshear lost that county by 24 points in his narrow 2019 win, so that would be a notable improvement for him. Meanwhile, in eastern Kentucky, Menifee County has 89 percent of its expected vote and Cameron leads by 8 points. But in contrast, this is a place Beshear lost by 7 points in 2019, so this would mark a slight GOP improvement.
—Geoffrey Skelley, 538

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, abortion rights issues have won every time they’ve been on the ballot. Tonight, we’ll see if that trend holds as Ohio voters will decide whether to enshrine abortion rights in their state constitution.

But more broadly, abortion rights proved to be a motivator for Democratic voters in last year’s midterm elections, helping propel their party to better-than-expected midterm election results. Abortion remains an important issue for Democrats: 86 percent view it as very or somewhat important in the Oct. 25 weekly YouGov/The Economist poll. It’s a sharp contrast to Republicans, who are much less likely to support abortion rights than the general electorate, and also less likely to rank it as an important issue: only 68 percent did so in the YouGov/Economist poll.

That could keep Democrats likely to show up at the polls even when abortion is only implicitly on the ballot, like in Virginia, where Republicans have a chance to win full control of the state government. Hoping to drive turnout, Virginia Democrats have campaigned on abortion rights in competitive legislative districts this year, warning voters that Virginia could join other Southern, Republican-led states in banning abortion. Republicans in the state have denounced these efforts as fearmongering.

If the Ohio abortion-rights amendment wins and Democrats once again outperform expectations in other elections, it could be a sign that abortion is still driving Democrats to the polls. But no matter what happens tonight, abortion will likely continue to shape the presidential primary and election season that begins next year.

—Monica Potts, 538