With abortion on the ballot in Ohio, Issue 2 — a statute that would allow Ohioans to possess and grow marijuana and create a new Division of Cannabis Control to regulate it — fell under the radar. However, ABC projects that Issue 2 will pass.

—Leah Askarinam, 538

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

Happy off-year Election Day! Tonight, I’m watching the proposed constitutional amendment on Ohio’s statewide ballot, which would codify abortion rights in the state constitution. It’s not only a temperature check on how voters view abortion rights post-Dobbs, but also a data point in a red state where Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown is running for reelection in 2024.

A vote approving Issue 1 would, according to the language of the proposed amendment, enshrine the "right to make and carry out one's reproductive decisions, including but not limited to decisions on contraception, fertility treatment, continuing one's own pregnancy, miscarriage care, and abortion." Controversially, though, a GOP-led ballot board had final say on the wording that appeared on today’s ballots, making changes that could dampen support for the measure.

Advocates on each side of the ballot measure have accused the other side of being too extreme and out of step with Ohio voters. Proponents point to the six-week abortion ban without exceptions that Gov. Mike DeWine signed into law (and that’s currently on hold), while opponents say that the law would allow people to have abortions at any point in their pregnancy. In reality, the proposed amendment would specify that “abortion may be prohibited after fetal viability,” though not in cases where a physician determines that the abortion “is necessary to protect the pregnant patient’s life or health.”

Next year, Brown is running for reelection in one of the key races that could decide the next Senate majority. And you can bet that strategists on both sides of the aisle will be assessing the effectiveness of their abortion messaging on this ballot as they prepare to deploy their resources in 2024.

—Leah Askarinam, 538