In Mississippi's gubernatorial contest, Reeves leads by about 15 points, 57 percent to 42 percent, with 34 percent of the expected vote reporting. However, one of the most critical counties in the state will probably be late to report its vote. Hinds County, home to the state capital of Jackson and Democrats' biggest voter base, had ballot shortages, which led a state court to order that all precincts remain open another hour beyond the 8 p.m. Eastern poll closing time, and a handful of others until 9 p.m. The Mississippi Republican Party filed an emergency motion with the state supreme court to vacate the lower court's ruling regarding extended poll times. Hinds County's population is almost three-quarters Black.

—Geoffrey Skelley, 538

We did warn that, of the more than 250 mayoral races in the country, we might see an upset someplace. For now, that place seems to be Manchester, New Hampshire, where local media projects that Republican Jay Ruais will win the race to replace Democratic Mayor Joyce Craig, who is running for governor and had endorsed Democrat Kevin Cavanaugh to replace her.

Technically, the mayoral race is nonpartisan. However, Ruais was a congressional aide to former Rep. Frank Guinta, a Republican who had also previously served as mayor of Manchester. Ruais also had an endorsement from outgoing Republican Gov. Chris Sununu

Across the state, Republicans have been campaigning on the idea that Manchester “is out of control,” according to reporting from the local NPR station. Expect to hear plenty of prognosticating over how Republicans won New Hampshire’s biggest city in the coming days, if not months.

—Leah Askarinam, 538

In the 11th District, the AP has projected that state Sen. Vin Gopal has won re-election in a district that Republicans had heavily targeted. Gopal leads his GOP challenger 60 to 39 percent, while his ticket-mates running for state Assembly, Margie Donlon and Luanne Peterpaul, are running ahead of their GOP opponents as well.

—Jacob Rubashkin, Inside Elections

Beshear spoke after his victory, saying that voters didn't choose to move right or left, but made "a choice to move forward for every single family." He said "anger politics" should end, and that Republicans had run ads in the state full of hate and division. Beshear touted his record of economic and infrastructure development, and promised to raise pay for educators and establish universal pre-K. His parents, including former Gov. Steve Beshear, wife, and children shared the stage with him. He said Hadley Duvall, a 21-year-old who appeared in an ad for him, speaking about the sexual abuse she experienced as a child and criticizing Cameron for his support of an abortion ban, was in the audience.

—Monica Potts, 538

Brandon Presley is trying to pull off an upset in Mississippi, which hasn’t elected a Democratic governor since 1999. To do that, he’ll need strong support from Black voters, who are the bedrock of the Democratic Party in the South. Mississippi has the highest proportion of Black residents of any state in the nation at 38 percent, but they are underrepresented in the electorate, usually coming in at around 30 percent of voters. In 2020, Black voters made up 29 percent of the electorate according to the A.P. VoteCast. To win, Presley probably needs Black voters to make up around 35 percent of the electorate. But turnout has only approached that level in elections where Democrats have had a Black candidate at the top of the ticket, specifically Barack Obama in 2012, when Black voters were 36 percent of the electorate, and Mike Espy in 2018’s Senate special election, when Black voters were 32.5 percent of the electorate. (And this wasn’t enough to boost either candidate to victory — Presley, who is white, would also need far greater support from white voters than Obama and Espy received.)

While the Presley campaign has invested significantly in Black voter turnout and worked to court Black voters in a way that 2019 Democratic gubernatorial nominee Jim Hood did not, he’s up against some serious structural hurdles. Mississippi has one of the most restrictive felony disenfranchisement laws in the nation owing to provisions of its 1890 constitution, which was written in large part to restrict Black residents from exercising their recently obtained right to vote. A 2020 study found that one in six Black Mississippians are ineligible to vote under state law because of felony convictions. While a federal appeals court panel this summer ordered the state to stop enforcing the disenfranchisement law, that decision has been vacated pending an en banc appeal to the full 5th Circuit, so residents who would have regained their rights are back in limbo.

—Jacob Rubashkin, Inside Elections