ABC News projects that no candidate will receive 50 percent in the race for mayor in Houston, meaning the race will go to a runoff. Democratic state Sen. John Whitmire and Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee will face off on Dec. 9, in what’s technically a nonpartisan election for mayor. With 54 percent of the expected vote reported, Whitmire leads with 43 percent, followed by Jackson Lee with 37 percent.

— Leah Askarinam, 538

In Mississippi, Republicans look somewhat favored to hold onto the governorship. Reeves leads Presley by 11 points, 54.8 percent to 43.8 percent, with two-thirds of the expected vote reporting. However, much of heavily Democratic Hinds County has still not reported, so that margin will tighten. The question is, how much? Looking at the aggregate vote in the 14 counties where 90 percent or more of the expected vote has reported, Reeves is running about 1 point behind his 2019 victory margin. But considering he won by 5 points in 2019, that trend still points to a narrow victory. Critically, it may also be enough to clear 50 percent to avoid a runoff under Mississippi law, which requires the winning candidate to have a majority of the vote. Gwendolyn Gray, an independent, dropped out before the election and endorsed Presley, but she remained on the ballot. She currently has 1.4 percent of the vote, which could be enough to throw it to a runoff if Presley can really close the current gap.

—Geoffrey Skelley, 538

Things are looking decent for New Jersey Democrats in the state Senate, where they look poised to oust at least one GOP lawmaker, Ed Durr (who currently trails his Democratic opponent by 8 points), and bring back all of their incumbents. The AP has called 15 races for Democrats so far (short of the 21 needed for a majority) but just 6 for Republicans. If each party wins the remaining seats in which they're leading, Democrats would actually see a net gain of 1 seat. In the state House, Democrats have successfully ousted at least one GOP incumbent, with Rabbi Avi Schnall edging past Ned Thomson in the 30th Legislative District, but the vast majority of the multi-member races are not yet called.

Ultimately, Republicans weren't able to capitalize on whatever momentum they had generated two years ago when GOP gubernatorial nominee Jack Ciattarelli nearly pulled off a massive upset against Gov. Phil Murphy. The GOP looks like they're going to fall short of flipping either chamber of the legislature, a disappointing result for a state party that has struggled mightily over the last decade and was hoping for some good news.

—Jacob Rubashkin, Inside Elections

After flipping a mayoral seat in New Hampshire earlier tonight, conservatives scored another win in Wichita, Kansas. Like the Manchester, New Hampshire, mayoral race, the Wichita race is technically nonpartisan, though it clearly pitted a Democrat against a Republican. The Wichita Eagle has a great summary of the race, which Libertarian Lily Wu, previously a Republican, won. She defeated Mayor Brandon Whipple, a Democrat who ousted the Republican mayor in 2019. Notably, Wu had the backing of Americans for Prosperity, a conservative group founded by the Koch brothers.

—Leah Askarinam, 538

Pennsylvania has a slew of state and local races to keep an eye on this evening, headlined by a multimillion-dollar state Supreme Court contest between Republican Carolyn Carluccio, president judge of the Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas, and Democrat Daniel McCaffery, a Superior Court judge.

The outcome here won’t change party control of the seven-member court, where Democrats have held a 4-2 majority (with one vacancy) since the death of Democratic Chief Justice Max Baer in October 2022. Rather, Democrats are looking to shore up their majority amid continued legal battles over voting access in the battleground state, and ahead of the next judicial elections in 2025, when three of their four existing seats will be up for retention.

There isn’t much polling on this race, but a September survey by the Commonwealth Foundation, a conservative think tank, showed McCaffery in the lead 42 percent to 36 percent. However, a mid-October survey by Franklin & Marshall College found that, for each candidate, over 70 percent of registered voters weren’t familiar enough to have an opinion of them. Voters, then, are more likely to be influenced in this race by partisan preference and issue-related messaging — of which there’s been plenty.

As we’ve seen repeatedly in the post-Dobbs era, Pennsylvania Democrats have made abortion central to their turnout efforts and attacks against Carluccio. But tonight’s outcome will likely have more immediate ramifications on another key issue: voting access. Pennsylvania’s Act 77, a bipartisan measure that widely expanded access to mail-in voting in 2019, has been repeatedly challenged by Republicans in the wake of Trump’s baseless claims of voting fraud in the 2020 election. The state Supreme Court deadlocked 3-3 on one such challenge right before the 2022 election and is likely to hear additional challenges heading into, and perhaps in relation to, the 2024 election.

—Tia Yang, 538