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

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