states. >> steve kornacki, thank you very much. >> by the way, with or without graphics, we look at you as steve kornacki master of graphics, but there's so much more there. we have 16 states and the district of columbia here as we approach this hour. we have a lot more projections as we approach this hour. and let's do it. 8:00 eastern time, let's go outside to rockefeller plaza, up the side of the building we go. the state of florida. we have as too close to call. 29 electoral votes. pennsylvania, too early to call. 20 electoral votes. new hampshire, too early to call. 4 highly fought-over electoral votes. illinois goes to the clinton column. of course the home originally of hillary clinton. a big state, 20 electoral votes, part of the blue wall, as is new jersey, the most densely

populated state in the union with 14 electoral votes. that goes to clinton, as does the baystate, the commonwealth of massachusetts, 11 electoral votes. adding to the trump bloc in the south is tennessee. we're projecting when all the votes are counted, he will receive those 11 electoral votes. maryland reliably maryland goes to hillary clinton, ten electoral votes there. alabama nine electoral votes going to trump. oklahoma in the midwest will go to donald trump, 7 electoral votes. back up we go to new england, the state of connecticut, the nutmeg state, seven electoral votes going to hillary clinton. mississippi weiay down south gog to donald -- okay, we have awarded it to donald trump. rhode island, we keep whipsawing back up north through new england and part of our story is in this whipsaw actually. four electoral votes from the

great state of rhode island. delaware to hillary clinton, home state of joe biden, going to hillary clinton. the district of columbia, longer talk we could have about taxation without representation there going to hillary clinton. the state of missouri we were just hearing from senator mccaskill, we have this as too early to call with clinton leading -- okay, trump is leading in missouri, too early to call with trump out front and in the state of maine, too early to call with clinton in the early lead. let's go to those other races we are watching so far. 75-66 in the race to 220 in electoral votes. it's early yet. and here is how the map looks. we've just added in some more red and we've just added in some more blue. but a map maker or a political

scientist looking for a trend, looking for regions, looking for who we are as a country, we are starting to see that inkblot test. here are the races we are still watching. ohio, too close to call and this could be a while given the 16% raw vote in. georgia, too close to call, another closely watched state in the south. north carolina, too early to call. virginia too early to call at this point, but a lead on clinton's part. we have a senate race, illinois, this one got a lot of attention just lately. >> this is important. very important. >> tammy duckworth, a decorated combat veteran, turning away the incumbent in this race. >> this is important not only because of who tammy duckworth is, this is important because this is the democrats ousting

than incumbent republican senator who was running for re-election. this will add to the democratic total in the senate in a way that could potentially be determinative in the end. the democrats will need four seats if hillary clinton wins, they'll need five seats if donald trump wins to take control of the senate chamber. mark kirk as an incumbent you would think would have the advantage. he ran a -- forgive me, i don't mean it in a bad way, he ran a bad campaign. he called president obama the drug dealer in chief. it was not good politics. it was also embarrassing at a deeper level when she said to tammy duckworth after she talked about her family serving in the military, he said snidely, oh, i didn't remember your relatives coming over from thailand to serve george washington. in fact tammy duckworth's father, his family does actually

have a record of military service going back to the american revolution. mark kirk apologized for that, but it was seen as such a low blow, i think there was no coming back from that for him. in the broader picture, that's a democratic pickup and that brings the democrats one big seat closer to taking control of the senate. >> it ends a challenging political story for mark kirk who, let's face it, came back from enormous physical challenges to get where he is today. >> that stroke, that's right. >> in terms of intellectual and physical ability and then came that moment at the debate that ricocheted around the country and the political world. steve kornacki over at the board. steve. >> three poll closings here. look at the numbers in some of these three key states. start on florida. we've been talking about it. here's the numbers we've been seeing. this is interesting. not all white college graduates around the country are reacting the same way. look at this. in florida, donald trump leading with white college graduates by 24 points. get this, four years ago, mitt romney in florida won this same

group only by 21. so here's the first time we've seen this tonight. white college graduates in florida reacting very differently. actually trump doing better with them than romney did four years ago. also white noncollege in florida. you see a 34-point lead here for donald trump. four years ago that was 27 for mitt romney. so it would appear with the white vote there donald trump is actually making progress over mitt romney. remember, mitt romney lost the state by about a point four years ago. we just took you through the map. why is hillary clinton still doing well on that map? latino voters in florida, a 29-point lead for hillary clinton over donald trump. you think of the national number, trump doing better with latinos in florida than nationally. why is that? large cuban vote in florida, ancestorally they were republican. but this 29-point lead is up. four years ago it was only 21

for barack obama. big progress there. that's helping hillary clinton. black voters, we're seeing a little bit of slippage there. our exit polls telling us turnout among black voters in florida may be up from four years ago. we can also show you pennsylvania. now look at this. white voters with a college degree, a four-point lead here for hillary clinton. check this out, four years ago. mitt romney won this group by 15 points. this is the prototype. when we talk about white suburbanites turning on donald trump, in the philadelphia suburbs romney won by double digits four years ago. donald trump now losing that group to hillary clinton by four points. the flip side, though, look at this. noncollege whites in pennsylvania, a 25-point lead for donald trump. he's basically doubled the 13-point advantage that mitt romney had four years ago. so those two groups of white voters moving apart in pennsylvania. again, you still see hillary clinton cleaning up with black voters in pennsylvania, getting very close there to what barack obama got. remember that rally in

philadelphia last night. quickly we'll take you through new hampshire. hillary clinton with a 20-point advantage among white college graduates in new hampshire. four years ago, this was 10 for obama. so this was already a group democrats had won over, but more. now doubling it. the democratic advantage among noncollege whites in new hampshire, for donald trump. >> we have another projection. right there next to steve on the big board, marco rubio. and nicolle wallace, i'm looking at you, will get to be one of the republicans from the long process you guys went through who gets to give an acceptance speech tonight. >> he could be the only republican who ran for president who gives a victory speech tonight. >> well, we've got rand paul. >> well, okay. so we may have a couple. but i want to bring mark kirk back into this, because the other laboratory of sort of political strategies that we'll be able to chew on in the coming days is what was the best way to deal with trump? mark kirk distanced himself from

trump immediately and he was personally offended, i think it was the muslim ban that caused him to unendorse donald trump. there was a very dramatic confrontation, i remember hallie jackson chasing him down in the halls. and trump made his displeasure with mark kirk -- senator kirk's unendorsement known and he didn't -- kirk didn't carry the day. i don't know if you can draw a direct line between how he handled trump, but rubio after a very, very, very, very hard fought primary ultimately endorsed him and never pulled away that endorsement. >> he didn't like to say his name. he would say i will vote for our nominee. >> but he consistently ran about three points ahead of trump in the state of florida. so i think we'll be able to look at in the later hours of tonight who had the best strategy and who was in a state with the most favorable terrain for dealing with the trump problem. >> it also tells you that time passes when these things happen. marco rubio hit bottom when he lost his home state in the presidential primary by 19 points. >> right.

>> after he had gone up against trump to the point that he was saying he was wetting his pants and making sure of the size of his hands, after he'd gone high and low and everything in between against trump and he lost by almost 20 points in his home state. now here he is holding on to his senate seat. >> i'm glad you opened this up. was it smarter politically to stick with trump no matter how bad he smelled sometimes or is it better to keep your distance from the beginning? back when goldwater was also a disaster but he didn't have this character problem that trump's got, the people that stuck with him through thick and thin came out okay. the ones that went hiding in the bushes were remembered for hiding in the bushes. >> i wouldn't call mark kirk someone who hid in the bushes. i think he bravely -- >> that's a nice way of putting it. what's the smarter move? >> we'll find out. >> mark kirk didn't handle it well. remember, he said he was going to vote in general petraeus and then he said he was -- >> none of us have been in this situation before where en masse the nominee of our party, you

know, stood in contrast to our values and our ideas and then there was the little character that you bring up. nobody dealt with it perfectly because nobody had had to deal with it before. but mark kirk dealt with it honorably. i don't know that you can say it cost him his seat. he lost his seat. but, you know, there's portman, who was with him until the "access hollywood" tape came out. portman is polling eight points ahead of donald trump in ohio. so there will be all these different examples and it's not apples to apples because all these states are very different. but one of the conundrums that incumbent republicans had was to figure out how to deal with trump. if you look at women, i've been obsessed with the mom vote all cycle, women are not breaking his way in some of these tight states. >> i was just going to say everybody involved in the process had to learn to deal with trump. >> right, in realtime. >> it was a learning experience for a lot of people and it does raise the question of how much you can extrapolate from a situation that never happened before.

>> if florida goes for trump, that helps explain the answer to this. i think he can carry florida, trump, and if he carries florida and rubio went with him, there's a lot of backup for him there. >> my state went for him, i went for him, okay, he has problems but we were together on that. >> but they all have wives and daughters and sons and you have to look them in the eye that say i voted for a guy -- >> right now florida tight as a tick. >> democrats feel great about the vote in the southern part of the state. >> even if they win, it's going to be tight. >> it's going to be tight but democrats feel very optimistic about florida. >> in terms of this issue about how down ticket, particularly senate candidates deal with trump, the really interesting case is pat toomey, right, in pennsylvania. pat toomey did this great thing today where he hasn't been willing to say who he's going to vote for. he's been doing this elaborate dance, not explaining who he's voting for like there might be any possible number of answers. he waited -- polls close at 8:00

in pennsylvania. he waited until 6:45 p.m. until he voted thinking at that point he would have to admit that he voted for trump, but maybe people wouldn't hear about it because there's only 75 minutes left. talk about threading the needle. we'll see how he does. >> i have to tell you that's not a sign of a profile in courage. and by the way, you know what's frustrating about tonight, the last two hours, we for months knew which states are going to be close, and they are. so too early to call, too close to call, it's what we've predicted. it's what we thought was going to happen and the states that are most fascinating like ohio and pennsylvania and florida, they are extremely fascinating and we're going to be here several hours to get this answer. >> not to be rigged, we don't know any answers in advance. >> you said the other night rachel, so brilliant, if you look at the poll numbers on the personality and personal approval ratings from day one, it's exactly the same now. it shows the power of the media

to influence opinion. zero. >> let's go to chris's hometown, philadelphia. jacob soboroff. jacob, you have high volume to report, correct? >> reporter: sure do. 1686 different election divisions in this great city and here in north philadelphia at temple university it has got to be the longest line in the entire city. polls closed, what, 10, 15 minutes ago. some of these students just got here and they just made it under the gun. these little white pieces of paper being handed out, if you got here by 8:00, you are getting in that door up there. three to four hours these folks of been waiting fueled by these folks, dunkin' donuts, domino's pizza. i want to introduce you to some of the folks. tell me your name. >> jessica hart. >> what has inspired you to stay in this line for how long now? >> about three hours. >> okay. why are you here? >> because every vote counts, and who i want to be in the office needs to be in the office so i will stand in this line.

this is my first year of voting. >> first time voting ever? >> ever. >> can i ask you who you're going to vote for? >> hillary. >> so nice to meet you. thank you very much. probably another 30 minutes to go? dedication, dedication, dedication in this line. again, what the hillary clinton campaign wants to hear. back to you guys. >> we know you're from southern california. all of us out east know that this week in november can be really rough. we've been blessed through a lot of the eastern seaboard with some very mild weather. it's nice because folks are in long lines tonight. just want to show you speaking of new york, the overflow crowd at the javits center. >> wow. >> if you know the city at all, this is over at the hudson river, what used to be kind of dilapidated old rail yard property. the huge convention center named for the esteemed new york senator, jacob javits, who had a big hand in among other things the war powers act.

>> 1974. >> we will go to a break. this is the overflow for the democrats gathering tonight, a stage looking for all the world like night three of a political convention or the vehicle assembly building at nasa. we're back with more right after this.

we are back here at beautifully decorated rockefeller plaza. still early in the evening, 8:19 eastern time, but we have enough calls, especially in some of these senate races, we thought you would walk us through what we know starting with this projection. the incumbent returning, well-known, long-time republican senator richard shelby of

alabama is going back to the u.s. senate. in connecticut, long-time, well known democratic senator, richard blumenthal. this is going to end up being like a 30-point margin. he's going back. chris van hollen in maryland, this is the mikulski seat. a lot of politicos are saying basically can hang on to this for a long, long time. she was the senior most serving woman in the u.s. senate when she retired. and lankford the projected winner, the incumbent p. democrats are up one with the tammy duckworth win from illinois. let's take a look at the vote that's coming in now. you see hillary clinton with a lead now. plenty to be counted. we can show you where this is coming from. it's two main sources on the map

for hillary clinton. this is mecklenburg. this appears to be the early vote there. this is the largest county in north carolina. you see clinton 66-31. now in 2012 barack obama got 61% in this county. this appears to be the early vote. we will see what happens when the rest comes in. the other area, the second largest county in the state, wake county. that's where the capital is, raleigh. there's also some well-to-do suburbs there. now we're getting same-day vote in. hillary clinton leading by 22. four years ago barack obama won this county by 11 points. so when we talk about those college educated well-to-do affluent suburbanites this could be working to hillary clinton's favor tonight. we were going through the results in florida just in the last few minutes. new returns have come in and actually now you can see this has moved in donald trump's direction. donald trump now leading hillary clinton in florida by 8,000

votes. we're trying to find out exactly which county, which big county came in here because we saw that lead for hillary clinton. one thing is poke county here, sort of in the middle of the state. you can see trump now with a narrow -- hang on. there you go, trump right now, that's a little better than mitt romney did four years ago, but really the story looking at these returns in florida, the story seems to be almost a rerun of the 2012 election. a lot of these counties look an awful lot like they did in obama versus romney. >> steve, can we go back to the statewide in florida just a second. heading into today, we knew that three-quarters of the 2012 vote basically had already been cast in terms of the early vote. so looking to fill in from today's election day voters is going to be somewhere in the order of a quarter of the vote if they vote in the same proportion as they did in 2012. with 88% of the vote that we've got in and we've got trump leading by 1 percentage point.

do we know anything about whether that overall turnout in florida is going to be significantly larger than 2012, significantly different? can we say anything about how big the vote is? >> one of the issues here, if i can go into miami-dade, let's see here. now, this is -- yes, this has changed a little bit. it's been a little finicky here. one of the problems is this 80% in-progress vote has not been doing a good job of tracking how much is early vote, how much is same-day vote so a lot of these counties were stuck sort of estimating. when it says 0% and you're looking at 200,000, it looks like that means that's the early vote. but then the other wrinkle in florida, some of the counties are reporting just to begin with just the mail-in vote before the election. then there's also the people who went in person to vote. we saw that in miami-dade earlier. a long way of saying we're still trying to figure out the answer to that. >> overall they now think it's 89% of the vote in in florida. important caveat, important detail from steve in terms of

not knowing exactly which vote this is. we've been putting so much effort into modeling what the absentee votes look like versus the early in-person, versus the day of. >> the early vote just comes up to steve's point and you've got instant starting percentages. over to the big board we had a call while steve was speaking. this is a hold for the gop, todd young, indiana senate. >> this is a senate seat that it's very interesting on this. this is the republican incumbent, left this seat, decided to retire, that was dan coates. the republicans nominated todd young after a little bit of a primary fight there. the democrats did not nominate evan bayh. they picked a guy named baron hill. after the primary was over, he stepped aside so evan bayh because they thought he would be a shoo-in but evan bayh losing

to todd young. >> you can't go home again. >> and if you do go home, remember your home address. >> yes, making that point. and i think the word lobbyist is bad here. he went off and became a lobbyist. we'll see that impact perhaps the race in missouri for roy blunt because his family is loaded with lobbyists. i think the country, whatever trump does, he has benefited from this anti-washington feeling. anybody who looks like too washington right now in terms of deals -- i think the word lobbyist has become terrible politically, just tie that to somebody and they're finished. >> watching these senate races right now, there's a lot of interesting personal stories. a lot of interesting political stories. again, we don't have calls in missouri or in new hampshire or in pennsylvania at this point. >> the other thing is the thing about being a senator, and it's hard to say there aren't exceptions bike dan coates was a senator and came back and took it rather handily. but bob kerrey went back to nebraska and got beat. it's very hard to go back

politically. >> another break for us. we're back with the 8:30 polls right after this.

we are back starting with one of the battlegrounds, virginia has moved in our projection from too early to

call to too close to call, from simply not having enough raw vote in to the raw vote we have in makes it too close to call. so we will continue to watch this. there's all kinds of internal politics and vote counting in virginia going into making a projection there. here's the 8:30 poll closing, and that would be the state of arkansas. the state of arkansas home to bill clinton and for a time hillary clinton goes tonight to donald trump, part of the red wall the republicans are amassing, six electoral votes. here's the race to 270 early in the evening. hillary clinton 75-72. and let's take a look at the too close to call state of florida. 29 electoral votes. you see the margin separating. 91% of the vote in.

sooner or later here, we're going to see why when the democrats are talking to us about how confident they are, if they're right or wrong in plain english. ohio too close to call, 31% of the vote in. georgia, one of the early closing states, too close to call. 16 electoral votes. let's see here, pennsylvania, too early to call. north carolina we have at too early to call. missouri, too early to call. advantage trump. trump is in the lead. new hampshire, too early to call. those four valuable electoral votes. maine, too early to call, advantage clinton. thus far, down onto home ice we go. let's take a look at how the country looks in red and blue.

the expanding red out from the middle atlantic states, patches of blue, but they're valuable patches. both will be added upon. back inside here to a big projection, a kind of big picture projection about our form of government and that is that the gop will remain in control of the house of representatives. that means that when the house begins its next session, paul ryan of wisconsin certainly hopes to be their leader and further he hopes to be the speaker of the house. >> and that raises a bunch of immediate questions and it arnsds some questions. obviously tonight -- >> it sure answers a bunch. >> the democrats are at best hoping for divided government. there's no chance that the democrats -- that hillary clinton can if she wins tonight and if the democrats take the senate tonight, there's no chance that they can come in with the kind of advantage, partisan advantage that barack obama had when he came in in

2008 with both houses of congress to work with. at this point it also raises the question of whether that sort of tells us anything about what the overall margin is going to be in the presidential race. historically there sometimes is and sometimes isn't correlation between how big a difference there is in the presidential race and how much of that translates to seats in the house. i think a lot of people thought that it was under no circumstances possible for democrats to win the 30 seats they'd need to take the house tonight, but maybe if hillary clinton had a landslide of 10, 11, 12 more points, maybe they could get there. now knowing at least in nbc news' projection that the house isn't going to go democratic under any circumstances, that may tell you something about how high the democrats hopes can aim for the presidency. >> it's going to turn into a bridge too far for the democratic hopes. there are some, as you all well know, the fascinating local house races. people follow politics all have their favorites. we'll try to get to those as the

evening goes on. let's circle back, however, to virginia and our designation that this thing is too close to call. steve kornacki is at the board. steve, if memory serves, it's all now about the vote in the north. >> that is a big part of this. one thing in virginia, and this gives democrats heart attacks every election in virginia is their best part of the state, the biggest part of the state, we're talking about -- it's even narrower than that. right in -- okay, you know what, let's zoom in. i'm still learning this thing. now we're in pennsylvania. bear with me. we are back. it's right around here in the northern part of the state. almost 30% of the vote comes out of here, it's always the last to report. so the gap hillary clinton has to make up right now in virginia, you're looking at about 140,000 votes. where can he get shows votes out of? this is fairfax county. you see this is early in the returns. her lead right now is 17,000 votes over donald trump. she's on pace for about what

obama got out of there four years ago in terms of the percent but his margin was 90,000 votes so she's going to gain a lot of votes from fairfax and arlington. it's too small to click on. it's also very early in the returns in arlington county, so that gap basically, the gap we're talking about here, and you see now it sits at 136,000 votes, that gap can be made up for in what's left in northern virginia. also you've got to look in richmond itself. there's opportunities there for hillary clinton. there are few other opportunities on this map. however, donald trump, and remember this is tim kaines home state. this is a state that the trump campaign made a late push for, talked about a little bit. i have to say in a lot of these rural areas, donald trump is running at or exceeding what mitt romney was able to do here four years ago. i think right now is keeping the state closer than people thought it would be. >> it's gone back and forth in color. terry mcauliffe, for starters, you know, long-time clinton ally, former head of the democratic party, current

governor. >> and the democrats swept all statewide races at the time terry mcauliffe got elected, they took all of those states -- all of those offices. you know, i think that a lot of democrats would tell you that they expected virginia to be done. they did not expect this to be a too close to call thing this late into the evening. i remember talking to larry sabado in virginia a month and a half ago and he said it was laughable that the trump campaign would even be trying to compete in virginia. it was wasted resources. it was completely cooked there. but right now we're looking at virginia and it can't be called. 51% of the vote in right now and it's still too close to call. >> as a leading indicator, people believe that northern virginia, steve, you know this, is the same as colorado, it's the same as the suburbs of philadelphia. it's better off, better educated, much more progressive on social issues, more secular in its thinking and it's politics. watch northern virginia for what's going to happen in colorado and also watch what's happening in pennsylvania. they're all going to move the same, the suburbs.

>> just before i welcome in joy reid and steve schmidt, let's look at florida. another big prize. joy, i'm doing this so you can talk about the state of florida and what we think is the metropolitan area lagging in the count. >> yeah. so i've been furiously texting with people in florida, trying not to do it on camera, but what i'm hearing now is that part of what we're seeing is that there are still some democratic precincts in miami-dade and broward that are out, yet to come in. broward always comes in last, my former homer do county. it always brings up the rear. however, there's been a lot of confidence among most of the democratic strategists that you talk to out of florida that florida was going to go to hillary clinton by between 1 and 2 percentage points and that's really up until today. what i'm hearing now is it looks li like some of those ex-urban votes, you have a larger white

vote for trump than you would have thought. trump is still winning white voters with a college degree, he's just not winning them by as much as mitt romney did because white women with a college degree are basically splitting. with what i'm hearing is some of that vote accidentally went to trump. there was a late surge of african-american voters that caught up to a big lag that they had had in terms of souls to the polls really delivering but they might not have delivered enough. florida is actually genuinely what you see right there. if democrats end up losing the state, it's going to be because of those white voters with a college degree went for the republican. >> there's a reason why things in politics that have never happened, have never happened. a democrat running for president has never, ever won college educated white voters, not in the modern history of voting. so people thought clinton had a shot at it but it doesn't mean that it's, therefore, going to

happen. there's obviously structural reasons why this isn't going to happen in terms of the way that we are divided as partisans. if she does it, she'll still make history, but making history is hard. >> and when we talk about the women's vote, we tend to talk about it as if it's one vote because women at large tend to vote for democrats. but when you separate it out by race, it's women of color who vote for democrats, women of color who create the gender gap. take women of color out and the gender gap has been in republicans' favor in the bush election, for mitt romney, the gender gap among white women is for republicans. so hillary clinton tying among white women with a college degree is in and of itself something that's never happened and it's new. >> and it shows you how uphill it is for democrats right now. >> steve schmidt, this also brings in my favorite dynamic and that is margaret meade journalism. when new york and washington-based journalists either accidentally take the wrong turn on gps and drive into

america, drive through america to visit a relative, come back and report the place is covered with trump signs. they are just amazed to find this. it happened so many times this cycle. we're seeing it on the red counties on the map. >> yeah, absolutely. you look at that florida number, 91, 92% in, that number is getting awfully big for her to be able to overcome. florida may well drop into donald trump's column here. but you are seeing, i think, a backlash in red america, rural america. it's what they perceive is the cultural condescension heaped at them, rebellion against the political correctness imposed on them, a backlash to the elites of this country. and so when we look at the numbers that are lagging against president obama's returns, it's helpful to remember we have the number one and the number two most unpopular candidates in the history of all of polling, in all of american politics running

against each other. and president obama doesn't make that list. and so i think that we'll see this play out a little bit more tonight. >> when you put a sign up on your lawn, it's like wearing a boat eer hat in the old days. it's i'm not only going to vote for this person, i want everybody to know that i'm for trump. is there a hidden trump vote that doesn't have a lawn sign? >> i think it's too brian's point, i don't think there's a hidden trump vote. i think that there may be a hidden clinton vote for republican women, for example. but the people who are for trump are not embarrassed to be for trump. this is a fiction of the new york city imagination that they are embarrassed for these people. it's part of the condescension. >> what do you think is hidden? >> i think you have republican -- i think you have republicans that aren't going to say to their republican friends that they're going to vote for clinton. and i think you see that opening up -- when you look at some of the returns, some of the gaps in

northern virginia, some of the gaps in pennsylvania with college educated white voters. a bunch of those people are republicans. >> just big picture in terms of sorting this thing out, we do not have a call in georgia, virginia, north carolina, ohio, florida, new hampshire, pennsylvania, missouri, all of these places which have been on everybody's toss-up or states to watch map. we got calls in none of them. >> for good reason. >> i do think that one thing -- but it's not too early to say this. red america is getting redder and blue america is getting bluer. the divide between us politically is deepening. >> let's see what north carolina says about that, which is a state that's hard to put in that. >> when we look in those -- when we look in the counties, the blue counties are bluer, the red counties are redder and we'll see. >> and you're starting to see migration of african-american -- particularly hispanic voters. look at georgia. georgia is too close to call for

two reasons. you have a huge cache of democratic african-american voters that democrats started registering. they started going after them and really turning them out. the second thing is that you have hispanic movement into georgia. georgia is becoming more diverse. so what's happening is red blerk is redder, blue america is bluer but they're in the same state. >> but even if they're purple states like north carolina, they're still balkanized. >> thank you for mentioning north carolina. we've just changed our designation in north carolina. can we get there? we'll get there this way. we had north carolina too early. we're now in too close to call. there's those blue blues and those red reds that mr. schmidt was talking about. we're over the halfway mark, 61% of the vote in. a difference of 68 and change just north of 68,000 votes.

it's that time of the evening where these states can become calls. we're watching them, we're going to leave you, though not that fast, for a commercial break. we'll be back on the other side. obviously if we're in a break and any of these states pop, we'll come out of the break.

we are back, 8:47 eastern time. 20% in. this is the national popular vote. donald trump is leading the national popular vote 14 million and change to 12 million and change. but then direct your eyes up in that upper right-hand corner, 20% of the vote in. this is the by county map. these are always good to curl up with the day after the election, the weekend after the election.

you know, compare your favorite counties with those of your friends and family. that does give you a picture when you zoom in of who we are and where we're doing it, especially as the time zones go west. let's check in with andrea mitchell at the javits center in new york city and katy tur is at the new york hilton. they're 1.8 miles apart. andrea, what's going on there? >> well, there's a lot of nervousness i'm told by democratic sources -- democrats in michigan, very nervous about what's happening in michigan. as you know, donald trump trying to flip that blue state. both candidates going there yesterday. i'm told by democrats in michigan that turnout is down. they're not seeing the vote that they had hoped for, the democratic vote in flint and in detroit, two key areas. hillary clinton had gone to flint repeatedly and making that a very big issue all along, so that would be of concern. it's not critical to her path to

betwe 270, but they are not happy, the democrats at least, with what they're seeing coming out of michigan. >> andrea mitchell at the javits center. katy, what are you hearing from the trump campaign? >> on the other hand the trump campaign is feeling really good about michigan right now. i'm speaking with a senior aide who tells me they believe there's record turnout in a number of gop counties. basically republicans coming home to donald trump. now, trump has spent a lot of time in michigan the past few days, he's made three stops in total since the convention they have made 13 stops in michigan. that's not at all the largest amounts of stops they have made in any state, but it is a state that they are focusing on, despite conventional wisdom. they believe that donald trump's message cuts across all demographics there, specifically the job message. they also believe that hillary clinton is not going to see the same sort of turnout among african-americans that president obama enjoyed, and that's why they believe that donald trump

is really going to have a chance in that state. that all being said, they still say it is very early but the campaign is feeling confident and they say they think they have a real shot. >> katy tur, thanks. we're fitting in a break now because at the top of the hour at 9:00 we have a lot of closings. there they are. >> including michigan that we were just talking about. >> big real estate and big important electoral votes. we're getting into that time of the night. we'll be back with more right after this.

we are back. lots of talk at this hour, 8:53 eastern, seven minutes away. pennsylvania, 20 electoral votes, too close to call. 2% of the raw vote in. 10% of the raw vote in in new hampshire. too close to call. >> both of those were too early to call, they have both been shifted to too close. >> and let's come inside and look at the senate races in both of those states. this is mcginty/toomey in pennsylvania. and do we have the burr race? okay. new hampshire senate, kelly ayotte, the incumbent. let's see here. 10% of the race in, too close to

call. separated by 7,000 votes. >> we've got too close to call both in the pennsylvania senate race between pat toomey and katie mcginty and too close to call in the new hampshire race between kelly ayotte and maggie hassan. a lot of really tight races and a lot of stuff that isn't called. in terms of the big kahunas, we're keeping an eye on two of them in particular. north carolina and florida, listed as too close to call. we want steve kornacki to help us with this. we've got 91% of the vote in in florida and it is too close to call, 49-48 the percentage between these two. what should we be looking for? >> we have been trying to find out where is the vote that is left in florida. look at this this way, hillary clinton right now is down in this thing by about 116,000 votes. i hope you can read that. she's down by about 116,000 votes. she's got to make it up. where is the outstanding vote? where are the large pockets of

outstanding vote? there is in these three sort of gold coast counties here, democratic counties, miami-dade, broward and palm beach. there is outstanding vote. i think that's specifically that most of it is in broward. the question is with a gap of 116,000, can she make that up because the other place where you're also seeing outstanding vote here favors trump and that is in sort of the panhandle, getting out closer towards pensaco pensacola. so gains that hillary clinton makes here, we can show you and give you a sense of it. here's broward county right now. you can see a lot of the vote is in. there is going to be more to come. hillary clinton is winning this thing by 40 points right now so you can imagine she is going to pick up. it could be 70,000, 80,000 votes, something like that, in the vote that still comes in here. less vote is still to come in in palm beach and miami-dade but she can make up some of the ground there. when you're looking at a gap of 116,000 votes, you're going to get gains here, you're going to take losses here. we're talking about the surprising strength trump is

showing in these rural areas. that is the definition of the counties i'm talking about here. so trump, whatever he loses, the ground he loses here, he will absorb some of that blow up here. clinton will have to net 116,000 votes to pull this state out right now. we can also quickly take a look at north carolina. this will be a surprise to me too to see if the numbers have updated. they have since i looked at this. we are looking at a hillary clinton lead of 30,000 votes. that's something that's been shrinking. let's check in on these two giant counties and you can see hillary clinton's lead here, she's getting at or even slightly above obama levels. this is wake county, second largest in the state. this is mecklenburg, the largest in the state. that's just the early vote that's there. there's still more to come in from there so there are areas of strength for her, but again these sort of outlying, these rural counties, you're seeing very high turnout, very high level of support for trump. i showed you one earlier, a tiny rural county where he's ten points above romney.

you don't get many votes in that individual county but you add these small counties up and they do make a difference. >> steve kornacki for us at the board, looking at two of those states that are too close to call. right now we've got too close to call florida, new hampshire, pennsylvania, north carolina, virginia, ohio, georgia, too close to call in all of these states that we've been watching all year long, wondering how they were going to come down at the end and wondering in fact if we ought to consider them all toss-up states. yes, we should have considered them all toss-up states at least if tonight's calls thus far are anything to go by. >> chris matthews, so many of the analysts this season have talked about the bar for trump, having to equal and better romney and sporadically on this map we're hearing that phrase all night. >> you know, i'm watching this and thinking it's almost 9:00 eastern. who would have thought. i'm talking about the people you listen to, you talk to, you get in touch with in your world.

no one thought it was going to be this close at this point. trump can still win this thing at 9:00 tonight basically. if he wins florida, i always thought florida was the first stepping stone to north carolina and that's the stepping stone to michigan. we all looked at it the same way. but if he gets on the ladder in florida, then we have to all look at north carolina and figure that's going to be possible. but he is step by step still in this race tonight, which i wasn't sure of a couple of days ago, because i think when the comey thing died down over the weekend, i thought he had lost his big booster rocket, which was the fbi report of 11 days ago. so i think this is such a -- the country is -- i say this all through the campaign on "hardball" every night. nothing is going on for two or three days, it goes back to true north. this country is 50-50 left/right. more people are voting for the candidate of their usual political party despite the candidate than at any time in history. there are people voting for hillary because they're democrats or liberals,

progressives, bernie people. but there are people that are holding their nose. we have a call. you're up. >> we have a call. >> poll closings. >> yeah. we're going to go outside. 9:00 eastern time, here are the polls closing all in gold. there's the list to the right. let's go outside and begin this thing. here are the states we are watching at 9:00 eastern. it's a long list, get ready. michigan, too close to call. arizona, too early to call. 11 electoral votes. wisconsin, too early to call. colorado, too early to call. texas has been awarded to donald trump. texas stays red, as does kansas. no wobble there. sportsman paradise, louisiana,