governor's races. but here is the list of states we'll be coming up on, starting with alabama, ending with tennessee. we've had some split closing times as we approach, again, the 8:00 hour here in the east. and we're going to start with one that we've been covering tonight. we just don't have the finishing data on it as 8:00 arrives. florida governor, too close to call at this hour. florida senate, also too close to call. missouri senate, closely watched race tonight, too close to call at this hour. tennessee senate, too early to call, blackburn is the early leader in that race. massachusetts senate and the next six people are going back to work in the senate, let's just say that, elizabeth warren, no surprise, connecticut senate, chris murphy going back, no

surprise. delaware, carper is going back, the democrat, no surprise there, ben cardin in the state of maryland, in the state of pennsylvania, senator bob casey, in the state of rhode island, senator sheldon white house, over to new jersey, too early to call, though, bob menendez is in the lead, something of a huge undertaking given the campaign mounted against him. angus king, the independent in maine who caucuses with the democrats, too early to call. he is in the lead, however. then in mississippi, this is, by the way, look at the current senate, again those undecided seats in gray. that's what to concentrate on until we get a little later in the evening. i got ahead of myself. mississippi senate, we have two races. we're calling them one and two. two early to call, too early to call. when we have a minute we'll

explain just how this is going to work in the state of mississippi. >> we may end up looking at -- we may be looking at a runoff in mississippi senate in that race there on the right. we want to go back to steve kornacki right now. steve has been getting in the data to, i think, call a few more of these house races. right, steve. >> we don't have more calls, but numbers are coming in everywhere. take you through this piece by piece. starting in virginia, we've had two calls, four target districts for democrats. they've won the 10th, lost the 5th district. the 2nd district, scott taylor, that wasn't supposed to flip there. scott taylor, embattled republican incumbent, the story in this district is largely virginia beach, about two-thirds of the vote, is going to come out of here, virginia beach. now, this is a -- trump won this portion of the district by four points in 2016. so taylor right now performing as he needs to there.

he is going to have to do that, continue to do that because in the other two portions of the district we've got vote here the democrat in york and really in norfolk, the democrat is exceeding hillary clinton's numbers. we're keeping an eye on that one and on the 7th district of virginia, the richmond suburbs, abigail spanberger leading over dave brat here, major pickup for democrats. 6th district of kentucky, rural areas are coming. andy barr, taken the lead over andy mcgrath. very tight, 3,000 votes separate them. very close right now. a few others of florida of note, carlos curbelo, largely miami-dade and the florida keys here, running very slightly behind there. as well, two more in florida to show you, brian mast, running ahead right now, not supposed to color, one more to check in on the 15th, spano of republicans,

numbers looking decent for him. leading by six at the moment. >> can i ask one quick question about virginia 5, the race you mentioned includes charlottesville. you've called that now, denver rigleman, the republican, holding the seat. lesley coburn, the democratic challenger. how big of a prize is that for the republicans? were they really expecting to hold onto that one? i remember that was a lean republican race. was that on the bubble for them? >> this is one that republicans, almost a catastrophe for them to lose. the way virginia went, i think the way folks were looking at this coming in the night the 10th, democrats had to pick up. they've done that. the 7th would suggest democrats are on their way to getting the house. see what happens to that. >> the brat/spanberger race. >> particular issues with scott taylor, around a koefrs there in that district, the 5th

district's the one where if you added that to one of the others for democrats you're saying nationally that could mean wave. again the story here, democrats not getting the gains they needed, charlottesville itself, the county around it, not getting the gains necessarily it needed here to offset the strength that rigleman got in the next heavily populated part of the district, very trump friendly. >> thank you, steve. >> governor's races are an important part of tonight. we have a partial list of them. again, some of these closings were at 8:00 in florida. however, too close to call. we're watching it. >> wow, very close. >> to the state of pennsylvania we go, wolf, the projected winner. governor tom wolf. tennessee, lee. massachusetts, baker. illinois, too early to call, though pritskerr is in the lead,

alabama, ivy is in the lead, rhode island, too early to call, romando is in the lead. and in georgia, too early to call, another widely watched race tonight where the numbers, the early has been all over the map. >> you mentioned the illinois race. that is the governor's race that democrats most hope to pick up. they have their strongest, i think, confidence in terms of flipping a governor's race. as bad as the senate map is for the democratic party, with all of these democratic senators defending turf in places trump won, as bad as the senate map is for democrats, it is that good for them in terms of the governor's races, so that illinois race is first among a lot that the democrats are hoping to flip. those governors -- >> and really, really expensive. >> really expensive. everything in illinois is expensive. those governor's races will be kwas nating to watch. democrats haven't been shy about

having high expectations. >> best candidates running in these midterms, whatever happens tonight, andrew gillum, the top democrat, the right message, and the right tone, in a claimant so colored by donald trump, stacey abrams, one of the best candidates running in this cycle. >> it's killing me we've only got 10% of the vote in in georgia. >> the florida race, the last numbers we showed for florida represented a real tightening in the race, so i wonder what came? >> steve kornacki, forgive me, i'm told he has more numbers. >> some things are start happening fast here. get everybody ready. the countdown for democrats at 21 with pennsylvania votes coming in right now, remember, they redrew the district lines in the middle of the year in pennsylvania. what that did was it created, first of all, more competitive districts for democrats and created accounting issues. we've been saying the democrats, this is -- these are all

districts where the democrats are trying to unseat republicans, a handful of districts across the country where republicans have a chance of unseating or taking democratic seats. there's one -- they are virtually guaranteed to get, in pennsylvania. it has everything to do with the redistricting. it's the 14th district of pennsylvania. they drew this in the southwest corner of pennsylvania under the new lines trump would have won this district by 30 points. these are two first time candidates running for it ear. the expectation is that any minute now this will be called republican and that this will become a republican pickup. we're not going to see many of those tonight. that would increase that number to 22 if that comes in first. however, i say there were a bunch of new districts drawn in pennsylvania. and so we have to point out as well that there are a couple that work the other way. down here on the other side of pennsylvania. start the newly drawn 6th district. again, two first time candidates under these new lines, this was a clinton district. and you can go right next door under the new lines, a really

big clinton district, also an expectation, the party -- you have republicans pulled out of this race in the 7th, a republican seat, charlie dent declined to seek reelection. the two parties were telegraphing they didn't think it was that competitive, expectation of democratic pick yups, and one more out here, connor lam who won that special election earlier this year, the district he won in, he went and decided to challenge in this newly drawn district of republican incumbent. the polling has shown connor lam ahead by double digits. the expectation is lamb will win the race fairly easily. you can see in the next few minutes a couple districts we expect to flip pretty quickly. there are others that may take longer but they're expected to flip as well. in pennsylvania alone, now that the polls are closing there, we're going to start seeing this number move around a lot.

>> steve kornacki, did i just see you flirting with new jersey 11? >> i'm going to call that up right now. >> i'm sorry to look over your shoulder. >> we don't have a vote. this is another one, we talked about virginia 10, the democrats and comstock, democrats are expecting to get this district with sherrill, bad sign if they don't. >> chris matthews, can i just ask you, the redistricting issue in pennsylvania, a huge deal, why democrats think they have a chance to take control of the house. what happened with the republican efforts to run somebody against bob casey or tom wolf? bob casey and tom wolf are fine, but neither is super man. they both just walked away with the statewide races. >> it's hard to beat an incumbent governor. and casey is a magic name in pennsylvania. it's a sweet spot, pro-life, but

a sweet spot with so many of the more traditional democrats in scranton, impossible to beat. i'm fascinated with bucks county. if they go knock mike kelly in eerie. >> fitzpatrick and kelly, both republican incumbents. >> yeah, they could knock them off and win the 10th in lancaster. they could pick up bucks county against a well recognized incumbent, they're in business. sweep time. >> how much of a difference does it make if they thad weak candidates, the guy running against tom wolf disappeared, and against bob casey disappeared. >> i know the burbs, the guy at the top of the ticket was on the republican side, donald j.

trump. a lot of the women this time, and men, were evolved men, as i said the other night, in the suburbs, i think -- hillary was a complication at the end. i heard from a lot of people you'd be surprised by. comey's report 11 days out didn't help. this time it's all about voting against trump. the american voter tends to be a voter against. there was no -- one thing you can say about the democratic party, so enactive in terms of legislation or national profile. you can't vote against them. >> once you're out of power, you can't do anything that offends anyone. >> trump's been running the show. i think it's a great advantage to be on offense this time. >> those counties, eerie county is a place where it would hurt republicans to have the economic message crowded out, what happened when donald trump -- >> you spent a ton of time there. >> i get mail delivered there. but eerie was a place where trump flipped eerie county because of the message about the economy and no republican has been able to run on the economy for the last, i don't know, eight weeks, six weeks because

trump has been obsessed with the slow-moving humanitarian crisis he calls a caravan. >> women are important. we didn't talk about it with northern virginia, but the comstock defeat is women, bedroom community, single women, like the philadelphia suburbs, highly educated, many single, very liberal on social issues, choice of work, on lgbt issues, very liberal. it was an opportunity for them to vote their feelings and also get the vote against trump. so i think the big wins are going to come in those suburbs. >> they didn't buy comstock's ms-13 scare mongering, but there is ms-13 in the washington suburbs, people put it in perspective. >> steve kornacki has new numbers at the board. steve? >> florida has turned around a little bit here. you can see, let's start in the senate side, the senate governor, matching up closely, a very -- you can see very narrow lead, we're talking 10,200 votes

for rick scott over bill nelson. it's come from a couple places, the counties where donald trump in 2016, particularly keyed by same day voters, not the early vote, but the same day stuff that comes in later where we're going to see republicans match that. here's one place where they've matched it. valutia county, one county we were looking at two years ago, trump is doing better than mitt romney did four years ago. in valutia, a 12 point improvement. scott is basically replicating what trump did in that county. that's one example of it. another one, collier county, down here southwest florida, rick scott actually running ahead of trump's pace right there. we showed you lee county, think of cape coral here, the midwest retirees who come down here, you can see scott replicating those numbers again. you're seeing it, manatee

county, replicating the numbers. take a look up, flagged this one earlier, pasco county with same-day, there's improvement here for rick scott. you're starting to see that, take a look on the -- excuse me, on the gubernatorial side in florida, to give you a sense of what's going on, the big picture number here statewide in the gubernatorial race, a 35,000 vote margin for desantis, take you through some of those counties again, valutia county, similar story, he's finding it in the same places. one other thing to flag here, in terms of what democrats are putting up on the board right now. osceola county, a 20 point margin in a key democratic county right there. you can see 24, 25, running even in orlando. so you're seeing -- and it looks like same-day vote in some of

those places trump did really well in 2016. looks like republicans are getting that today in florida as well. very complicated picture there statewide. >> we're going to try to page chuck todd and get him back into the studio as our son of florida to talk about what's going on in florida. steve kornacki stay on it and holler if you get anything new. michael steele is with us, the former chairman of the republican party, and michael, if you were in your old job tonight how would you feel about the chances? ed. >> i'd be very nervous, to be honest, because there's a lot that's still out there, obviously. when you look at the trend lines, in a state like virginia, northern virginia, that loudoun county area, a bellwether for the state. how that's impacting the vote

patterns and where people are going to turn out and how that settles down. i think we're going so see this play out across the country tonight in a big way. looking at the numbers in florida, that race is tighter than i think people thought it would be at this point. and again, that says a lot about how people have kind of settled into their vote. and almost settled into old habits in some respects. particularly when you look at the momentum that someone like fwil u gillum had in florida. >> we're looking at a 50/50 race, rick scott, bill nelson. on the other side, 49/49 and change. that is unbelievable. >> yeah. and really speaking to just how the voters have processed these elections. trump is no doubt a factor. but at the same time he had that ability to sort of settle the

vote down for a lot of republicans in key areas. and that will be interesting to juxtapose against something like what we see in virginia right now where the democrats have picked up congressional seats. does that translate in pennsylvania? does it translate in nevada? does it translate in other parts of the country? that's the thing to look at as we go forward in these numbers coming in. >> michael, don't move an inch. we'll fit in a break. i'm watching kornacki at the board looking at county by county numbers in florida. a lot of stories on the move right now. please stay with us.

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>> we are back, 8:22 eastern time, ohio governor right now, we have this, too close to call between cordray and mike dewine. >> 30% of the vote in there. >> there you go.

steve kornacki have been taking an early look at texas and florida. >> keep on florida now. higher turnout than expected. estimate for the overall turnout has gone up since the start of the night. but still, we've got, you know, more than 7 million votes counted. you see the gap here, it's just gone up, as i'm speaking, about 37,000 vote lead for rick scott. where is there vote left here? less populated up here in the panhandle, but you can see there are a couple of counties up here we don't have any vote. this is big for rick scott, small in terms of population. down here, miami-dade, 75% of precincts. they don't run that early vote. the mail-in vote through the precincts. proportionally that's out of whack. i'll give you an example. in terms of vote out of broward, it adds up to 474,000 -- or

about 485,000 votes. i think we're going to be just over 600,000 out of broward when all is said and done. there's still vote to come out of broward. it will not double though. keep that in mind. palm beach almost all in. you see how nelson is running there. there's some democratic areas. the story, as we said, scott and for that matter desantis in the governor's race, same-day vote in those trump areas and republican areas seem to have come through and made it a real game there, memories of two years ago, certainly. texas, a heavy early voting state, take our first look at the senate race. but more than 2 million votes counted. the reason, one thing that's helping beto o'rourke, one of the places is dallas county, over half a million votes count, a core democratic area, hillary clinton got 61% of the vote in 2016. beto o'rourke is improving on that. more interesting is when you get outside of austin, williamson county here, one of the

wealthiest -- a very wealthy county. beto o'rourke doing nine points better than hillary clinton did, and also, you go to hayes county on the other side, about a ten point improvement there. so those are numbers in that area that the o'rourke campaign wants to see. but that's very early, democratic friendly areas that are in. they need to get that kind of shift in the suburbs around the state. they need to have a turnout surge there, and we've got to see what happens as these republican counties begin to come in as well. >> steve kornacki, thank you. we have two calls to pass along to our viewers from illinois. we are projecting pritsker wins as the next governor, a pick yup for the democrats. and a hold in maryland, as larry hogan will be returning. we have one more, rhode island governor, it's going to be raimondo, gina raimondo, the democrat. and let's go to james carval, long-time democratic strategist.

i think in 2016 florida was turning. when we went to james carval. if you look at the spectrum of benjamin moore paints, i don't know what color i would have described your face at that moment. but whatever blood was draining out, you started to -- your mood started to go south, james. how are you thinking about the country right now? >> well, 2016, i sat between chuck todd and hugh hewitt. chuck todd said she was running ahead of -- hugh hewitt, said 65% chance that trump wins florida. i knew right there, and the blood did go out of my face. tonight there was some hope the democrats would have a wave election. it's not going to be a wave election. it could still be a good election. you know, there's a lot of trauma left in florida, and some of the stuff in texas i thought was encouraging.

it's still a lot of politics left. but i will wait and see, hopefully the democrats get the house back. i was a little more optimistic about florida than it's turned out to be. i think we're in for a nail biter. >> james, how tough do you think it will be? we keep running the number on the right-hand corner of our screen, 21 for the demes in the house. >> well, i think they're going to do well in some of these suburban seats, you know. places like north carolina, some of them, georgia will do well, pick ups in texas. but the aspiration that pick up a lot of seats doesn't seem like it's coming to fruition. a lot will be close. still a good chance that the democrats win the house. but i see the chances of a wave kind of dissipating every time i see something on the board. >> james, this is rachel in new york, thanks for being with us tonight. you're talking about how you see the wave dissipating and not building there. obviously the democrats hope to get control of the house with as

big a majority as they can get. even if they've only got a one-seat majority that means that they will take over the committee chairmanships, nancy pelosi will be speaker once again. how important is the size of the democratic majority, if that wave doesn't materialize, but they do win? >> you always want -- you need safety in there. people can switch, people can die, a thousand things could happen. so you want some margin there. you know, let's wait and see. still could get it. don't get me wrong. i'm saying -- this is not going to be the wave election that people like me would have hoped for. it can still be a good election. but some of these races are going to be, you know, very tight. you know, it's still volatile in florida. you've got a lot of broward out, a big county, and hard for scott to make this up in the panhandle. but it's going to be close. i went in this morning feeling almost confident, to the point

of being cocky about florida. >> how you feeling about georgia tonight, james? >> well, some of these -- the vote turnaround in georgia is going so high in a place like suburban atlanta, the fultons and the mariettas and all the counties come in, they dwarf the rural counties. there's a lot of counting left to do. i'm going to be watching it really close. but, you know, we'll see. but right now, with florida senate is kind of central to what's going on, i think. >> san francisco tonight, democratic strategist james carval, a pleasure to have you. >> thank you. tell my children that. >> will do. >> he's a proper southerner, he should appreciate the honorific,

30 seconds from the next half hour, poll closings, only the state of arkansas coming in fresh at 8:30. but we're also going to use this opportunity to update folks on the other races. people are so highly interested in. and people are waiting for. and rachel's warning, her admonition at the top of the evening, it might be a very late night, remains true. that holds, even at this hour of 8:30. so here we are, the poll has closed. polls have closed in arkansas. we are projecting governor hutchinson is handily reelected there. and onto the other two. we're watching. florida, too close to call. georgia, too early to call. so projected on the side of the building we sit in. >> georgia race, again, only 16% of that vote in, in georgia. in georgia the issue of the administration of the election has been like the other candidate in the race as we talked about earlier this evening brian kemp faced many, many calls, not just from his

opponent, but from people like former president jimmy carter and others that he should step down from his role as secretary of state administering the election given he's running at the top of the ticket in election. georgia's election security has been very, very controversial, a number of lawsuits against the state. there have been a number of election security public complaints and publicly reported issues in georgia. when there have been concerns raised by outsiders and by outsiders in this case i mean even the federal government about the security of georgia elections, brian kemp turned that around and made it sound like they were hacking into georgia if they discovered those faults. so the issue of georgia voter suppression, him purging hundreds of thousands of people off the rolls in advance of this election is inexor able, the votes are crawling in. >> no praaper trail.

>> there's a federal judge in that case who has been considering issues about georgia, voter suppression and ballot security and the judge was absolutely poised to order georgia to finally get a paper backup. but said, at the last minute, we are too close to the election to make that kind of a change. >> one second interruption. we have a winner in the senate race in the state of new jersey, new jersey remains blue. menendez, who had so many ethical and legal troubles has turned away former pharma executive, bob hugog, we are projecting when it's all said and done, bob menendez returns to the u.s. senate from new jersey. >> we should be clear, that visual might have confused you a bit. this is nbc projecting that as brian said when the votes come in, bob menendez who have won the race. the actual number of votes in is only 1%. those show the republican

challenger ahead. but projections are put together through a lot of things than the other counted votes. that wasn't a typo. and menendez looks like he's going back to the senate. >> steve kornacki, more from florida. >> the gap for bill nelson has climbed over 50,000. show you where the vote is left. it's beginning to come into focus here in terms of democrats and where they can still find votes, two places to key in on, number one here is broward county. we expect there's going to be about 630,000 votes that are going to be cast here. that means there's probably about 145,000 left to be count. you can see nelson is defeating scott at about a 2-1 clip here. so if there's 145,000 left, that gives you about 55,000 vote plurality if things broke for

the democrats. miami-dade is more confusing. there's a range of 713,000 votes counted, there could be up to 900,000 votes that come out of this county. there's a lot of confusion here right now about where exactly that's going to land. so that could be the ceiling, 900,000. but it may end up being less than that. two big democratic areas still to come. they are balanced by two things, however, the scattering of rural counties, particularly in the panhandle where there are still votes to come in, not many, but overwhelmingly republican and also a couple of counties that have more population. let me start down here, collier county you can see still vote to come in here, still a significant amount, scott winning that one 2-1 if we take a look up here in charlotte county, still vote to come in here, scott leading that almost 2-1 up in the panhandle as well. so there are still places where republicans are going to balance out gains that democrats make in those core counties. again, right now, let's see if

it's changed, it is now 60,000 votes for scott in the senate race. in the governor's race the margin for ron desantis now approaching 100,000. you're at 83,000. 83,000 is the margin for ron desantis in that race, again, a similar turnout pattern holds there as well. >> we are on it, we'll stay on it. we have to sneak in another break here. with this proviso, we'll bust out of any commercials for any major calls we have at our election headquarters here in new york as you look at the state of the florida senate race. if we're gonna steal christmas,

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like magic. at comcast, it's my job to develop, apps and tools that simplify your experience. my name is mike, i'm in product development at comcast. we're working to make things simple, easy and awesome. it is 8:39 on the east coast, one of the senate races we are watching tonight is in the great state of missouri. where republicans would so love to unseat democratic senator claire mccaskill. as you're seeing the results there, only 1% of the vote in right now, too close to call right now. but as you're seeing we've got less than 30,000 votes. joining us now live from missouri is senator claire mccaskill. senator mccaskill, thank you so

much, we know this is an incredibly fraught and busy evening for you. >> yes, a little nerve racking. >> 1% of the vote is in. how do you feel about how things have gone over the course of the campaign but also in the closing days? >> well, you know, we had to crawl out of a pretty deep hole. donald trump won this state by 20 points. so i'm really proud that we kind of clawed our way to dead even near the end of the campaign. but you know me, i'm going to be really honest with you, i have no flipping idea what's going to happen tonight. we could win and we could lose. i feel like our turnout was great. >> go ahead. >> the turnout was great in places we needed it to be great. but it was also strong in other parts of the state where we're not going to do as well. i think it could go either way. >> missouri is such a tough state. it's like riding a bucking bronco representing that state. i remember of all the weird things eisenhower lost in '56,

he won in '52 and then they dumped him in missouri. it's like a bucking bronco or a missouri mule maybe, what is it about missouri that makes it so hard to stay atop of? >> well, if you think about it, i got -- running in this race as a democrat in missouri has been very republican lately. so not only do i have to excite the base and get them out, but i also have to make sure that people understand that i'm not ashamed to be a moderate. it's like walking and chewing gum at the same time and juggling all at once to make everything work. to make sure people understand that my moderation is principled, but i'm not afraid to compromise, which i think a lot of missouri voters like that i'm independent, i don't always vote the party line. so -- but it's tough. this is a tough state in terms of -- it will never be completely red or completely blue. but it's pretty close to red these days. >> senator gene robinson, the

president had that big rally out in your state. what impact do you think that had? did it -- was it positive or negative for you? >> oh, listen, he was here so often, i figured he was building a golf course, right? he was here time after time after time. and then of course he finished the campaign here with rush limb baug and sean hannity and gene perot and kellyanne conway, it was a cast in cape girardeau last night. while it motivates the trump base when he's here, it also motivated a lot of people in my base that really are not happy with president trump. so i don't think we'll know whether or not ultimately it worked or not until every vote is count tonight. >> senator mccaskill, as a woman in the senate, and as a woman

leader in missouri, who's held a lot of different positions of authority and your state and your country, i have to ask you how you feel like gender plays right now in terms of being a senior elected woman at a time when gender politics in our country eight now and the fight over sexism and sexual harassment and sexual assault and accountability and all of those things is just is red hot and such a volatile issue. we're seeing a record number of women running this year, particularly on the democratic side. but i just wanted your perspective on that right now, especially right now, not knowing how tonight's going to end for you. >> well, i think these -- it's always going to be an issue that's out there. sometimes it's more subliminal. sometimes it's front and center. it's probably been more front and center this time. i've got to tell you, honestly, rachel, the biggest problem for me is not as much gender than it is in politics today it's a mark against you if you know what

you're doing. experience, this is one of the few fields where experience is considered a negative right now. i mean, you know in most careers, if you've done a lot of different things and learned a lot, then that is a positive thing. but right now people really don't get excited about folks who have spent their life in public service. they want something new. and so i think the fact that i have served the public so long, and maybe that's one of the things that's hurting bill nelson. if you've been serving the public for a long time that's a difficult hurdle to get over these days. >> senator claire mccaskill tonight awaiting news of her own fate with her own voters in missouri. good luck to you, senator. thank you for taking some time while you're watching the vote totals come in. >> the senator mentioned something new, i'm looking at steve kornacki who is deep in the heart of texas, speaking of something new, steve? >> something new, something blue. >> in texas, this is similar to florida in that you've got a ton

of early vote, that early vote gets sort of put out there, almost all at once, when you wait for the same day and the question that hangs over the same day is, is there going to be a trend on the final day that's at odds with what you see in the early vote? >> this looks like about, we think, about half the vote that's going to be cast total statewide. when you go into the individual counties, you'll see a good example of a ton of vote here it's going to say 1% of precincts, the giveaway we are looking at early vote right here. again, here's the comparison as we can show you how the early vote is looking for beto o'rourke in 2016 donald trump won the state of texas by nine points. so you basically got to improve the margin if you're a democrat by nine points or more across the state. use it as a rough benchmark. in dallas, in district, the margin here for clinton was 26. tonight the margin in the early vote, 33, a seven point improvement: go next door to tarrant county, the margin for

trump was nine, it's down by eight. up to denton, 21, cut to 10, that's in the dallas area, consistently. 17 sits at 7. better than that in the early vote for democrats, travis county, austin, 39 goes to 53. you talked about an explosion of democratic energy, especially in the early vote, it speaks to that, north of austin, williamson, 10, 10-point advantage there for trump has turned into a three-point advantage for o'rourke. interesting here, yet to hear from travis county, the suburbs outside of that, clinton won this by seven, a disappointment, because only ten in the early vote. but this is like florida, we await that same day. >> steve kornacki, thank you. more on this same topic, chris hayes has made his way to o'rourke headquarters in el paso. chris, what are you hearing there? >> i've been talking to a lot of

strategists here in texas. and there are a lot of eyes wide open emoji right now. the numbers are different than people are used to seeing in statewide races. something interesting happening. that tarrant county is good place to think about, the largest urban republican district in the united states, encompasses fort worth, texas, next to dallas. when the early vote came in it was 50/50 as steve was just talking about, that's a number that puts beto in the ballpark. so far the kinds of early voting they're seeing, you're talking to democratic strategists, particularly those running the state house races here, a bunch of state houses targeted for democrats, they're down in that state house, 95 to 55, and ten or eleven they're feeling good about it, republican districts they're looking at that they may be able to flip. that points to an evening in texas that's more interesting than it's been in texas for a very long time when you're

looking at what kind of dynamics beto would in order to defeat the incumbent ted cruz. >> brian, go ahead. >> no, please. >> i was going to ask a dumb question. chris, i know that you've been through a lot of races like this. you've been through losing and winning races, you've been at headquarters as the votes have come in. in your own reporting, do you think the campaign believes it will win tonight or do they believe that they will lose tonight? >> they believe they will win. now, that's a crazy belief in some ways because of the history of statewide democrats in texas. if you look behind me, i don't know if you can see the shot, the setup here is not the setup of a person expecting to come out and give a concession speech after losing by nine or 15 points traditionally what happens to democrats. we're in a ballpark, there's a ton of media here. there's a huge venue behind us with bands. it's a campaign feeling they were in the ballpark, literally,

figuratively, of what they would need. you're looking at the republican strategists right now who know this state well, particularly some of the big data people, when they're looking at the modeling and looking at a number of 8.2 million votes, looking at tarrant county particularly, there's real nervousness on the republican side right now. it will be an interesting night. >> chris hayes, thank you, we think you might be at one of the more exciting stories and story lines of the evening. chris hayes at o'rourke headquarters in el paso, texas. nicolle wallace, i am thinking about the best laid plans in 2016. the west side of manhattan. >> i was thinking listening to you and chris hayes. there's only so far science and polling and academics can take you. the people that sit in headquarters in front of computers with whirly hats on, they can only get you so far, they don't make you win or lose.

candidates make you win or lose, candidates with magic make your win or lose. ted cruz was supposed to win. ted cruz really, to lose this after sort of crawling back to donald trump who insulted his father and his wife, would be a human tragedy. tragedy, but an political victory. he is the most polarizing figure in the republican party, was famously at odds with the bush family, the other famous republican family to hail from texas. but to talk to texans and to talk to texas republicans as i have over the last three months, there are beto signs in every corner of the state there are beto signs all over el paso where he is from, but in neighborhoods in block, in streets that are known to be republican strongholds. so it would not be surprising to see an upset there. >> you wouldn't be surprised to see an upset? >> of course we would be surprised, but it wouldn't be surprising to beto, because i think he is running as someone who he didn't have a pollster.

he didn't do the conventional things, and he didn't become hostage to sort of the politics of red and blue, and it can't be done, and you're running against ted cruz. it would be the story of the night if he were to win. but i'm betting he would do an interview and say to you i'm not surprised i won. >> whatever happens in texas is technically going to be a surprise. if they usually get 4 million votes in a midterm election, and they're going get 8 million or 9 million, it's all a surprise. nobody knows what that extra vote is going to do. >> and if in 2020, texas turns out 8 or 9 million votes which as a baseline, that changes the country. >> it becomes a battleground state and changes the country. >> i can't believe a week ago we had the "hardball" concert tour down there at the university of houston. i have never seen -- well, bill clinton might be the best retailer i've ever seen. he works the last one in the room. he stays until everybody is gone. he wants to shake hands with

everybody, chat up everybody. this guy is good this guy has all the good stuff. i think not having a pollster, joe kennedy, his best buddy in the house said, i told him for a year, please get a pollster. don't dive into the pool until you know how deep or cold it is. and he wanted to do it. >> no one but the pollster wins with that one. >> 8:52 p.m. east coast time. another break, a quick one. we're back right after this.

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we got a bunch of new poll closings in just a few minutes at 9:00 at the top of the hour. before that, quickly, we have some more calls in house races. and steve going to tell us about the overall estimate of how the house is going to go. steve kornacki? >> kentucky, six, we've had our eye on bar is holding off amy hispanic grat. >> i have to interrupt you. indiana senate, republican pickup. donnelly has been turned away. this has just come into us.

mike braun. donald trump worked hard to flip this seat from the democrats. we are estimating that when all the votes are counted, this will be a gop pickup in the senate. steve kornacki, back to you. >> the other big piece of news we have from you comes from our decision desk that has been watching these early house results, seeing democrats get what they needed to out of virginia 10. they need to get only a share of these, only about a third of these to get the house. it will lose this is not necessarily bad for democrats. the question in a lot of cases here is are they improving over hillary clinton's performance significantly. you saw that in kentucky six. what that means is our decision desk is looking at the totality of this sort of extrapolating out the trends and numbers they're seeing to similar districts around the country, and coming up with their initial estimate of the night, which i can now show you their initial estimate is that the democrats will end the night with 224

seats plus or minus 8. so keep that in mind. 224. >> wow. >> minus 8 would get you to 216. 216 would be short of the 218 needed for a majority. 224 plus 8 would get you to 232, comfortably over what you need for a majority. and what that means is if you look at that range, where that number falls in it we think it's about right now a 65% chance. about a 2/3 chance that when all these districts come in, if the trends old about a two-thirds chance that democrats will end up in control at the end of the night. so, again, we're going to see more of these districts start to come in, more of these individual counties and precincts. that number is going to change. it might change frequently. but use that as the benchmark. the first estimate of the night comes in with democrats, a range of 216 on the low end to 232 on the high end, and a two-thirds chance at this moment we think that they will end up in control of the house. >> and on the low end of that

estimate, steve, which is 216, that is not enough to make nancy pelosi speaker that would leave kevin mccarthy a speaker. >> that's right. >> we're waiting for poll closings at 9:00, but we have a new call right now. this is the west virginia senate race. nbc news can project that democrat joe manchin will hold on to his seat in west virginia. this was obviously a state that trump won by huge double-digits in 2016. that made republicans very excited about the prospect of knocking off joe manchin. joe manchin is a home state senator above all else. he is a moderate democrat much in the mold of claire mccaskill who is fighting for her seat tonight in missouri. but joe manchin will be returning back to the senate, and that will make the democrats happy, especially given that just moments ago it looks like they have lost joe donnelly's seat out of indiana. >> i'm getting -- i'm getting the top of the hour calls for 9:00, 30 seconds away from the

9:00 poll closings. forgive me. you caught me talking to the control room. here are the 9:00. >> we're going have now poll closings in arizona, colorado, kansas, louisiana, michigan, nebraska, new york, north dakota, south dakota, texas, wisconsin, wyoming, all of those states are pulling in their poll closings right now. >> 9:00 p.m. in the east has just turned, and here we go. these are our latest projections. texas senate too early to call. we're giving crews a slight lead in this race as of now. texas governor re-elected the governor, governor abbott. here is the two-way race of the texas governor's race as we look at the math that went into this. wisconsin governor evers is the lead, but officially, too close to call. arizona senate,