Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest: Obama wins, Democrats hold Senate, Republicans keep House

Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest banner Want the scoop on hot races around the country? Get the digest emailed to you each weekday morning. Sign up here. If you're reading this morning's Digest, then you certainly didn't go to bed last night without knowing that Barack Obama was re-elected to a second term as president. At press time, every state's outcome was clear except for Florida, which looked likely to remain in Obama's column. Only North Carolina and Indiana flipped to Mitt Romney from Obama's 2008 map, though the president's popular vote margin was much smaller than four years ago.

Democrats also held the Senate and likely expanded their margin. Democrats picked up seats in Massachusetts (Elizabeth Warren) and Indiana (Joe Donnelly), while independent Angus King won in Maine. When we put the Digest to bed, Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota looked likely to hold the seat for Team Blue, while Jon Tester race in Montana was still very much a tossup. Only Nebraska was a definite flip to the GOP, as expected. (Nevada, a potential Dem pickup, also remained uncalled.)

The House picture was not positive for Democrats, however, as the GOP remained firmly in control, with each party roughly flipping as many seats as it lost. On the gubernatorial front, North Carolina switched to the Republicans (as predicted), but the other competitive seats were all holds. (Montana and Washington, both blue seats, were still uncalled.)

Finally, while there were many hotly contested ballot measures nationwide, the news looked good on the marriage equality front in particular. Same-sex marriage laws were upheld by voters in Maryland and Maine, while the same looked likely in Washington and a ban was failing in Minnesota.

Keep visiting us at Daily Kos Elections as we stay on top of all late-called races and potential recounts. And of course, we'll also be crunching the numbers every which way, so there's plenty more in-depth analysis to come.


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