Dear Rand Paul: Congratulations. Sincerely. You ran a better campaign than your opponent, and eventually you got past your gaffes to win in Kentucky without much trouble at all. While you’ll remain controversial to many for your small-government-heavy views, you didn’t win tonight in spite of your views. You won because you beat your opponent (see: Aqua Buddah). Sure, we had our beefs with some of your views, but as the campaign worked towards the end, we found ourselves actually respecting you a little. The way your campaign handled the head-stomper proved you’re past the point of gaffes. So, tonight, as the left accepts its fate, we’ll see more candidates lose. But let it be on the record that Rand Paul earned his victory tonight. source
» And possibly an all-time record, too: The tally of early ballots looks to get very close to 2008’s record. Will it top it? Either way, it’s a record for a midterm election.
Just as the conditions promising at least a pretty bad Democratic year have been with us for some time, the uncertainty has been with us all along as well, like a virus with an exceptionally long latency period; on Tuesday, we’ll see which of the polls it has infected.FiveThirtyEight guy Nate Silver • Offering a key piece of final analysis that we should probably take into the elections today. While the polls have largely remained consistent about how many seats the Democrats will lose and the Republicans will gain, it’s good to keep at least a little bit of perspective no matter how you lean. Remember, back in 1994 the analysts were relatively consistent too, but in the end, the Republicans did way better than most of them expected – by a long shot. No matter the case, you should probably get out there and vote your heart out for both the ballot measures and the candidates – unless you live in DC and know the results of every election already. We’ll have lots of key results from our non-existent glass-enclosed nerve center at a late-night coffee shop in Dupont Circle tomorrow night. source (via)
» Oh, and it gets worse for Reid: See, the Las Vegas Review-Journal just gave Angle a big endorsement over Reid, throwing some harsh words at the Senate Majority Leader in the process: “As he has climbed higher and higher in the Democratic hierarchy, he has veered further and further to the left, becoming politically disconnected from Nevada and its residents.” This is bad news for Reid, but will it be enough to hurt Harry’s ability to win?
» Other things to note: Is this just a hype issue? That’s Newsweek’s conclusion. They say that the chances of angry voters voting in the 2010 elections is roughly the same as normal voters, and there’s a lot more of those. And they note that Obama’s approval rating, currently at 48 percent. is way above where both George W. Bush and Bill Clinton were during their 2006 and 1994 midterms, respectively.
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