POLITICO NIGHTLY: These races will tell you who's winning

BY RENUKA RAYASAM AND RYAN LIZZA

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With help from Myah Ward HOW TO NERD OUT TONIGHT — The Nightly asked POLITICO reporters across the country how they will be watching election returns tonight, as we wait to learn whether President Donald Trump will win reelection or Joe Biden defeats him. Here are their answers: (All times are EST) At 6 p.m. polls close in Indiana Indiana: Donald Trump won the state’s 5th Congressional District, which includes the northern suburbs of Indianapolis, by nearly 12 points four years ago. Tonight, its House seat, which has long been controlled by Republicans, is a pure tossup. A victory by Democrat Christina Hale over Republican Victoria Spartz would be an early indicator that the president is in trouble across the country. — Renuka Rayasam

A poll worker helps a voter fill out a provisional ballot at Park Tavern polling station in Atlanta. | Getty Images

At 7 p.m. polls close in Georgia and in much of Florida including Miami-Dade County Georgia : I’ll be watching to see how smoothly voting goes in Fulton County, Georgia’s most populous county. In the June primary, the area saw hours-long lines and frequently malfunctioning voting machines that alarmed voters and elections officials who feared a large volume of Election Day voters could cause a repeat. Since polls opened at 7 a.m., wait times have not jumped above 30 minutes in any of the county’s more than 250 voting locations and reports of machine malfunctions have been few. A strong Democratic showing in the Atlanta county could offset Trump’s strength in rural parts of the state. Hillary Clinton lost Georgia by 231,323 votes in 2016. If Democrats can turn out even a fraction of the more than 800,000 new voters registered between 2018 and 2020, many of them in Fulton, that should be enough for them to take the state. — Maya King Florida : Watch the returns in Miami-Dade County to see if the strong support of Cuban Americans and other Hispanics cuts into Joe Biden’s margin coming out of the county. He needs to come close to Clinton’s nearly 30-point margin to overcome Trump’s Republican support in the rest of the state. If Biden wins Miami-Dade by less than 20 points, Florida is probably going to Trump. Two counties — Pinellas and St. Lucie — supported President Barack Obama in 2012 and then supported Trump in 2016. A Biden victory in those two counties could be a strong signal that the state is going his way. Duval County could also be decisive. Jacksonville’s mayor is Republican and the area has been traditionally a source of Republican votes, but Democrats have made the county a battleground. Even though he lost his bid for governor in 2018, Gillum flipped the county winning by nearly 17,000 votes. In 2016, Trump won the county by a little under 6,000 votes. Gillum’s success was a sign the county is up for grabs. If Biden wins here, it means that things are looking good for him in Florida. — Gary Fineout At 8 p.m. polls close in Illinois. The last precinct in North Carolina, which extended polling in four locations that opened late, closes at 8:15 p.m. Illinois: The state’s 13th Congressional District has a lot of dynamics that mirror nearby battleground states like Wisconsin and Michigan, according to Democratic media consultant Scott Kennedy. The district is in the central portion of the state and has a mix of rural areas and midsize cities. The outcome of a rematch between Republican Rep. Rodney Davis and Democratic challenger Betsy Dirksen Londrigan could signal what’s happening elsewhere in the country. Whoever wins, it will be close again this year. Voters are also deciding whether to institute a progressive income tax, to replace a flat tax, in the state’s most expensive ballot contest. Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker has spent more than $58 million backing the change, while hedge fund executive and GOP donor Ken Griffin leads the business opposition. He donated $54 million opposing it. — Shia Kapos North Carolina: Four years ago, Hillary Clinton beat Trump in the inner suburbs across the state but barely — 49 percent to 48 percent, North Carolina’s only true “coin-toss” territory, per Catawba College political scientist Michael Bitzer. Around Charlotte, that includes Mecklenburg County towns like Huntersville, Cornelius and Davidson. Trump, meanwhile, with 65 percent of the vote, won big in the outer suburbs — places like Waxhaw in Union County, Harrisburg in Cabarrus County and Mooresville in Iredell County. This year, if either that 49 or that 65 gets into the 50s — if Biden, in other words, wins the inners up in the 50s or Trump wins the outers but down in the 50s — that would suggest to me that Biden’s going to win North Carolina and become the 46th president. — Michael Kruse At 9 p.m. polls close Minnesota and New York. In Texas polls close in most of the state at 8 p.m., but at 9 p.m. in El Paso, which is in mountain time. Minnesota : Trump won Anoka County, which includes northern suburbs of Minneapolis, by about 10 percentage points in 2016. Two years later, Democrat Tim Walz carried it by less than 1 point on his way to winning the governorship. The result here should give us a good indication of how much support Trump has shed — or retained — in the outer-ring suburbs. I’ll be watching to see if 2020 margins are closer to 2016 or 2018. — David Siders Texas: A race for railroad commissioner could end up giving Democrats their first statewide win in Texas in more than two decades, while also pointing to whether conservative states are willing to embrace a more progressive energy policy. The Republican incumbent, who had the backing of the state’s GOP leadership, lost his March primary. So it’s now an open seat that pits Democrat Chrysta Castañeda against Republican Jim Wright. — Renuka Rayasam New York: In Central New York, Democratic Reps. Anthony Brindisi and Antonio Delgado — who won moderate districts in competitive races last cycle — are testing whether 2018 was more than a one-off. Delgado is expected to win his race, and Brindisi is in a rematch against a Republican who has embraced Trump. The races suggest that independent voters are embracing Democrats down ballot even if they vote for Trump. — Anna Gronewold At 10 p.m. polls close in Montana and Iowa Iowa : Until voting for Trump, Dubuque County had backed every Democratic nominee dating back to John F. Kennedy. As recently as 2008, Obama won by 21 percentage points. But in 2016, Trump flipped the script in the most heavily Roman Catholic part of the state. Democratic turnout was down in the working-class city of Dubuque. And Republican turnout was up in the more suburban and rural parts of the surrounding county where Trump ran up the score. To win Iowa again, he’ll need a similarly robust performance in northeast Iowa, which is why he campaigned in Dubuque two days before Election Day. — Charlie Mahtesian Montana: The state’s recreational marijuana ballot initiative could help tip the scales for a Democratic Senate majority. Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, a Democrat, is polling close to incumbent GOP Sen. Steve Daines with the race a toss-up. The marijuana measure is sure to boost turnout of young, Democratic-leaning voters who may have never voted before . — Natalie Fertig and Mona Zhang At 11 p.m. polls close in California California: Progressive prosecutor George Gascón’s challenge to incumbent Los Angeles District Attorney Jackie Lacey is the most important district attorney contest in the nation and a bellwether for an ascendant criminal justice reform movement. Law enforcement has spent big for Lacey, while Gascón has drawn support from wealthy individuals in California and beyond. Elected Los Angeles Democrats like Mayor Eric Garcetti and Rep. Adam Schiff, sensing which way the wind is blowing, have abandoned Lacey en masse and back Gascón. — Jeremy B. White

Matt Wuerker

Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out at rlizza@politico.com and rrayasam@politico.com, or on Twitter at @ryanlizza and @renurayasam.

A message from Care in Action: Right now, children are crying for their parents, because our government said “we need to take away children” - cruelly plotting to separate babies from their parents. How do we explain to our kids that families were separated on our watch? We need to reunite every family. Now.

PALACE INTRIGUE

THE END — Chief Washington correspondent Ryan Lizza emails the Nightly: Good evening from Washington, where Trump will spend the evening at the White House hosting several hundred staffers, family members, and supporters. Biden will be at home two hours north in Greenville, Del. Both men are expected to speak tonight. Do not miss POLITICO’s excellent election rig here. As a reminder, control of the Senate is too close to call. Democrats are likely to expand their majority in the House. The majority of governors are expected to be Republicans. Trump remains a longshot for reelection, but he still has a non-zero chance of securing 270 electoral votes. If we know the winner before polls close in Anchorage at 1 a.m. ET, it is likely that it’s Joe Biden, who turns 78 later this month and who first ran for and won office in 1970, when he was not quite 28. Earlier today Biden visited his childhood home in Scranton, Pa., where he signed a wall inside and then addressed a small group of supporters outside via a bullhorn. Biden’s message on Election Day 2020 is eerily consistent compared to when he started in April 2019. He talked about how the “soul of America” was on the ballot. He talked about how the middle class was the “backbone of America,” a device he has used for 18 months as an umbrella for his economic policies. And he pitched himself as the only candidate who could “unite America,” a goal that many Americans in our divisive political era tell pollsters they crave. Biden and his top strategist, Mike Donilon, came up with this trio of political clichés two years ago. They tattooed them to Biden’s teleprompter and the candidate, who in previous campaigns was most famous for a lack of message discipline, never wavered far from them, even at the lowest point of the primaries earlier this year when Biden seemed finished: He couldn’t secure a victory in the first three states, and Trump, who was emerging from impeachment and overseeing a booming economy, seemed formidable. Then Rep. James Clyburn endorsed Joe Biden in South Carolina and the coronavirus endorsed Donald Trump and everything changed. If Biden wins, his consistency will surely be one reason for it. There is always a debate between political consultants who believe campaign strategy is the key to victory and political scientists who believe underlying fundamentals are paramount. The fundamentalists will have a strong argument if Biden is elected president. Trump, who has never enjoyed majority support, was handed a national crisis in an election year and he bungled it. The Biden campaign wanted the race to be a vote about whether to rehire Trump, and in pursuit of this strategy Biden found an unlikely ally in Trump himself, who could not help but make himself the central character of the campaign every day. Although he tried at the last minute to pursue the strategy that his advisers recommended — making Biden an unacceptable alternative — it may have been too late. The Biden campaign has played the excellent hand it was dealt extremely well. Despite all of this, Trump could still win. But if Biden prevails, even with a smashing victory north of 400 electoral votes, there will be a temptation to over-analyze the results and over-interpret his mandate. Perhaps there will be something jaw-dropping in the data that augurs a realignment of American politics. But this seems more likely to be an election about judging the performance of one man, rather than an election about embracing the new possibilities presented by the challenger and his platform. No matter who wins, it is likely that we will continue on the trajectory we’ve been since 2000: a country that at the presidential level, partly because of the quirks of the Electoral College, remains competitive, and an electorate that is often more certain about what it doesn’t want than what it does.

EXCLUSIVE: "THE CIRCUS" & POLITICO TEAM UP TO PULL BACK THE CURTAIN ON THE MOST UNPRECEDENTED PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION IN HISTORY: It’s been the most unconventional and contentious election season of our lifetime. The approach taken by each candidate couldn’t be more different, yet the stakes couldn’t be higher as we cross the finish line. Join POLITICO’s John Harris, Laura Barrón-López, Gabby Orr and Eugene Daniels in a conversation with John Heilemann, Alex Wagner, Mark McKinnon and Jennifer Palmieri of Showtime's "The Circus" on Thursday, Nov. 5 at 8 p.m. EST for an insiders’ look at the Trump and Biden campaigns, behind-the-scenes details and nuggets from the trail, and the latest on where things stand and where they are heading. DON'T MISS THIS! REGISTER HERE.

COVID-2020

HOW THEY CAN WIN — Election Day is here. The results? They might not be finalized for a while. And that has lawyers for Trump and Biden preparing for lawsuits, recounts and some odd scenarios that you might never have thought of. In the latest POLITICO Dispatch, White House correspondent Anita Kumar breaks down some of the weird ways the election could be won.

Listen to the latest POLITICO Dispatch podcast

THE GLOBAL FIGHT

THE TRANSATLANTIC TECH DIVIDE WILL STILL BE HERE — As U.S. voters head to the polls, optimists on both sides of the Atlantic hold out hope for a revival of the transatlantic relationship. They should brace for disappointment — especially on tech, European technology editor Nicolas Vinocur writes. Over the past few months, tensions between Europe and the United States in the digital realm have ratcheted up to levels not seen since Edward Snowden’s disclosures about U.S. intelligence gathering. From a Washington-led pressure campaign on 5G security to Europe’s plans for digital taxes and the collapse of a transatlantic data protection agreement, the EU and the U.S. have been drifting apart over technology for years. Now Europe’s “tech sovereignty” agenda — which aims to rein in the power of U.S. tech giants like Google, Facebook and Amazon and foster local alternatives — threatens to make the split permanent. The presidential campaign has been largely devoid of foreign policy, much less pesky questions about data flows, so the convulsions in transatlantic tech remain a preoccupation for U.S. policy wonks and industry officials. But for those wonks and officials charged with securing access to Europe’s rich markets, there is growing alarm. The EU’s moves to keep data in the bloc, and away from cloud storage providers like Amazon and Microsoft, have proved particularly concerning.

SUBSCRIBE TO TRANSITION PLAYBOOK: No matter who wins this week, a lot will change in the coming months. Advisers to both candidates have been working behind the scenes for months, vetting potential nominees, political appointments, and drafting policy proposals for the first 100 days. Our Transition Playbook newsletter, written for political insiders, tracks the appointments, the people, and the next administration’s power centers. Don't miss out. Subscribe today.

NIGHTLY NUMBER

1,253 days The number of days since Trump announced the U.S. would exit the Paris Climate Accords. On Wednesday, regardless of the results of the election, the United States will leave the agreement.

PARTING WORDS

HIGHLIGHT REEL — As results come in tonight, take a look back at the first term of the Trump administration, from the opening debates on inaugural crowd size to this fall’s coronavirus infection and Supreme Court battle.

A message from Care in Action: Right now, children are crying for their parents, because our government said “we need to take away children” - cruelly plotting to separate babies from their parents. “I always tell my kids to treat others the way you want to be treated. How do I explain to our kids that families were separated on our watch?” We can make this a nation we’re proud to leave our kids. We need to reunite every family. Now.

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