The Ultimate Test.

"Bat woman" is back.

“If I could only open one thing each morning it would be John Ellis’s News Items newsletter.” — Larry Summers, President Emeritus of Harvard University and former Secretary of the Treasury of the United States.

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1. Sabato’s Crystal Ball, The Center for Politics, University of Virginia:

One of the things we do at the Crystal Ball that many others do not is that, at the end of the day, we lay our cards on the table and remove all of the Toss-up ratings.

After assessing all of the data and hearing from people we trust, we think that Harris retains the slightest of edges in the “Blue Wall” of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. So those states lean to her in our final ratings—as always, “leans” does not mean “safe.” Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina lean to Trump. Of all of these ratings, the lean in Georgia may be the shakiest—a week ago, we would not have envisioned having a serious internal discussion about potentially leaning Georgia to Harris, which may convey something more broadly about how we think the election’s closing days have gone. A Harris win in Georgia (or North Carolina) would likely be predicated on an especially strong Democratic Election Day vote. Finally, Nevada moves to a very slight Leans Democratic. As a nod to Selzer, we are also moving Iowa from Safe Republican to Likely Republican. Republicans have been favorites to win the Senate majority for months, and we formalized that edge back in early September, when we downgraded Sen. Jon Tester’s (D-MT) odds from Toss-up to Leans Republican. Our final ratings show 52 seats Safe, Likely, or Leaning Republican, and 48 seats Safe, Likely, or Leaning Democratic . If the ratings hold, that would be a 3-seat net gain for Republicans. Just like the presidential race, the battle for the House has been a Toss-up for essentially the whole cycle. Our general belief throughout was that the presidential and House winner was likelier than not to be the same. Our final ratings reflect this, but only by the barest possible margin and with little confidence. We have 218 seats Safe, Likely, or Leaning Democratic, and 217 Safe, Likely, or Leaning Republican.Our Toss-ups split 8-6 Leans Democratic versus Leans Republican, with one other significant move: Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R, IA-1) moves from Leans Republican to Leans Democratic. (Source: centerforpolitics.org)

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2. In the American ideal, elections are moments of patriotism, a time for citizens to settle their differences at the ballot box, no matter how fiery the disagreements. In the reality of 2024, ballot boxes are, in some places, literally burning. So it goes in an election that has been darker than any in recent memory. The nation enters this Election Day on edge over possibilities that once seemed unimaginable in 21st-century America: political violence, assassination attempts and vows of retribution against opponents. For many voters, the anxiety that pervaded the last election, a socially distanced race that happened amid the coronavirus outbreak, has morphed into a far grimmer feeling of foreboding. In dozens of interviews over the final weekend of the campaign, Americans from across the political spectrum reported heading to the polls in battleground states with a sense that their nation was coming undone. While some expressed relief that the long election season was finally nearing an end, it was hard to escape the undercurrent of uneasiness about Election Day and what might follow afterward. (Source: nytimes.com)

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