<Not so long ago, nobody met a partner online. Then, in the 1990s, came the first dating websites.

Match.com went live in 1995. A new wave of dating websites, such as OKCupid, emerged in the early 2000s. And the 2012 arrival of Tinder changed dating even further. Today, more than one-third of marriages start online.

Clearly, these sites have had a huge impact on dating behavior. But evidence is emerging that their effect is much more profound.

The way people meet their partners has changed dramatically in recent years.

For more than 50 years, researchers have studied the nature of the networks that link people to each other. These social networks turn out to have a peculiar property.

One obvious type of network links each node with its nearest neighbors, in a pattern like a chess board or chicken wire. Another obvious kind of network links nodes at random. But real social networks are not like either of these. Instead, people are strongly connected to a relatively small group of neighbors and loosely connected to much more distant people.

These loose connections turn out to be extremely important. “Those weak ties serve as bridges between our group of close friends and other clustered groups, allowing us to connect to the global community,” say Josue Ortega at the University of Essex in the U.K. and Philipp Hergovich at the University of Vienna in Austria.

Loose ties have traditionally played a key role in meeting partners. While most people were unlikely to date one of their best friends, they were highly likely to date people who were linked with their group of friends; a friend of a friend, for example. In the language of network theory, dating partners were embedded in each other’s networks.

Indeed, this has long been reflected in surveys of the way people meet their partners: through mutual friends, in bars, at work, in educational institutions, at church, through their families, and so on.

Online dating has changed that. Today, online dating is the second most common way for heterosexual couples to meet. For homosexual couples, it is far and away the most popular.

That has significant implications. “People who meet online tend to be complete strangers,” say Ortega and Hergovich. And when people meet in this way, it sets up social links that were previously nonexistent.

The question that Ortega and Hergovich investigate is how this changes the racial diversity of society. “Understanding the evolution of interracial marriage is an important problem, for intermarriage is widely considered a measure of social distance in our societies,” they say.

The researchers start by simulating what happens when extra links are introduced into a social network. Their network consists of men and women from different races who are randomly distributed. In this model, everyone wants to marry a person of the opposite sex but can only marry someone with whom a connection exists. This leads to a society with a relatively low level of interracial marriage.

But if the researchers add random links between people from different ethnic groups, the level of interracial marriage changes dramatically. “Our model predicts nearly complete racial integration upon the emergence of online dating, even if the number of partners that individuals meet from newly formed ties is small,” say Ortega and Hergovich....>

<....And there is another surprising effect. The team measure the strength of marriages by measuring the average distance between partners before and after the introduction of online dating. “Our model also predicts that marriages created in a society with online dating tend to be stronger,” they say.

Next, the researchers compare the results of their models to the observed rates of interracial marriage in the U.S. This has been on the increase for some time, but the rates are still low, not least because interracial marriage was banned in some parts of the country until 1967.

But the rate of increase changed at about the time that online dating become popular. “It is intriguing that shortly after the introduction of the first dating websites in 1995, like Match.com, the percentage of new marriages created by interracial couples increased rapidly,” say the researchers.

The increase became steeper in the 2000s, when online dating became even more popular. Then, in 2014, the proportion of interracial marriages jumped again. “It is interesting that this increase occurs shortly after the creation of Tinder, considered the most popular online dating app,” they say.

Tinder has some 50 million users and produces more than 12 million matches a day.

Of course, this data doesn’t prove that online dating caused the rise in interracial marriages. But it is consistent with the hypothesis that it does.

Meanwhile, research into the strength of marriage has found some evidence that married couples who meet online have lower rates of marital breakup than those who meet traditionally. That has the potential to significantly benefit society. And it’s exactly what Ortega and Hergovich’s model predicts.

Of course, there are other factors that could contribute to the increase in interracial marriage. One is that the trend is the result of a reduction in the percentage of Americans who are white. If marriages were random, this should increase the number of interracial marriages, but not by the observed amount. “The change in the population composition in the U.S. cannot explain the huge increase in intermarriage that we observe,” say Ortega and Hergovich.

That leaves online dating as the main driver of this change. And if that’s the case, the model implies that this change is ongoing.

That’s a profound revelation. These changes are set to continue, and to benefit society as result.>

<<Joshka> Be warned, there has been some buying / selling / trading / stealing of avatars around here (just one more problem that we must deal with)....>

<Donald Trump and his attorneys thumbed their noses at the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack's lawful subpoena ordering him to submit requested documents by 10 AM Friday morning. Trump and his team were originally given two weeks to comply, but Friday morning's 10 AM ET deadline came and went without a whisper from the former president.

Nearly ten hours after the deadline the Select Committee announced that they "have received correspondence from the former President and his counsel regarding the committee's subpoena."

They're effectively giving him a week's extension.

"We have informed Trump’s counsel that he must begin producing records no later than next week and he remains under subpoena for testimony starting on November 14th," the Committee writes.

The subpoena served on Trump also requires him to testify in person on November 14. As NCRM was first to note, that is also the day Trump has reportedly chosen to announce his third run for the presidency.>

<Those 'blundering statements', <fredthebore>, exist only within your cranium.

<This morning brings fresh news that in response to a GOP lawsuit, vote counting in Philadelphia will slow down dramatically. Said the city’s sole Republican elections commissioner: “I want to be very clear that when there are conversations that occur later this evening about whether or not Philadelphia has counted all of their ballots that the reason that some ballots would not be counted is that Republicans targeted Philadelphia — and only Philadelphia — to force us to conduct a procedure that no other county does.”

It’s worth remembering: it’s fine if vote-counting takes a while. It’s a bit annoying. But there’s really no rush. The issue of course is that Republicans are already out in force across the country claiming that post-Election Day counting is a sure sign of fraud. The fact that Philly has a large Black population makes it an even bigger target of “vote fraud” propaganda, much as Detroit was in 2020 and both cities have been in numerous previous cycles. Indeed, Republicans have been after Detroit voters just this weekend.>

Time to address these 'concerns' here, since there is no hope at the support forum, what with <fredthebore> caterwauling to the admins and proclaiming himself hard done by twentyleven times every hour:

Who appointed the prefect manque the judge of my chess posts? What right has this pathetic worm to judge <anyone>? How can a player as weak as he is uncover errors by anyone?

<House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said this week that far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who is currently banned from the chamber’s committees, will serve on committees if Republicans gain a majority advantage in Tuesday’s election.

That, of course, also depends on prohibitive favorite Greene winning reelection over Democrat Marcus Flowers.

Greene was removed from committee assignments in 2021 for spreading conspiracy theories and liking a Facebook post that called for the execution of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). CNN’s Melanie Zanona noted Greene’s history of inflammatory remarks and election denial. McCarthy appeared unfazed.

“She’s going to have committees to serve on, just like every other member and every other member goes through a steering committee looking at the best places to serve,” said McCarthy, who is a heavy favorite in his bid for reelection Tuesday.

Greene, who has called for halting aid to Ukraine in its fight for freedom against Russia, has expressed interest in the Oversight and Reform Committee, which could potentially revisit the withdrawal from Afghanistan and how the COVID-19 pandemic started, among other topics, MarketWatch reported.

Zanona noted that McCarthy, who hopes to become House speaker, is on the steering committee and could wield influence. But the House Republican leader begged off the suggestion by saying he was just one person.

He reiterated that Greene will have committee assignments.

“She’s duly elected by her district and has a right to serve,” he said.

In October, Greene warned McCarthy that if he didn’t give her more power in the event of the GOP retaking the House, the Republican base would be “very unhappy.”>

<Steve Bannon and the far-right have no idea what to do after seeing the so-called "red wave" turn to be a little more constipated than anticipated.

Any win at all for a Democrat isn't being believed by the right, according to MSNBC's Ben Collins, who has been watching the right on message boards all night. He first used the word "despondent" but said at one point that the real word was "catatonic."

"I don't think they had a plan for this, to be honest with you Rachel," said Collins. "I've been watching all of the most wonderful parts there this evening, InfoWars, and the Steve Bannon-style shows that he is populating this evening. They did not have a plan, and that is kind of interfering with their backup plan."

He explained that Arizona was going to be a key piece to their conspiracies and their fights, but that might not even matter anymore, said Collins.

"They want to make all of the, you know, what they call shenanigans, stuff happening down there with their viral lies about the voter tabulations this morning. They want to make that into a huge deal. And it might not even matter at the end of the day, depending on where the Democrats end up winning in Pennsylvania, in a battle, in Georgia, they are -- I can't really stress this, it's a very weird vibe on these sites. They seem a little bit despondent."

Meanwhile, Donald Trump has at times taken victory while also making attacks on candidates he said lost because they didn't support him enough and abandoned the "big lie."

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow asked if the MAGA world was believing what they saw in terms of the results. Collins said they don't. Every Democrat that is called, they think it is a fraud. That could indicate that violence is coming from the far-right in retaliation.

"There was a moment where I thought maybe they had pretaped some stuff earlier today, because they had kept going with the 'red wave' stuff," said Collins. "And then the tide turns at some point in the middle of the evening. They realize it was maybe not coming through in the way that it was. They were looking at all these other places that did not really line up with all the polls that we're seeing in the weeks beforehand. They sort of can't believe it. They really did not have a plan. They were making fun of the Democrats' ability to get out the vote while they started to lose some of these races."

Earlier in the day on Election Day, a former national security official at the Justice Department, Mary McCord, warned that the major thing would be watching and waiting for possible violence....>

<Herschel Walker, the Republican candidate for Senate in Georgia, is in the final day of a bruising campaign to unset [sic] Democratic incumbent Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock.

Both sides have sunk over $241 million into the race. Two women have accused the pro-life Walker of financing their abortions, with the second woman appearing on camera for an interview. Former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump have both campaigned for their party’s candidate.

The final poll showed Walker with a 2.2-point lead, though that was within the poll’s margin of error of 2.8 percentage points. The campaign has turned personal with both sides lobbing insults in the campaign’s closing days.

Walker has another proponent in former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley.

“Legal immigrants are more patriotic than the leftists these days,” Haley told a rally in Hiram, Ga.“They worked to come into America and they love America. They want the laws followed in America. So the only person we need to make sure we deport is Warnock.”

Walker, Haley said, is a “good person who has been put through the wringer and has had everything but the kitchen sink thrown at him.”

The midterm elections are set to close on Tuesday nights [sic]. Oddmakers [sic] list the Republican party as favorites to win both the House of Representatives and the Senate.>

<Among the many surprisingly positive outcomes for Democrats on Tuesday night was Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman earning a comfortable-ish win for the state’s open Senate seat, previously held by a Republican. Fetterman—the former mayor of the Rust-Belt borough of Braddock—appears to have outperformed Joe Biden’s margin of victory over Donald Trump across the state, including in rural areas. He also overcame legitimate questions about—and needlessly cruel attacks against—his health, as Fetterman is struggling with his auditory processing following a stroke he suffered on the eve of the Democratic primary.

But most importantly, Fetterman beat New Jersey-based, crudité-loving, TV celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz.

It wasn’t a guarantee. Fetterman ran several points behind the winning Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Josh Shapiro. It’s easy to imagine that a strong Republican candidate could have beaten Fetterman in a race that may well likely determine control of the Senate.

Indeed, Republicans had a real opportunity to select that strong challenger for the seat, specifically, the relatively moderate hedge fund manager and former Treasury Department official, David McCormick, who finished second in the Republican primary by just 951 votes. But it was Dr. Oz who clinched the nomination, thanks almost entirely to a high-profile endorsement by Donald Trump.

Oz proved to be more of a piteous MAGA villain than a frightening one. He spent much of the summer being mocked on social media for actually being from New Jersey and not Pennsylvania, for saying he owns only “two” homes and “ten properties,” and most of all, for going to a grocery store he described by the made-up name of “Wegner’s” to purchase crudité, guacamole, and margaritas in a farcical attempted demonstration of the horrors of inflation.

Perhaps more disturbingly, Oz, a medical doctor, spent the final weeks and months of the campaign essentially tormenting Fetterman for having suffered a stroke. Oz ran one ad in August, for example, with a cut-animation version of Fetterman’s head cracked open and his supposedly crazy policies and thoughts dumping out of it. Oz’s campaign advisor mocked Fetterman for not eating enough vegetables, seeming to try to point to Fetterman’s large build as a reason for his stroke. And he sarcastically offered to “pay for any additional medical personnel he might need to have on standby” during their lone debate. Oz continued this approach well into October, and leaned into it after Fetterman’s issues with auditory processing became very apparent during that lone debate. It was all as cruel, petty, and dumb as it sounds.

Now, Oz will have to slink back to one of his several homes—probably one in New Jersey. What his political prospects are now is relatively unclear, since Oz seems to have failed to be embraced by the MAGA voting contingent, who actively complained about their hero Trump putting his thumb on the scale for the fellow reality TV star. And after he unceremoniously fired the entire staff of his TV show out of the blue to take on this campaign, leaving them “blindsided,” “depressed, with “no health benefits,” and infuriated at their “heartless and selfish” boss, it seems unlikely that Oz will have a syndicated talk show to return to, either.

He could always go back to his day job. Despite his lacking bedside manner, he’s actually pretty good at heart surgery.

Fetterman will head to the Senate. Speaking in front of a crowd tonight, he seemed much more comfortable than he did at the debate.

“We launched this campaign almost two years ago and we had our slogan it’s on every one of those signs right now, every county, every vote,” Fetterman told his supporters. “And that’s exactly what happened, we jammed them up. We held the line. I never expected that we were going to turn these red counties blue, but we did what we needed to do and we had those conversations across every one of those counties and tonight that’s why I’ll be the next U.S. senator from Pennsylvania.”

That approach may have also allowed Democrats to retain control of the Senate for at least the next two years.>

<Voters in the key election battleground of Michigan on Tuesday rejected a Republican candidate vying to run the 2024 presidential election in their state who backed former President Donald Trump's false claims that he won in 2020.

Kristina Karamo was beaten by Democratic candidate Jocelyn Benson in the race to be Michigan's secretary of state, Edison Research projected.

Republican "election deniers" were also on the ballot for secretary of state in Arizona and Nevada, but both races are yet to be called.

Democratic President Joe Biden narrowly won Michigan, Arizona and Nevada in 2020 and Trump and his allies have falsely claimed that the results were fraudulent.

Voting rights groups and constitutional scholars worry that any secretary of state who believes the Trump fraud claims could try to dispute or ignore the popular vote at the presidential election in 2024, refuse to certify the result, or even claim the losing candidate actually won their state.

Karamo soared to prominence when she claimed in 2020 that she had witnessed fraud at Detroit's absentee counting board as a poll observer. No evidence has ever emerged supporting those claims.

In 30 of the country's 50 states, election deniers were candidates for at least one state position overseeing elections - governor, secretary of state or attorney general, according to nonprofit advocacy group States United Action.

While votes were still being counted in many races, States United Action said that as of early Wednesday, 12 election deniers had won a statewide role in election administration in eight states.

The group said election deniers were running for secretary of state in 13 states and that so far three had won, two had lost, while the remaining eight races were still undecided.

The races in Michigan, Arizona and Nevada are particularly important because they are key battleground states.

Mark Finchem, the Republican candidate for secretary of state in Arizona, said he would not have certified Biden's 2020 victory in the state. He also supported an audit of Arizona's election results and backed a bill that would give the state's legislature the power to overturn election results.

The secretary of state in Nevada cannot certify results but can set and enforce election rules. Republican candidate and former state assemblyman Jim Marchant opposed certification of Biden's win in the state in 2020.

Trump's false claims of fraud in 2020 were rejected by numerous court rulings, his own Justice Department and even Republican-led investigations at the state level.

Trump is considering launching this month a bid to win the White House again in 2024, according to several Trump advisers.

Ahead of Tuesday's elections, Biden accused Trump of inspiring Republican election denier candidates and warned voters: "Democracy is on the ballot for all of us."

Richard Gowan, U.N. director at the International Crisis Group think tank, said before Tuesday's election that if election deniers score some big wins it would undercut Biden's key U.S. foreign policy theme of promoting democracy.

"If U.S. democracy looks like it is back on life support, I think you'll see even good friends of the U.S. start to edge away from Washington on democracy issues," he said.>

<It’s another classic Kin-zinger.

Illinois congressman and vocal anti-Trump critic Adam Kinzinger mocked the former president’s supporters on Wednesday, after a sponsored post on Mr Trump’s Truth Social network claimed the former president was “prophesied” in the Bible.

The jab was in response to a sponsored post from a group called America Under Attack, claiming, “Did You Know Donald Trump is Prophesied in Your Bible?”

The post seems like a likely insult to Donald Trump supporters, who are reeling after the former president’s predicted “red wave” of GOP victories in the midterms hasn’t come to pass.

On forums like The Donald, a hotbed of MAGA support online, Trump fans were having a meltdown as results rolled on.

"These results are farcical," said one poster.

"There’s no rhyme or reason. You don’t get a blowout from counties in Florida and then magically cross state lines into ‘highly competitive’ territory in Georgia."

High-profile Trump-backed candidates have had mixed results thus far, with JD Vance winning his Senate race in Ohio, while Herschel Walker in Georgia and Kari Lake in Arizona both appear to be trailing.

One overwhelming sign of Mr Trump’s influence, however, was how a majority of US states had 2020 election deniers on their ballots this midterm season.

Throughout his rise to power, Mr Trump has enjoyed strong support from conservative Christians and evangelical leaders, some of whom indeed believed his ascendance was part of a divine plan.

Mr Trump made good on their support, delivering a conservative Supreme Court that ultimately struck down Roe v Wade.

In private, however, Mr Trump’s associates have claimed the former president would mock these supporters.

“His view was ‘I’ve been talking to these people for years; I’ve let them stay at my hotels—they’re gonna endorse me. I played the game,’” one former colleague told The Atlantic.

Mr Trump’s former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen has said Mr Trump considered evangelical leaders “all hustlers.”

While Rep Kinzinger may mock Mr Trump and his religious supporters as losers, the Illinois representative has suffered setbacks of his own for criticising Mr Trump.

Mr Kinzinger, who became a rare vocal Trump critic within the GOP, voting to impeach Mr Trump and serving on the January 6 committee, announced he wouldn’t seek re-election in 2021.

The Illinois legislator has been the subject of bruising attacks from Mr Trump as well as the Republican National Committee, which voted in February to censure Mr Kinzinger.>

<In June, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito and the court’s ultra-conservative majority wrote that they were sending the issue of abortion back to the voters. The voters are displeased.

The midterm election results look like a striking rebuke of the court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, and the wave of near-total abortion bans that followed it.

Results are still pending in some key states like Arizona, but Democrats won many contests that will shape abortion access for the next few years — and in some cases, much longer. Abortion-rights supporters managed to enshrine the right to abortion in three state constitutions, including the crucial state of Michigan, where a near-total ban on abortion from 1931 has been tangled up in court battles for months. And supporters notched another consequential win in Kentucky, where a majority of the state’s voters opposed a ballot measure that would have explicitly clarified that abortion rights was not protected under the state constitution.

These are significant victories for Democrats and abortion-rights supporters, particularly as Democrats faced significant headwinds on other topics important to Americans. That success almost certainly means abortion will remain a defining political issue as the 2024 presidential race looms on the horizon. There will be plenty of opportunities for Democrats to push their message: Abortion-rights activists now have momentum to push for ballot measures like the one that passed in Michigan, perhaps in states with active or pending bans like Ohio, Oklahoma and Missouri. And candidates may see this week’s results as evidence they need to talk more about abortion than they may have otherwise.

In other words, the unpopularity of the Supreme Court’s decision isn’t just registering in polls – it’s also reshaping the country’s political landscape.

Abortion-rights activists won on key ballot measures

The timing of the Supreme Court’s decision, just months before the midterm elections, didn’t leave much time for abortion-rights supporters to get measures on the ballot that would allow voters to weigh in directly on whether abortion should remain legal in their state. But abortion did make it to the ballot in five states – Michigan, Vermont, California, Kentucky and Montana – and although we don’t have final results everywhere, abortion-rights supporters appear poised to sweep the board.

By far the most important of these ballot measures was in Michigan, where a 1931 abortion ban has been snarled in litigation since before the Dobbs decision. Now the fate of the ban is moot after a decisive majority of Michigan voters cast their ballots in favor of an amendment establishing the right to reproductive freedom under the state constitution. The vote was an important bellwether because it was the first attempt to affirmatively enshrine abortion rights in a state constitution in a swing state where the status of abortion was genuinely uncertain. (Vermont and California also approved similar measures on Tuesday, but their blue hue made the outcome of those amendments considerably less suspenseful.) Abortion-rights supporters were already thinking about pursuing similar measures in a number of other states – those efforts are likely to get a lot more money and attention.

Abortion-rights supporters also defeated a Kentucky ballot measure stating that there is no right to abortion under the state constitution. That outcome might seem surprising, given that Kentuckians are solidly opposed to legal abortion in all or most cases, but it’s actually pretty much in line with what a New York Times analysis estimated after Kansas voters rejected a similar measure during the primary in August. Kentucky is redder than Kansas, so this vote was narrower, but the result underscores the fact that even some voters who are opposed to abortion in many cases are unhappy with the extreme turn that abortion policy has taken. In Kentucky, for instance, abortion is currently banned with very few exceptions – and according to polling by Civiqs, only 13 percent of Kentucky’s registered voters want abortion to be illegal in all circumstances. The abortion-rights side also substantially outraised anti-abortion advocates in the lead-up to the midterms, so that spending advantage may have helped too. The ballot measure’s defeat won’t immediately change the status quo — abortion will remain banned in Kentucky — but it does mean that a legal challenge to the ban in state court will proceed.....>

<....That said, the results in Kentucky are also a sign that opposition to Republicans’ extreme position on abortion does not automatically translate into support for Democrats. The “no” vote on the ballot measure (which, confusingly, corresponds with the pro-abortion rights stance) is currently running 14 percentage points ahead of Democratic Senate candidate Charles Booker, who lost decisively to Republican incumbent Sen. Rand Paul. So turning the general air of displeasure about extreme abortion bans into electoral victories could be tricky for Democrats in red states like Kentucky. Many anti-abortion candidates were also elected in races across the country last night, too — so simply prioritizing abortion doesn’t necessarily translate into support for Democrats.

Democratic victories will protect abortion access in Pennsylvania, North Carolina and other states

In key purple states, though, abortion rights seem to have lifted Democratic candidates, and although some races are still outstanding, Democrats have already won most of the state-level races that will shape abortion access going forward. In Pennsylvania, where Republican legislators were making noises about stricter abortion bans, Democrat Josh Shapiro won the governor’s race handily, defeating an opponent who was one of the most ardent anti-abortion advocates in the statehouse. Regardless of what happens in the Pennsylvania General Assembly — which, in a surprising turn of events, Democrats may also have a shot at winning — Shapiro has promised to veto any new abortion restrictions, which means that abortion will remain legal up to 24 weeks of pregnancy (with some restrictions, like waiting periods) in Pennsylvania for the foreseeable future.

Democrats also managed to stave off a Republican supermajority in the North Carolina General Assembly — a down-ballot victory that will have big implications for the thousands of women who already appear to be traveling to North Carolina for abortions. The governor of North Carolina, Roy Cooper, is a Democrat, so anti-abortion Republicans were hoping for a veto-proof majority that would allow them to pass a stricter abortion ban than the state’s current 20-week limitation. But that didn’t happen, and North Carolina will likely continue to accommodate thousands of out-of-state abortion patients from across the South as a result.

In addition to abortion-rights advocates’ victory on the ballot measure in Michigan, incumbent Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer also won reelection, and abortion rights were clearly a factor. Whitmer made abortion rights a defining issue for her candidacy, and it paid off. According to the exit polls conducted in Michigan (which, like any other poll, are subject to error), a whopping 45 percent of Michigan voters said that abortion was the top issue driving their vote – 18 percentage points higher than the number for exit polls conducted in 10 other states and Michigan (27 percent). That spike is almost certainly because abortion was actually on the ballot in Michigan, but the result will likely embolden Democrats who are thinking about similar ballot measures in their states.

<....Abortion will continue to be a defining issue for Democrats

Add all those contests up and it’s clear the issue of abortion rights isn’t going away. Some Democrats who leaned heavily into abortion, despite the prevailing economic winds, will likely feel vindicated by last night’s results. It’s still not entirely clear whether abortion was a decisive issue in states where access to the procedure is protected — like Oregon and Nevada — but the issue clearly did not fade into the background, despite predictions to the contrary.

How did Democrats manage to defy those expectations? We don’t know yet. But it seems like abortion access may be mobilizing some groups that the Democrats have long struggled to turn out reliably, like young voters. There were signs going into the election that young women were particularly upset by the Supreme Court’s ruling, and that’s reinforced by the exit polls, which found1 that abortion was the top issue for 44 percent of voters under the age of 30 — far more than the share that picked inflation. Women were also more likely than men to say that abortion was their top issue in the exit polls (33 percent vs. 22 percent), but the gap wasn’t huge, and it could be at least partially explained by the fact that women are more likely to vote for Democrats. We’ll have to wait until we get more reliable turnout numbers to dig into this further — but for now it’s clear that abortion is motivating many Democratic voters, despite a sour economy and general discontent with the state of the country. Going into 2024, we will likely see more Democratic primary candidates running on the issue of abortion, as many of this year’s primaries were over by the time the Dobbs decision came out.

Gubernatorial Races Were A Mixed Bag For Each Party

And what about Republicans? Last night’s results were a fairly clear sign that Americans are not happy with the extreme stance on abortion that many Republicans have taken — which could affect what happens in state legislatures over the coming months. Republican politicians in states like Ohio, Nebraska and Virginia are hoping to pass or retain restrictive abortion bans, but the results of the midterms could lead to more standoffs like the one we saw in South Carolina earlier this year, where Republican legislators split on the exceptions that were included in a proposed abortion ban, and ultimately ended up not passing anything. (They might end up coming to a deal in the next few days, but time is running out.) New abortion bans could give Democrats more ammunition heading into the next election cycle, but anti-abortion advocates will likely push for them anyway, putting some Republican legislators in a bind.

And then there’s the question of what national Republicans will do. Some Republican candidates tried to moderate their stance on abortion as it became clear that the Dobbs decision was backfiring on them, proposing 15-week abortion bans rather than the much stricter restrictions that had gone into effect in other states. Now that it’s even more clear that abortion bans are weighing down Republicans in some states, we could see that trend continue. (Although, because the party has gotten more extreme on the issue of abortion over the past decade, some Republicans will almost certainly continue to support strict bans.)

We’ll keep looking into how abortion shaped the results of the midterms in the coming days. But for now, it’s clear that the Dobbs decision did turn abortion into one of the most salient issues in the country — which means you’re going to be hearing a lot more about it as the 2024 presidential campaign creaks into gear.>

<All eyes in the political world were trained on Friday on Arizona and Nevada, where hundreds of thousands of uncounted votes held the key to control of the U.S. Senate three days after Americans cast their final ballots in midterm elections.

Either Democrats or Republicans can capture a Senate majority by sweeping the contests in both states. A split, however, would transform a Dec. 6 runoff Senate election in Georgia into a proxy battle for the chamber, which among other powers holds sway over President Joe Biden's judicial appointments.

Meanwhile, Republicans were slowly inching closer to wresting control of the House of Representatives from Biden's Democrats, which would effectively give them veto power over his legislative agenda and allow them to launch a bevy of investigations into his administration.

Republicans had secured at least 211 of the 218 House seats they need for a majority, Edison Research projected late on Thursday, while Democrats had won 197. That left 27 races yet to be determined, including a number of close contests.

The Republican House leader, Kevin McCarthy, has already announced his intention to run for speaker if Republicans take over, an outcome he described as inevitable on Wednesday.

Biden told reporters on Thursday he and McCarthy had spoken but said he had not yet abandoned hope that Democrats could still prevail in the House, despite the tough odds.

"It's still alive," he said of their chances.

The outcome of the Arizona and Nevada Senate races, where Democratic incumbents were trying to fend off Republican challengers, may not be known for days yet. Officials in both states have said it could take until next week to finish tallying uncounted mail ballots

Tuesday's results fell far short of the sweeping "red wave" that Republicans had expected, despite Biden's anemic approval ratings and deep voter frustration over near-unprecedented inflation.

Democrats portrayed Republicans as extremist, pointing to the Supreme Court's decision to eliminate a nationwide right to abortion and the hundreds of Republican nominees who promoted former President Donald Trump's false claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent.

Some of Trump's most high-profile endorsed candidates lost pivotal races on Tuesday, marring his status as Republican kingmaker and leading several Republicans to blame his divisive brand for the party's disappointing performance.

The outcome may increase the chances that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who routed his Democratic challenger on Tuesday, opts to challenge Trump for the 2024 presidential nomination. While Trump has not officially launched a third White House campaign, the former president has strongly suggested he will do so and is planning a "special announcement" at his Florida club on Tuesday.

Trump lambasted DeSantis in a statement on Thursday, taking credit for the governor's political rise, while attacking critics on his social media site, Truth Social.

Even a narrow Republican House majority would be able to demand concessions in exchange for votes on key issue such as raising the nation's borrowing limit. But with few votes to spare, McCarthy might struggle to hold his caucus together - particularly the hard-right faction that is largely aligned with Trump and has little interest in compromise.>

<Doug Mastriano has been one of the most ardent supporters of former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent. As state senator, he attempted to launch a forensic “audit” of Pennsylvania’s election results. He attended the “Save America” rally that preceded the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. And on Tuesday, he lost his race for Pennsylvania governor, according to ABC News projections.

As our forecast predicted, the majority of candidates who denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election are projected to win their races. But the bulk of those wins are from incumbent Republicans, in particular members of Congress who voted not to certify some of the 2020 election results. Many of the most vocal election-denying candidates who made claims of voter fraud central to their campaigns failed to break through, as did most newcomers who aligned themselves with Trump’s stolen election narrative. While many factors have influenced these results, the overall trend suggests that playing to voters who don’t trust the results of the 2020 election wasn’t a winning strategy by itself.

Of the 199 Republican candidates for the House, Senate, governor, secretary of state, and attorney general who deny the legitimacy of the 2020 election, so far 134 (67 percent) are projected to win their races, 52 are projected to lose, and 13 have yet to be called, as of Thursday, Nov. 10, at 4:30 p.m. Eastern. Of those 134, 112 are incumbent members of the House, many of whom voted not to certify the results of the 2020 election and still haven’t said the election was legitimate, but who also did not make the issue of election fraud central to their campaigns. Take Rep. Doug Lamborn, the Republican representing Colorado’s 5th District. Lamborn voted to not certify the 2020 election results but then seemingly dropped the subject entirely. Lamborn managed to fend off more vocal election-denying, hard-right challengers during the GOP primary in June, and ABC News now projects him to win reelection in the deep-red district. But it also includes some vocal election deniers, like Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, who released a campaign ad where she claimed “the fake news, big tech, and blue state liberals stole the election from President Trump.” Ivey, who has been Alabama governor since 2017, is projected to win reelection.

Election-denying newcomers running in open seats or against Democratic incumbents had a harder time on Tuesday — in the races that have been called, the majority of these candidates have lost. Of the 80 non-incumbent Republican election deniers who ran for House, Senate, governor, secretary of state, and attorney general, just 22 are currently projected to win (28 percent), while 49 (61 percent) are projected to lose, and nine are in races that have yet to be called. Many of these losses were in races where the Democrat had an advantage but were far from guaranteed slam dunks. J.R. Majewski, the Republican candidate for Ohio’s 9th District who attended the Jan. 6 rally that preceded the attack on the Capitol, told FiveThirtyEight in an email that there were “irregularities and illegalities that occurred across multiple states” in the 2020 election. Heading into the election, our final forecast gave Majewski a 22-in-100 chance of winning, but he began the campaign with much stronger odds. Majewski is projected to lose to incumbent Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur.

In at least one race so far, an election denier who was favored to win is projected to lose. Bo Hines, a former college football player and the Republican candidate for North Carolina’s 13th District, said he believed the 2020 election was “stolen.” Hines was polling well heading into the election, and our final forecast gave him a 77-in-100 chance of winning, but he is now projected to lose to Democrat Wiley Nickel, a state senator. There’s also a chance that Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado’s 3rd District, who has said voting not to certify the 2020 election results was one of the things she was “most proud of,” might lose her reelection bid — she’s currently in a nail-biter finish with Democratic challenger, former Aspen City Councilor Adam Frisch. If Frisch wins, it would be the most dramatic upset of the election so far. Boebert had a 97-in-100 chance to win, according to our final forecast.....>

The rest to follow....

<....Perhaps most meaningfully, voters almost universally rejected election deniers who ran for secretary of state, an office that is typically a state’s top election official and responsible for administering elections, enforcing election laws and certifying results. Having a secretary of state who doesn’t accept the results of the last democratic election, with a total lack of evidence of fraud, raises questions about whether or not they would act to overturn the results of a future election — even without evidence. In seven states, the Republican candidate for secretary of state denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election, and four are projected to lose. Only one election-denying secretary of state candidate — Chuck Gray in Wyoming — is projected to win. Of the races yet to be called, it looks like the election denying candidates are likely to lose, too. In Nevada, Jim Marchant, who has said he would not have certified Nevada’s 2020 election had he been secretary of state, is currently leading by a slim margin, but the remaining ballots are expected to favor his Democratic opponent, Francisco Aguilar. In Arizona, Republican candidate for secretary of state Mark Finchem has been deeply involved with Trump’s effort to overturn the election. He attended the Jan. 6 rally, worked with Trump’s campaign lawyer Rudy Giuliani and signed a resolution with fellow state lawmakers to send illegal alternate electors to the Electoral College. He’s currently trailing Democratic candidate Adrian Fontes, former recorder for Maricopa County.

<Sen. Mark Kelly is projected to win reelection, ABC News reports, securing a full six-year term to the Senate after pitching himself as an independent-minded candidate with bipartisan success. Kelly cast his opponent, Republican Blake Masters who was backed by former President Donald Trump, as too extreme for Arizona.

With Kelly's win, Democrats are closer to maintaining their slim majority in the Senate, and Arizona keeps its purple hue.

"Thank you to the people of Arizona for re-electing me to the United States Senate," Kelly said in a release Friday, after a large drop of votes from Maricopa County in his favor. "From day one, this campaign has been about the many Arizonans - Democrats, Independents, and Republicans - who believe in working together to tackle the significant challenges we face. That's exactly what I've done in my first two years in office and what I will continue to do for as long as I'm there."

"It's been one of the great honors of my life to serve as Arizona's Senator," he said. "I'm humbled by the trust our state has placed in me to continue this work."

Kelly, a former NASA astronaut and Navy combat pilot, who is married to former Rep. Gabby Giffords, ran a well-funded campaign with nearly $80 million fundraised to Masters' $12 million. In a tranche of TV ads, the junior senator told Arizonans he's focused on job creation, protecting abortion rights, and securing the southern border, supporting barriers on the southern border "when appropriate." He said he stands up to President Joe Biden and Democrats "when they're wrong."

"I stand up for Arizona," Kelly told ABC News on the stump. "When they're making what I think is a poor decision, I tell them, and in some cases, I drop legislation to prevent them from doing the thing that is the mistake."

He ran on legislative victories in the Senate, including the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the CHIPS Act, and explained measures in the Inflation Reduction Act that would help Arizonans such as drought relief measures and capped prescription drugs costs for seniors.

Masters, a 36-year-old venture capitalist from Tucson backed by Trump and tech billionaire Peter Thiel, went after Kelly on loyalty to Biden, record-high border crossings, fentanyl deaths and inflation. With Trump's endorsement in June, he had beat out five other Republican candidates in the August primary, but after swinging far-right to stand out in the bunch, Masters faced criticism for an apparent pivot, including changing his website to soften stances on key issues.

Kelly often used Masters' words from the primary trail against him, arguing he would support a federal abortion ban, privatizing social security, and spread baseless doubts about American elections since he has alleged, without evidence, that the 2020 presidential race was corrupt.

"I think Trump won in 2020," Masters said in a campaign ad last year. He changed that stance publicly during the Arizona Senate debate to say he hadn't seen widespread voter fraud but believes "Trump would be in the White House today if big tech and big media and the FBI didn't work together to put the thumb on the scale to get Joe Biden in there."....>

Part II on the way....

<....Kelly warned, on the same debate stage, that the "wheels" could "come off our democracy" if candidates like Masters, who continue questioning the integrity of American elections, rose to power.

Kelly also argued that Masters would be beholden to Trump, who Arizonans notably rejected in 2020, though by his slimmest of losing margins. In the final days of Kelly's campaign, he added into his stump speech a mention of a phone call Trump made to Masters after their Senate debate, when Trump told him he should've gone harder on the "rigged" election conspiracy theory. The scene aired in Tucker Carlson's documentary's "The Candidate: Blake Masters."

Masters told supporters Thursday that he would "come back and win," but seemed disappointed with vote drops as early as Election Night, seeing as he didn't take the stage before supporters once.

Arizonans, ultimately, stuck with the incumbent.

"No matter how the rest of the results shake out, our government will remain closely divided with a lot more to do. That can feel daunting. But that's democracy," Kelly said Tuesday at a watch party in Tucson. "The way to solve these problems isn't by pointing fingers and dividing people. It's by listening and finding common ground."

Kelly was first elected to the Senate in a special election in 2020, flipping the late Republican Sen. John McCain's seat, and giving Democrats control of both of Arizona's Senate seats for the first time in nearly 70 years.

"There is not a day that goes by that I don't think about the fact that I am sitting in the former Senator John McCain's Senate seat," Kelly said Monday at a campaign event with Republicans. "Senator McCain's legacy is one that we should all strive to live up to -- because Arizona deserves nothing less than a leader committed to always putting country first."

It's a message of unity that clearly resonated with Arizona's electorate, who also pride themselves on being willing to split a ticket. And it's another blow to Trump's ticket.

<Donald Trump's Thursday meltdown on his Truth Social website had already made its way into court proceedings in Florida just one day later.

"Former President Donald Trump's post-election screed labeling Florida's governor 'Ron DeSanctimonious' didn't go unnoticed by Andrew Gillum or his Miami lawyers," the Tallahassee Democrat reported. "In addition to saying he helped 'fix' DeSantis' campaign after it had 'completely fallen apart,' Trump said he also got the feds to intervene 'when votes were being stolen' in Broward County."

Gillum was beaten by Ron DeSantis in the 2018 midterms.

"David Markus and Katherine Miller, who are representing Gillum on federal public corruption charges involving donations to his gubernatorial campaign, didn't fire back at insults Trump hurled at Tallahassee's former mayor," the newspaper reported. "Instead, they cited Trump's statement in a motion filed Friday in federal court saying it further supported their request for a hearing on whether the federal government selectively prosecuted Gillum because of his race."

In a series of posts imitating a Twitter thread, a feature Trump's Truth Social does not support, Trump had harsh words for DeSantis.

Trump complained that Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and New York Post had gone "all in" for DeSantis, who Trump described as "an average Republican governor with great public relations."

"I was all in for Ron, and he beat Gillum, but after the Race, when votes were being stolen by the corrupt Election process in Broward County, and Ron was going down ten thousand votes a day, along with now-Senator Rick Scott, I sent in the FBI and the U.S. Attorneys, and the ballot theft immediately ended, just prior to them running out of the votes necessary to win," Trump claimed.

Gillum's lawyers seized on Trump's social media remarks in their filing.

"Former President Trump's posts raise serious questions about how exactly Trump 'fixed' DeSantis' campaign and what Trump directed the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office to do, and whether there is any connection to the FBI's investigation and later prosecution of Gillum," Gillum's lawyers argued.

The attorneys said Trump's Truth Social post demonstrates a "prima facie case of selective prosecution (at a minimum for political purposes), because Donald Trump confirms that he took action through the FBI and U.S. Attorney's Office."

According to The Washington Post, Trump's claims of sending federal agents to intervene in the election are "also almost certainly false.">