Live Election Night Returns: FL, NC - Sunshine and Tarheels

(AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee, File)

10:07 CST And there it is. Budd has kept the seat in the GOP column. Unfortunately, NC-01 as a pick-up didn’t materialize, and neither did NC-13. Rats. Thank YOU all so much for keeping me company! Can’t wait to see how the rest of this plays out.

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9:22 CST Well, there’s one seat that we won’t pick-up. Budd still 70K votes in the lead.

8:31 CST NC has half the precincts counted. Good, Grief. But Budd is firmly in the lead, with 50.2% according to the AP.

8:16 CST THIS is DELICIOUS, lol

8:05 CST Budd has taken the LEAD now, by almost a percentage point. Rural counties are starting to report.

7:55 CST Dang near have this sweater knitted. Better start on a beanie.

7:50 CST In N.C. Budd’s moved w/i 2 points of Beasley with 61% of the vote in. THAT’S the right direction.

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7:47 CST Officially, we picked up FOUR congressional seats in South Florida!

7:40 CST The NC-01 race is still neck and neck with the Dem ahead, and still only partially counted. NC-13 and 14 have tightened as well.

7:29 CST Slow as molasses in January, but Budd in N.C. is doing a slow, steady creep upward. This is kind of mind-boggling, too.

7:29 CST https://twitter.com/MaxNordau/status/1590147160917557250

7:11 CST Good gravy goodness. It must be the Florida in me, but COME ON, N.C. Count something, for crying out loud!

7:08 CST WOOT!!

7:07 CST SoFL stations calling it for Rubio

6:59 CST AY DIOS MIO!! DeSantis is over A MILLION ahead of Crist. DYING here. 3,305,836 to 2,484,106. DAWG. THAT’S a shellacking, and the Panhandle hasn’t come in yet. Marco’s pulling away, too – almost 700K ahead of Demmings, 55%-43%

6:50 CST HO-LEE-SMOKES, it looks like Anna Luna has pulled out a WIN in FL-13!! WOOT With 95% of the vote, she’s ahead 53%-45% !! Yeah, BUDDY!

6:46 CST Ah! There’s an explanation for the NC numbers.

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6:45 CST Salazar is taking no prisoners

6:42 CST Math is not my strong point, but – halfway thru the voting here in FL – Governor DeSantis is already up over 220,000 (that’s TWOHUNNERTTWENTYTHOUSAND) votes over Crist.

6:39 CST We still have 20 minutes of voting left here in the Panhandle. Rebekah Jones has already announced she won’t be attending her election night party. She’s feeling…ill. Hope it’s not COVID.

6:36 CST NC returns just started to come in as polls there closed at 7:30. The Democrat Beasley is ahead 59%-39% right now with 21% in (lots of urban areas in that so far). NC-13 race, the GOP candidate is behind 64-35, with 33% of the vote in.

6:32 CST With 73% of the vote in, FL-07, the district outside of Orlando has Republican Cory Mills ahead 56% to 44% and THAT seat would be a pick-up

6:28 CST So far DeSantis has Crist down 54-45%. Rubio is maintaining his 7 point lead as well.

6:23 CST With 10% in, Anna Luna has 48 % to her FL-13 challenger’s 50% in a heavy D district. Good showing so far!

6:20 CST Rubio is leading Demmings by 7 points already in South Florida. Maria Salazar is ahead in her race in FL-27

Starting our liveblogging here: 6:17CST HO-LEE-SMOKES! DeSantis has DONE it! Miami-Dade is red, red, RED!!!

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Welcome, my friends, to the Red Wave, Blood Moon Rising live blog of the Florida/North Carolina Election Day Returns!

AP/Reuters Feed Library

Oh, I am SO glad to have you here with me – and with all my terrific peeps at HotAir – for what could be just the loveliest night. Now, I’m up here in the NW Florida Panhandle, and we always bring the vote home for the GOP, being on Central time.

FLORIDA: We’ve got a couple of rock solid big races here in my home state. Senator Marco Rubio is expected to vanquish Val Demmings with no trouble at all, and our incredible governor should be on cruise control. The exciting part of watching Ron DeSantis blow the doors off Charlie Crist will be the margin of victory, and can our Chief Executive finally flip Miami-Dade?

Miami-Dade is one to watch in FL – it is a hard-core Dem blue bastion that went for Andrew Gillum (boo hiss) four years ago, but that seems to be changing…and YIKES for Crist if this from this morning holds up!

As of 3 p.m. their time, we were still up 6K voters for in-person.

There are 2 Congressional races that we might be able to flip that bear watching: FL-07 and FL-13. Both are open seats but they were both previously held by Democrats. We’ll be keeping an eye on those.

As well as watching what happens with Rebekah Jones vs Matt Gaetz here in my home district of FL-01. The drama is neverending and I expect that to continue, even as she goes down in flames to the incumbent.

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FL Republicans sure look like they mean business in a big way.

A BIG way…

NORTH CAROLINA: There’s a U.S. Senate race worth watching that’s been a bit of a nail-biter until recently. Republican Senator Richard Burr decided against running again, and the race to replace him has former N.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Cheri Beasley up against Republican Rep. Ted Budd. The RCP Senate Poll Average now has Budd up 6 points, but it ain’t over ’til it’s over.

There’s also a supposedly heated (read: fugly according to my N.C.-based little brother) battle between two combat veterans for the redistricted 14th, encompassing Charlotte and Mecklenberg.

…Democrat Jeff Jackson is a state senator representing part of Mecklenburg County, and he’s a former Gaston County assistant district attorney.

…Republican Pat Harrigan is a political newcomer. He and his wife own a gun manufacturing business in western North Carolina.

The Afghanistan war veteran said he decided to get involved in politics last year after watching the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

“I truly realized we had failed leadership that are leading us down the road to failed outcomes,” Harrigan said.

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That should be interesting. The Democrat seems to like using the Jan 6 insurrection narrative as a basis for his running to “protect democracy.”. We’ll see how that plays. It is a very blue district.

NC-13 has Trump endorsed Bo Hines challenging a state senator, Wiley Nickel, in another new district.

Voters in the midterm elections are choosing 435 members of the House of Representatives. But of all those races, fewer than three dozen are competitive — and it’s these few districts that will determine which party controls the House.

One of those rare districts is North Carolina’s 13th, a newly created district that runs from the city of Raleigh through two suburbs and all the way out into two rural counties.

RCP has Nickel by 1. Could be a squeaker!

Also, my little brother tells me, if they manage to flip another 3 seats or so in the state house, they’ll have a supermajority, which is also a storyline here in Florida. Two more Supreme Court seats and they’ll have a majority there as well.

Alrighty then.
Everything’s looking sharp at the moment and we’re ready to rock and roll. Let me leave you with this absolutely hysterical CBS News report.

Let the games begin.

***

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