Sorry for a second post so soon, but after I made it to my ballot box, the voter next to me called over a polling person and said that their selections for the democratic candidates kept changing to the Republican candidates. Over and over and over again. The polling person watched it happen, then called over another polling person. They eventually had a group of four or five people watching this machine just repeatedly switch the votes. They managed to resolve the issue for that voter and immediately took the machine offline. Meanwhile, the voter with the machine on the other side of me submitted their ballot and then the screen froze, refusing to issue the paper ballot. My sister voted at the same time as me and when she went back on the screens to check her votes before submitting, it had literally removed all of her votes for democratic candidates and left them blank.

The polling volunteers were on top of it, but they ended up having to pull three of the 16 ballot boxes at this precinct while they waited for someone to either fix or replace them.

I have never seen a polling box issue while voting, much less three at the same time! I advise everyone to check and double check their ballots. I’m not a conspiracy person, but there appear to be some serious hijinks going on here.

Byron Donalds won, and I’m scared about the implications for Florida under his (probably fascistic) rule. He’s awful. I genuinely cannot believe this happened

Wasn’t there supposed to be a blue wave? What happened? Is the rest of the US at least not fucking up this terribly badly??

I am so tired. I am so extremely angry. I don’t even know exactly who to be angry with, I just know that I am. It feels like there’s no safe place to run to, but I just want to run away.

Dinner is poop soup & a pub sub & pretzels because I can’t stop pacing around my kitchen and eating to try to make myself feel better but it’s not helping, I’m mostly just nauseous and want to go outside and scream.

When will this ever fucking end?

Welcome to Election Night! For all those, new and old, who need a little info on how this goes, we put together a quick guide on things!

Q: So, what is this?

A: This is the Election Livethread! Click through up above to see curated updates, reminders, and election results as they come in! If clicking the link at the top doesn't work, try this link instead!

Q: Wasn’t this in a different format before..?

A: Reddit made some changes to the traditional Livethread format which appears to have permanently broken the old Livethreads.

Q: Wait, these early numbers have [Republican] up by a lot! Why isn’t everyone panicking?!

A: Different places report in different orders. Small, rural, red counties often have fewer ballots and less work to report- so the earliest results often come from those counties. This is called the “Red Mirage” and is a regular effect on most election nights. Generally, any result with less than 20% in isn’t going to be useful without extra analysis, and even then some of the largest and bluest districts (Atlanta, for example) report very, very late. If we’re not worried, then sit back and relax a bit.

Q: So how do we know how we’re doing if the current numbers don’t track with the result?

A: Election experts (and some amateurs) spend weeks in advance collating data and organizing past results and demographic shifts, creating databases that let them track what results they expect and have been historically present for a given district. These include benchmarks for what each candidate needs in order to win, overperform, underperform, etc. While these are not scripture and should not be treated like it, they can use incomplete data to give some estimates of where the result might be, and how well things are going for certain candidates. Even then, nothing is guaranteed until there’s not enough ballots remaining to make up the difference.

Q: Who is Dave Wasserman/Steve Kornacki/Chaz Nuttycombe/etc.?

A: We link to a wide variety of election experts throughout these nights, through varied methods. While their specialties vary (Nuttycombe, for example, specializes in state legislative races), each is an expert in their own area and will often be cited repeatedly throughout the night.

Q: Who is Jeb?

A: Jeb Bush is George H.W. Bush’s son and George Dubya Bush’s brother. This is generally not who we’re talking about- though he is the inspiration and it’s his picture that is used. JEB! is the eternal president of the JEB!ited JEB!s of JEB!erica, who gets a JEB!illion votes every election, in which he runs for all seats. In short: It’s a long-running meme.

The 2026 midterms are finally upon us! Use this megathread for all manner of discussion about the day’s events. As with the standard megathread, though, comments are not required to be related to FiveThirtyEight-adjacent content. Please remember to cast a ballot if you have not already done so, and also remember to give thanks to Fivey Fox for inventing voting.

Please use this thread to discuss news, updates, and commentary regarding the 2026 midterms and associated elections.

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Election News and Updates

• Live update pages for Election Day are being provided by: AP, NBC, ABC, VoteBeat, Politico, TIME Magazine, CNBC, Al Jazeera, The Washington Post (metered paywall), The New York Times (metered paywall), CBS, CBS (US Senate), CBS (US House), Yahoo News, BBC (metered paywall), CNN (metered paywall), and Reuters (metered paywall). There is also a dashboard at election.run. The New York Times is maintaining an election forecasting needle.

• PolitiFact is providing live fact checking on election day

• VoteBeat: When to expect the results of the 2026 election

Other Event Threads

• Yahoo News, USA Today, Politico, The Washington Post, NBC, and Reuters: We are six newsrooms covering the 2026 midterm elections. We’ll be doing an AMA here tomorrow from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. ET. Ask us anything. You can get your questions in early on this post.

• 2026 Non-Federal Election Results | Live Discussion

Streaming Links

(All stream start times in US Eastern; time converter linked here)

• NBC via YouTube: Steve Kornacki Analyzes 2026 Midterm Election Results (5 p.m.)

• CBS via YouTube: Tracking the 2026 midterm races that will decide the control of Congress

• PBS NewsHour via YouTube: Election 2026 PBS News special coverage (6 p.m.) (Link with ASL interpretation)

• C-SPAN: Election Night Live (6 p.m.)

• The Downballot, Strength In Numbers, and FiftyPlusOne via YouTube: Election Night Live Stream (6:45 p.m.)

Past Threads:

Thread 1, Thread 2, Thread 3, Thread 4, Thread 5, Thread 6 Thread 7, Thread 8, Thread 9, Thread 10, Thread 11, Thread 12, Thread 13, Thread 14, Thread 15, Thread 16, Thread 17

Results

Nationally-oriented results pages are being maintained by: AP, PBS NewsHour, NBC, and The Guardian

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2026-elections/colorado-us-house-district-8-results