Author: Andrew Sullivan

Josh Marshall updates us on the Senate side:

As of now the Democrats have 51 Senate seats in the win column. Alaska seems like a battle between two Republicans, with Lisa Murkowski the apparent winner, though with write-ins there's no telling. That leaves Washington state and Colorado. At the moment, Patty Murray is about 14,000 votes ahead and Michael Bennet is about 8,000 votes behind.

Silver explained why Bennet will probably win anyway. Josh continues:

If those both come into the Democratic column, it would mean that the Dems won each of the seats they were predicted to win. Basically, West Virginia, California and Washington, along with two they weren't — Nevada and Colorado. What's got to be tantalizing for Dems is that they came pretty close in two other states — Pennsylvania and Illinois — but came up just short.

Silver updates:

FiveThirtyEight can project with 99% confidence that the Democrats will not lose 70 seats. Between 62 and 68 appears to be the realistic range at this point.

He also projects a Bennet win by 3 to 4 points:

He now trails by about half a point, but both Boulder and Denver counties, where Mr. Bennet leads by wide margins, have only reported a little more than half their vote.

Quinn McCord projects:

If all current leads hold up (hardly definite), GOP will hold 31 gubernatorial seats to Dems' 18. By population, 58% of Americans would have a GOP governor and 42% a Dem governor.

Lincoln Chafee, an Independent, makes up for the remaining seat. The breakdown prior to Election Day was 24 GOP to 26 Dem. Check in with the gubernatorial results here. Several races are still close.

A reader writes:

We may be seeing significantly diminished medical marijuana access in California if L.A. District Attorney Steve Cooley beats S.F. District Attorney Kamala Harris in their race to replace Governor Jerry Brown as attorney general. We could see Cooley declare dispensaries illegal.

Cooley currently leads Harris. Scott Morgan posted the above video last week and added:

This guy is as nasty a drug warrior as there is, and if he becomes California's top law enforcement official, it isn't going to be pretty.

DiA signs off for the night and brings us up to speed:

The Republicans have won at least 60 seats in the House, surpassing their total from 1994. John Boehner is your new speaker. In the Senate, Republicans have gained at least six seats, with close races still to be called in Colorado, Washington and Alaska. Harry Reid and the Democrats retain control of that chamber. In the states, the GOP has picked up eight governorships, with results in many states still coming in.

The '94 revolution resulted in a net gain of 54 seats in the House and eight in the Senate, causing both chambers to swing to the GOP.

The AP's Jennifer Agiesta tweets:

Generation gap on Prop. 19 was enormous: six in 10 under 30 say they voted yes, seven in 10 seniors say no.

The Republican nominee, losing to Cuomo by nearly 30 points, won't go down without a threat:

Nick Wing says Paladino was "attempting to channel Al Capone from 'The Untouchables.'"

With 40% of precincts reporting, the write-in candidate is leading Joe Miller by 5 points.

And it has. A reader writes:

As someone who spent 8 years in the trenches for legalization at the Marijuana Policy Project and still supports it strongly, I have to disagree with you on this. The "medical marijuana scammers who like things the way they are" vote is tiny, in part because intelligent medical cannabis patients have seen growing crackdowns in L.A. and elsewhere, which will accelerate if Republican Steve Cooley is elected Attorney General – a distinct possibility.

The real problem is that the Prop 19 campaign made several fundamental tactical mistakes.

Most of the movement wanted to wait til 2012, as the off-year electorate (even without the Tea Party influence this year) tends to skew older and more conservative – the voters most hostile to marijuana by far – but Rich Lee was sure he knew better than anyone. He went ahead even though he had no idea if he could raise enough money to do a decent TV campaign, which in California runs $2 million+ per week. He didn't, despite a couple last-week cash infusions that were too little and too late.

Most critically, they tried to sell the initiative as something it's not. The campaign's main TV spot (echoing most of the campaign's other materials), says that 19 will tax and regulate marijuana "just like alcohol." That's a transparent lie, which has provided easy fodder for opponents, newspaper editorial writers and others. Alcohol production and sales are governed by statewide standards, statewide taxes, and a statewide agency to police them. Prop 19 does nothing of the sort, leaving everything about commercial sales up to local option. That's an entirely defensible approach, but the sales pitch is obviously, blatantly false. Shockingly enough, many voters do notice these things.

Medical marijuana initiatives fail in South Dakota and Oregon. The one in Arizona is too close to call.