The early results from battlegrounds and key races we’ll be watching

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• Geoff Bennett:

  All night, we will be digging into data from some of the battlegrounds and key races of this election.

  For a deep dive into all of that, we're joined now by our Lisa Desjardins over at the PBS News super screen.

  All right, Lisa. So let's start with the big state everyone is watching tonight, Pennsylvania. What counties are you tracking?

• Lisa Desjardins:

  I'm sad we have to pick just a couple to highlight, but it is Election Day. So it's all about choices.

  And let's start here in Philadelphia, the most important county for Democrats. Let me show you what happened here between 2016 and 2020. Hillary Clinton, 83 percent, but that actually went down for Joe Biden, 81 percent. That's great in any county. But when it's your biggest county, this is a place where Kamala Harris needs to do more like Hillary Clinton than like Joe Biden.

  Let's look at somewhere that the Trump campaign is paying attention to. This is Berks County. What's there? This is where Donald Trump ended, had his last rally in Pennsylvania last night, a place known and loved by the Desjardins family.

  And I want to show you what's going on here, why the margins in Berks County matter. Donald Trump actually had about the same margin between 2016 and 2020. But look at this. Joe Biden gained percentage in this county. Also paying close attention to Berks County because its population, 25 percent Hispanic, including many Puerto Ricans.

  We want to see there's any effect from those remarks from the Trump rally earlier, a couple of weeks ago.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Lisa, we know we could have a long night ahead. So what are some of the places you're tracking that could give us some of the earliest look at what's to follow?

• Lisa Desjardins:

  Georgia is one of the states we expect to hear from first, especially these — some of these counties around Atlanta.

  Let's talk about Gwinnett County. This is a place that used to be red, now has voted more blue. Also Cherokee County, this is somewhere — we're going to talk a lot about not just who wins these counties, again, but the margins. This is somewhere we saw the Biden campaign lost, but still did better than Hillary Clinton, the kind of place that we think that the Harris campaign needs to do as well as Biden.

  Trump hopes to do better than he did last time. Let's look at North Carolina. There's a couple of population centers that we will watch early in the night, Raleigh, Charlotte. Those counties, Wake County and Mecklenburg County, the turnout in those counties are going to be important for Democrats. Heavy turnout there would be good news for Democrats across the state.

• Geoff Bennett:

  So, we talked to you earlier about Pennsylvania. What about the rest of the blue wall, Lisa?

• Lisa Desjardins:

  Yes, the blue wall is critical for Democrats, and it's something that, of course, Republicans want to cut into tonight, as they were able to in 2016.

  Let's look at Michigan. Some place that I will be watching very closely, here's Detroit. Right next to Detroit, we have Washtenaw County. That's Ann Arbor. This is a place that was sort of a hotbed of protest against the Biden administration policy in Gaza and the Middle East. And we have to see if there is a kind of backlash against Kamala Harris there, maybe third-party voting there. So we will watch that carefully.

  Let's talk about Wisconsin, and about the same sort of area of Wisconsin. You have got Milwaukee right here. Want to point out another county right there, sort of a bedroom, suburb, exurb county. That's Waukesha County. And here is another place where we need to watch the margins. It's not just about who wins. This is a Republican county.

  But look at this. Again, this is a place where Biden was able to cut into what Trump did in 2016. The question is, can Trump regain momentum there? Or does — Harris be able to perform as well as Joe Biden?

• Amna Nawaz:

  And, Lisa, we know you're tracking the races that will decide control of the House and the Senate as well. Tonight, tell us about that.

• Lisa Desjardins:

  You know I love some congressional numbers.

  All right, let's talk about the Senate. We start right here with these races that are not even up this year. The Senate, about a third of it is up for reelection every two years. So look at this. Republicans have 38 seats in the bank. Here's where that halfway point is. So they start out with an advantage.

  But here's where we will be watching early as to our question, races like in Ohio with Sherrod Brown, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and then a really key one will be Montana, where Jon Tester is fighting for his life. Those polls close there at 10:00 Eastern time.

  Let's look about the House, so many races to talk about. But we're going to keep track of it all night in part by looking at these eight races that will show us sort of who's up and who's down. Democrats, again, need to pick up about four seats. And we will be watching these that close around 7:00 and these ones that close around 9:00 Eastern just to help us keep track of where we are.

• Amna Nawaz:

  All right, Lisa Desjardins over at the PBS News super screen, where she will be for the rest of the night.

  Lisa, thank you.

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