Races to watch as election night returns come in

Judy Woodruff:

So, meantime, Amna Nawaz and Lisa Desjardins are here tracking key races and important trends.

They join us now for a preview of what to watch tonight.

Amna Nawaz:

That's right, Judy.

Polls are still open across the country here in the 6:00 hour on the East Coast, but, as you mentioned, at stake tonight, the balance of power in the House of Representatives.

Lisa Desjardins:

Yes.

Amna Nawaz:

Lisa, you are tracking these races closely. Give us the state of play.

Lisa Desjardins:

Big night in the history of our country.

Again, we're looking at these 435 House seats. Now, what Democrats are hoping is that they can hold on to almost all of them. Republicans just need to flip five of these blue dots, what are blue now, into red dots tonight. We will be watching all of this and see if the colors do indeed change.

Amna Nawaz:

We will have some early indicators. Polls will begin to close in a number of states, including in Virginia.

This is a key race you're tracking. Tell us why.

Lisa Desjardins:

This is one of those seats that Republicans hope add up to a majority in the House of Representatives for them.

These are the suburbs just outside of Washington, D.C., Alexandria, near where we're standing right now. In addition to the suburbs, there are some rural areas here in Virginia that make this a competitive seat for Republicans, issues here, abortion, suburban women in particular, and also law enforcement, concerns about the crime perhaps and the role of law enforcement big in this district.

This is a place where Republicans believe, if they can win this seat, Virginia Seventh, they will have a good night all night. Let's look at the candidates in this race. You will know what I mean. Republican Democrat Abigail Spanberger is a very strong campaigner. Republicans acknowledge this. This was a race that was not close a few weeks ago. Now it is close. So it's a very good race to watch.

Amna Nawaz:

Democrats hoping to hang on to this seat here.

You are tracking another race over in Ohio. That's Ohio's First Congressional District around Cincinnati.

Lisa Desjardins:

Yes.

Amna Nawaz:

What do we need to know?

Lisa Desjardins:

Come with me down to Cincinnati. Here we go. This is Ohio's First District.

These are dense suburbs. There's really no rural aspects to this district. This is a place where redistricting actually swung it in Democrats' favor. And that made a 25-year Republican congressman vulnerable. We're talking about Republican Steve Chabot. We will see his photo in just a second. He is running against a local city councilman here, Greg Landsman.

Now, this is a rare exception tonight. There are a few races like this not many, though, where a Republican congressman is vulnerable. But this is a place where Democrats want to keep their numbers going and kind of sort of mitigate any kind of wave effect from Republicans — from Democrat — from Republicans.

Amna Nawaz:

There is a major issue you have been tracking very closely of election that denialism.

We know this is the first big test of that issue. Tell us how you're tracking that.

Lisa Desjardins:

We have spent weeks carefully looking at the statements of all of the Republican gubernatorial and secretary of state candidates.

This map shows what we found. These are the dark purple states where you see gubernatorial candidates who have outright denied the 2020 election. And you can see some of these are close races, like Arizona, Wisconsin, neck and neck. These are races we will be talking about all night.

One way, Amna, that we will be tracking this carefully is, we're kind of categorizing that in columns. So we will be able to show this next graphic, where you can see who's winning. These are all of the Republican gubernatorial candidates who we know have denied the 2020 election. Many of these do have some influence, not direct, but influence on the next election. So that's why we're watching this.

We will put check marks by those who win. And these are the defenders. We will be watching those who have defended the legitimacy of the election closely as well. Now, of course, some of these candidates have not said yet if they will concede if they have lost tonight.

So this is one reason that we want to make sure that viewers know it could be a long night. We have some states — in fact, I want to look at three states that we know the counts, just from the processing of the vote usually take longer, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada. What do those three states have in common? Important toss-up races up and down the board.

So we may not know everything we want to tonight, and we may be waiting for results from these states for a while.

Amna Nawaz:

So important to stress that to viewers.

Lisa Desjardins, thank you so much — Judy, back to you.

Judy Woodruff:

And thank you both for getting us kicked off tonight.