should be just pushed to the side until it's actually real in the courts and you only deal with it then? >> such a great question. nerd out a little bit in terms of politics. this is whiee do a lot of research with voters. even the critical race theory bs that is made up in virginia by youngkin, if he wins tonight, people will assume that's going to sweep the republicans to every election victory next year. i hily doubt that. i think you'll find some states and candidates where that won't fly. here's what i know has to happen. if the build back better and infrastructure bill passes, and i think they will, most -- we have seen polling. nobody in america knows what's in it outside of people, so you have to educate them about what's in it, by the way, the billionaires and big companies paying for it, that's more popular than the popular stuff in the bill. story telling along the way, you have to make clear that the republicans opposed all of that. you have to make -- most voters support mask mandates. they have supported vaccination mandates. they support climate change. they support expanding health care. we're winning the issues. the problem is, even when we're getting 60% to 65% of people innishuse, we're losing some of them in head to head races. i think we also have to improve the way we deliver those messages, make it stronger, more guttural, more controversial even. and also don't let them be the only ones playing the culture war. like with josh hawley talking about, oh, these poor men in america, they don't work anymore and they're obsessed with video games and pornography because their masculinity is being challenged. how ridiculous is that? mock these people and be tougher, but understand that newt gingrich is now the rule. that is the rule. >> yeah. >> so if you go to a boxing match, they're going to come in with heavier gloves and a knife in their boot. they're not going to play fair. we have to know that. >> you know your way around that. david plouffe, our special guest on a big night. thank you. that does it for me, ari melber. don't go anywhere. our special coverage with rachel, nicolle, joy, and steve at the big board picks up early right after this. which saved investors over $1.5 billion last year. that's decision tech. only from fidelity. bogeys on your six, limu. they need customized car insurance from liberty mutual so they only pay for what they need. woooooooooooooo... we are not getting you a helicopter. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ feel stuck with student loan debt? ♪ move your student loan debt to sofi. earn a $500 bonus when you refi- and feel what it's like to get your money right. with relapsing forms of ms... there's a lot to deal with. not just unpredictable relapses. all these other things too. it can all add up. kesimpta is a once-monthly at-home injection... that may help you put these rms challenges in their place. kesimpta was proven superior at reducing the rate of relapses, active lesions, and slowing disability progression vs aubagio. don't take kesimpta if you have hepatitis b, and tell your doctor if you have had it, as it could come back. kesimpta can cause serious side effects, including infections. while no cases of pml were reported in rms clinical trials, it could happen. tell your doctor if you had or plan to have vaccines, or if you are or plan to become pregnant. kesimpta may cause a decrease in some types of antibodies. the most common side effects are upper respiratory tract infection, headache, and injection reactions. ready for an at-home treatment with dramatic results? it's time to ask your doctor about kesimpta. in business, setbacks change everything. ready for an at-home treatment with dramatic results? so get comcast business internet and add securityedge. it helps keep your network safe by scanning for threats every 10 minutes. and unlike some cybersecurity options, this helps protect every connected device. yours, your employees' and even your customers'. so you can stay ahead. get started with a great offer and ask how you can add comcast business securityedge. plus for a limited time, ask how to get a $500 prepaid card when you upgrade. call today. happy election night! thank you for being here! this is very exciting. i'm rachel maddow here on the mother ship in new york city, with all that means. i'm joined by my colleagues, joy reid and nicolle wallace. this special occasion putting all three of us into the same room tonight in direct line of sight of our beloved steve kornacki and his big board. because it is election night in the hospital not everywhere. but tonight voters in the state of virginia have gone to the polls to elect a new governor. virginia voters cannot ever re-elect a governor directly. the state prohibits governors from running for consecutive terms. this year, the outgoing democratic governor ralph northam will be replaced by glenn youngkin, the very wealthy head of a famous privacy equity firm called the carlyle group, or they will bring back a previous democratic governor of virginia, democrat terry mcauliffe. mcauliffe led the commonwealth from 2013 to 2017. he is running tonight to get that job back. now, if historical trends and patterns hold sway, republicans should have the edge here, going all the way back to the 1970s. every time a new u.s. president has been elected to the white house, that president's party has gone on the following year to lose the virginia governor's race. so with democrat joe biden winning the presidency for the first time last year, history suggests that the republican candidate, glenn youngkin will win tonight. that said, history doesn't get a vote, virginians do and recent polling has had this race basically tied, well within the margin of most polls. we've had our eyes on other important races tonight, too. new jersey voters will be deciding this evening whether to re-elect their democratic governor, phil murphy. there are also important mayor's races tonight in new york city, in boston, atlanta, minneapolis, and a really, really interesting race in buffalo, new york. we will have more on that to come over the course of the evening tonight. but for now, our first point of focus is on virginia. right now, we are minutes away from the polls closing in that state. again, the democrats hoping to hold on to this governorship in virginia. we'll also be watching the state legislature in virginia tonight. democrats are also trying to hold on to control of the now-democratically controlled house of delegates. there's a lot at stake. jets jump entitle. we turn naturally to the great steve kornacki, who has been marinating in the polls and data and exits now for as long as we've had access to them. steve, what should we expect over the course of the night. how do you think tonight will unfold? >> rachel, here we go. strap yourselves in. the clock you see ticking down inside of six minutes now until polls close in virginia. and then we start getting actual results. so right now, this map is blank. mcauliffe versus youngkin. but based on talking to the county election officials here in virginia, they've been sending signals that this thing could start to light up pretty dramatically, pretty quickly after 7:00. it's kind of a technical explanation, but essentially, virginia has changed some of the procedures for reporting out the vote that should make it much easier to get vote reported out this year. for instance, i'll give you one example right here. this is fairfax county i'm circling. you'll be hearing a lot about fairfax county tonight. it is the biggest county in the state. about one out of every votes in the entire state of virginia will come out of fairfax county. fairfax county is historically one of the latest to report in virginia. back in 2020, a year ago, it was 11:45 p.m. when fairfax reported out the lion's share of their vote. election officials in fairfax believe they'll be reporting out a massive chunk of their vote within minutes of the polls closing at 7:00 tonight. so fairfax is sort of exhibit "a" there, potentially, but a lot of other counties may be a lot quicker in virginia than they were in 2020. one thing that that could change is, historically, the pattern in virginia has been that in this scoreboard, this running tally you see on the screen, historically, republicans get out to an early lead, because historically, it's the rural counties that report first, and we're waiting on the fairfax counties of virginia. but if they have managed to streamline things procedurally, that historical pattern may be different, it may be mcauliffe who gets out to the lead tonight. we will see. that's one thing to keep an eye on. the other thing is talking to the campaigns, talking to democrats and republicans in virginia. the one thing i've heard agreement on from them today is they both believe there has been very high turnout in virginia today. it's funny, you talk to democrats. they are very afraid that republicans have turned out there. voters, you talk to republicans, they are very afraid that democrats have turned out their voters. so we will see if there was a winner in the turnout battle when this board starts lighting up. but before we get the results here, give you a quick sense here, this was the backdrop. this was virginia a year ago. a year ago, the democrats won this state. they won it with ease. joe biden won by ten points. here's what we're looking for very quickly as the results came in tonight. i mentioned fairfax county, the biggest in the state. this is a democratic vote. joe biden won this county by 42 points over donald trump. it is a big reason why biden got that double-digit victory statewide. this is right outside washington, d.c. key question tonight. it's a question in fairfax, it's a question in all of northern virginia. it's a question in the richmond suburbs, as well. these metropolitan areas, but especially in the trump era, moved dramatically away from the republican party. can glenn youngkin, without trump as president anymore, can he make inroads here? let me show you what i mean. trump lost by 42. but if you look at fair farkas county before donald trump came along, this is the last presidential election before donald trump. mitt romney in 2012. romney got blown out here. but you see the margin us with only 20. losing fairfax county by 20 points, if you're a republican, is a world of a difference between winning -- losing it by 42 points, as trump did. this takes you out of the game completely statewide. but if youngkin can win back some of those voters that republicans gave up in the trump era, that could put him in the game statewide. so we want to see if youngkin is making inroads in northern virginia and in the richmond suburbs. the other big question we're asking tonight, kind of circle a big swath of virginia here. southwest virginia. the shenandoah valley. you're seeing core republican areas here. believe it or not, republicans actually got stronger in this part of the state during donald trump's presidency. a lot of these are very small counties, but you add them together, there can be some significant vote there, all added together. let me give an example of this, though. take a look at small allegheny county. donald trump won this by 44 points. look what it was like for republicans here before donald trump came along. they were barely winning. mitt romney only won this county by three. trump won it by 44. so republicans make gains by leaps and bounds in some areas of this state during donald trump's presidency. that's another question tonight. can glenn youngkin, without donald trump as president, can republicans keep those gains that donald trump helped them make? that's the combination that would win tonight for glenn youngkin. inroads in the suburbs, with equal trump enthusiasm in those core southwest shenandoah valley rural areas of the state. that's the balancing act he's been trying to strike as a candidate. that's how you can erase if you're a republican a ten-point gap statewide. again, when this board starts lighting up in a few minutes, you can expect we'll be looking a lot at those areas. hampton roads, the closest thing to a real bellwether in the state. right down here in virginia beach, largest city in the state, 450,000 people. and look at this one. trump won it 2016. it flipped to the democrats. it flipped to joe biden last year. this is a very important county tonight to keep an eye on, and it could be a bellwether. demographically, virginia beach looks an awful lot a lot like the state of virginia. we'll be looking about that as well. >> we're about 30 seconds from the polls closing. the reason we may get some results within a couple of minutes of the polls closing is in part because virginia counties are not just allowed -- they've been directed by voting reforms that they could start preprocessing ballots that came in, absentee ballots that came in ahead of the polls closing right now. isn't that right? >> yeah, and that's the difference, in 2020, they had to wait until the mail was all counted to release the early. they could release the early right away. >> it is now 7:00 p.m. eastern time and the polls have closed in virginia. now, again, at this point, we are expecting that we will get results soon, but while we are looking at polls closing right now at 7:00 eastern, this race is too early to call. not surprising. it's only 20 seconds old. but we'll be watching, as steve said, we'll be watching from counties large and small as they're able to turn around potentially a significant chunk of the vote that's already been cast right away, in part because they're directed by new state laws, state voting reforms that they can start pre-processing ballots, scanning them, getting them ready to count, ready to report right when polls close. right, steve? >> that's right. and we have, you know, potentially here again, fairfax county is a great sample. they said 11:45 and 2020, because they were waiting to get all the mail ballots counted. now they can release big chunks. and again, they've said, take these promises with a grain of salt. election officials sometimes can be too optimistic. but they were talking within minutes of polls closing. we'll see if that comes true here. >> i'll bring into the conversation now my beloved colleagues, nicolle wallace and joy reid. it is great to see you two. >> best thing about being back. >> it is. i'm nervous. i have to say. being all back in the same studio. not that you make me nervous, it's just so different from the way we've all been working right now. but it's election night. and i expect that we are going to see a bunch of virginia numbers right away. i feel like part of what we have to manage tonight both in terms of watching it ourselves and thinking about what viewers at home are seeing, we've all become sort of like junior steve kornackis. we've all become amateur election data counters. you know, in the rural areas, they'll be can counting the absentees. we have all outthought our way through looking at some of this data, i think. >> yeah. look, i just -- i think that's exactly right. and the thing about these nights, you know when you're on a campaign, you're always calling the press to find out what the early exits say. and when you're sitting at these sets, you're calling the campaign to see what their turnouts say. obviously, kornacki will take us through the exits. but two sources inside the mcauliffe campaign are very happy with what they're seeing relative to those numbers. prince george county is 104% of the 2017 pace. earlier in the day, some of those numbers were below 2017. as the day sort of closed, they caught up to a lot of those numbers. the plot twist may be in some of youngkin's choices in terms of where he closed his campaign in loudoun county, he's hoping to squeeze some of those -- he's hoping to shrink some of those democratic margins in the kinds of places that steve keeps drawing our attention to that, that biden won, running away. i think just to reinforce the fact that it's going to be a long and perhaps white-knuckle night. >> and the mcauliffe campaign, they are correlating high turnout with bettering their chances. >> they're saying that the 2017 turnout numbers, they've exceeded them in all the democratic counties, in all the places that they needed to. they're seeing some of the republican counties underneath the 2017 pace. >> oh, okay. >> i think, though, we have to watch that comes in as the night goes on, because of the choices youngkin made. he was campaigning yesterday in loudoun. he's hoping to shrink some of that. so the turnout numbers in democratic counties don't, at this point -- we don't know yet if that's all democratic vote. >> exactly. >> and that is why i cannot count myself as a miniature steve kornacki, because i'm completely confused. this is the first time in watching politics in really long time that i don't really know what the numbers mean. focus i'm texting with from the campaign, at first, were a little bit down. they were not super enthusiastic in their texts, well, the numbers look up, it's close, it's going to be close, it's going to be close. then they got happier when they started seeing african-american areas, and it's back to, will the black voters sort of save the party? but the challenge here is on white voters. i don't know what it means when you see what is a typically democratic county with high turnout. because is -- how many voters are in that county who are suburban white voters, who normally democrats could count on when they see high turnout in that county and say, aha, that's my voter. who maybe back in the day voted for doug wilder or donald trump, but who are sick and tired of hearing the race conversation. they don't want -- they don't like living in this post-trump era, what we're talking about, white nationalism and january 6th and charlottesville horrified them, but they're over it. and they don't like the idea that the 1619 project will be taught in schools. they're kind of a both/and voter. maybe they also want to see a vaccine mandate, but the race stuff is so potent in american politics, it always has been, lee atwater knew it, ronald reagan played that game with welfare reform. it is such a powerful argument for people who are not traditionally right-wing voters, but that it gets at an emotional toll that people feel that talking about race takes on them. and they -- that means they're available to the republicans. >> do you think that the race, the way that youngkin harped on race so much as his closing message is potentially motivating to black voters and to anti-racist voters. did he overplay that hand in a way that may have turned out people in reaction to it? >> i think he was being subtle and being really tricky and slick until he dropped that tony morrison ad. the tony morrison ad might have been -- he might have gone -- that might have been the point at which he went too far. a lot of the people that heard the ad -- that were maybe his maybe voters, maybe didn't even know who tony morrison was. but i promise you black people know who tony morrison was. she's the reason i wanted to be a writer. this is someone who is beloved among black people. and particularly for people who say education is important, that's why that question -- i don't know what it means. if you're saying education is the most important issue, you might be a black voter who says, i'm defending great literature and defending tony morrison. and i don't like the idea that youngkin wants to be a governor that would purge those books. what's next? the biography of dr. king? is e.b. dubois next. dr. king said america might go to hell. are we going to erase his robust commentary? he took that so far, he probably animated some african-american voters, too. >> i guess i don't want to be the skunk at the garden party, but i think there's a sense among republicans that what youngkin did was, where trump ron as a guy who wasn't going to -- who was going to ban all muslims, who mexicans were rapists and murderers, black people came from bleep hole countries. he was such an uncouth and flagrant, debased -- there was no conversation about race under him. it was underneath people who said they voted for him. what youngkin has done, he put it in a disguise, gave it a fake name, and his candidacy is wrapped in two big lies. one is this half truth. i flew an insurrection flag at my rally. oh, trump's at arm's length, there's trump. and the second big lie is his -- i watched his rally last saturday. his campaign promise, and he was makinging this promise in loudoun and in alexandria, is on day one, i'm going to ban critical race theory. that is like us banning the ghosts. there are no ghosts. so we can say, you know what, 7:00 p.m., we're banning the ghosts. there are no ghosts. there isn't critical race theory, but he's laundered trump's really sort of disgusting, flagrant outracism, he's wrapped it in education and given it a lie as a label and he said he's going to ban it. there is no critical race theory. it's a legal theory not taught in virginia public school. >> it's so powerful. because it takes the exhausted voter who wants to vote on what is fundamentally a racist idea, right? that you cannot teach the truth about thomas jefferson. if you even talk about enslavement, that's critical race theory. anything that makes a white parent uncomfortable is critical race theory. and he's been very subtle and very slick. that tony morrison ad was too much of a blunt hammer. but everything he did up until then, i totally agree with you. he's found a way to launder a pretty racist trope. this idea that we cannot talk about america's history, because it hurts my feelings. he's turned that into a campaign. and i think what democrats have to worry about is if he succeeds, and he wins, that is going to be the campaign model for every single republican that's running in 2020. >> well, i think, even if youngkin comes close and doesn't win, it still will be. >> correct. >> to have the fox news channel, our friends at the fox news channel building their programming, particularly the prime-time programming around this for months, they're building a campaign platform for conservative candidates to run on it everywhere. even though it's not actually taught anywhere. even though it's not a real thing. there's nothing you could pay for in any campaign that would equal the kind of free help you'd get from that kind of conservative media, just fire hose on the issue. >> and it's the same -- to your point, it's the same play they reason. if you own a bakery or a deli, you'll have to run -- they run this play every cycle. they did it with the wedding cakes. they'll have to be eight bathrooms if you own a small restaurant. they take something that isn't real and they make a potent issue. i think the question after tonight, i talked to jamie harrison today on my show. the question for democrats will be almost rumsfeldian, do you go on the campaign trail with folks that you know, that they lie, that they have a propaganda network that reaches more candidates -- do you adjust with this barely veiled dog whistle race stuff or keep trying to fight on policy. >> this is the problem with democrats. they want to do the latter. >> i know. >> they seem to believe if they just do goo-goo good-government policy, somehow people will understand that it's better for them. it's better for you to be with us because we'll give you this policy, this policy, this policy. while republicans are fighting with a sledge hammer. they're using a blow torch and democrats are coming out with a fork. and it may sound mean, but the democratic party has not developed the reflex of defending black voters. they don't know how to do it. even though african-american voters overwhelmingly -- and brown voters and all voters who are in a minority, they don't know how to openly defend them, because they're so afraid of offendering that suburban white voter who might be uncomfortable on race and so desperate to get back -- to be able to win white voters again, they don't have the reflex and truly don't have the language to robustly defend their core voter. they haven't been able to defend them on civil rights legislation, they've dropped -- they prefer to just drop the entire attempt to pass voting rights. and on critical race theory, you have to come back with something and have an answer. they haven't figured out how to answer this racist charge. >> there is another way in which it cuts back at them, though, right? because there's -- for the voter who, as you're saying, joy, the voter who's exhausted and the voter who wants the temperature to come down and the voter who just wants things to get more rational and less dangerous, when you're talking about caring about education, maybe one of the things you care about is school board members not being screamed at and threatened and doxed and having their families threatened and all of these things, which has come with the fearmongering around what's happening in schools. whether it's about vaccines, whether it's about masks, whether it's about this made-up stuff about racial indoctrination. the way it's played out on the ground, including in virginia, is by teachers, school administrators and school board members being put in the bull's-eye and those threats against people who are public servants and who are trying to provide basic services to our kids and families, that is also a form of toxicity that i think the exhausted voter, black, white, and other, does -- there's a resonance there as well. >> for democrats to really fight that, they would have to be willing to say what you have said on your show, i think we've all said a version of it, you have to be willing to vocalize that these republicans are dangerous. that this isn't a party that's just another political party that disagrees with us on tax policy. that at this point, they're dangerous. they're dangerous to our national security, because stoking that kind of soft white nationalism eventually leads to the hard-core stuff. it leads to the january 6th stuff, because if people are tolerant of it in your porter, they're tolerant of the soft racism, it's a really short trip to get to the january 6th insurrectionist play. >> although, that's what -- mcauliffe has tried to do that, though. by mcauliffe trying to hang trump around youngkin's neck, and youngkin trying to do this arm's length thick. that's what mcauliffe has been trying to do -- >> and obama did it very effectively. that was obama's message and it sort of -- i think that in a lot of ways was one of the more effective closing messages -- i heard a little eep. and i think that means that we've got -- steve eeped. does that mean that we have some first data? >> we have our first votes in, and i stress, this is about 2,000 votes. but we now do have vote coming in a little bit after ten minutes after 7:00. what you're seeing here is from chesterfield county. this is a good opportunity to talk about the importance of this county. this is going to be a big one tonight. in the suburbs of richmond, just south of richmond. this is mcauliffe with about 2,000 votes here. you can't read anything into this small amount, but keep an eye on chesterfield tonight. because let me show you, the trend in chesterfield, joe biden won this county by about six and a half points last year. this is one of those counties, trump actually narrowly won it in '16 and romney in 2012 actually won this by eight points. so this is one of those, it went from romney by a comfortable margin to trump narrowly to a democratic comfortable margin in 2020. this is a suburban county. it's been migrating away from the democrats and that took off in the trump era. this is one of the counties tonight, i think, the youngkin folks, if they aren't winning chesterfield back tonight, that's going to be a very bad sign for youngkin's campaign. this is exactly the kind of place where his message around education was designed to resonate. this is exactly the kind of place when you look at the suburban areas where the votes are in the suburbs and the d.c. metro area, in the richmond metro area, this is exactly the kind of place where you come looking for votes if you're youngkin. this is just a sliver -- and here we go, we're starting to get a little more lighting up here. this is an interesting -- let's zoom back out to statewide here. we're getting scattered amounts. this is buchanan county. it borders west virginia and kentucky. the only one in the state to do that. this has been a wild political journey for this county the other way. take a look at what's been happening here over the last couple elections. back to 2012, mitt romney was winning this by 34 points. by the end of the trump presidency, republicans were winning this by nearly 70 points. i showed you an example with allegheny county, another small county, this is another one of these southwest virginia counties, small rural counties where trump really built up the democratic margin. and the question coming into tonight, one of the questions has been, can youngkin sustain trump levels of support in southwest virginia. trump got 83.5% here last year. as we get more in buchanan county, let's look at that. let's work our way up to bath county here. and we're just getting a small smattering in, but the point i want to make here, again, we are in the heart of what was trump country. what you would call trump surge country in virginia. it's a strongly republican area that got much more republican under donald trump. the question again for youngkin, is he hitting that trump number in this part of the state? let's see what else is coming in. this looks like culpepper is starting to come in. culpepper, you're one rung removed from the immediate washington, d.c. area. culpepper is an interesting county. take a look here. trump won this thing by about 20 points. this is one of those places where youngkin really wants to expand on that trump margin. this is a small amount that's coming in right now in culpepper county. and i'm going to ask my producer, adam, do we know, is this the same-day -- are we getting same-day vote in culpepper? that's the other key point to make here. what you see here is the vote starting to come in culpepper. youngkin at 80%. trump got 60%. what you're looking at right now, this is from -- and this is another important thing to keep in mind as the votes come in tonight. there are different batches of votes that are going to behave very differently. so you've got the mail-in vote, the vote-by-mail ballots. that's going to be the most pro-mcauliffe. the most democratic. the early vote. that probably going to be pro-mcauliffe, but not muches as much as the mail. and the same-day, the people that went out and voted today. this is same-day vote. that's the most republican friendly. that's the most youngkin friendly. so he wants to be running significantly ahead of trump in that particular type of vote. when they all get added in and we get a final result in culpepper tonight, if you're youngkin, you probably want to be running above 65% in this county. so you want to be running if you're youngkin five points or more above trump's performance in any given county. this is the kind of county, there are some demographic ingredients here if your youngkin, you want to do a little bit better than that. that's an example there in culpepper. what else is starting to come in. reset with the statewide total. it's skewed right there. it is that -- we talked about it, the traditional model in virginia has been rural areas, republican areas reporting first. in the first 7,000 or so votes we're getting statewide, that is the case. you're getting these more from republican -- this is richmond county, not the city of richmond, richmond county. donald trump won this thing, got 62% of the vote last year. you're looking at same-day vote. if you're youngkin, when everything gets added together tonight, you want to be at 67% of the vote. this is the most pro-youngkin batch of votes you'll get tonight. so when everything comes in from richmond county, is he as 67%. we are in southwest virginia, the heart of trump surge territory in the state of virginia. trump got nearly 80% of the vote here. i believe we can put this up on the screen. okay, that is election day vote. that is the same thing i'm talking about, it's the election day vote that's the most republican. so right now, we're getting the election day vote in. this is southwest virginia, the heart of the trump surge in virginia. and when this number comes down -- when everything gets factored in in a place like wythe county, you want to hit that trump number. we have brunswick county. this is interesting. we're getting into -- if you get into south side virginia, here you come west a little bit of the fall line, get into south side virginia, this is where there's a larger african-american population you can see in brunswick county, joe biden won this county by 15 points. again, getting a few of the same-day votes in here, but this is one of those tests we'll be looking at tonight. we talk about the importance of the black vote to democrats this is the kind of county if you're mcauliffe, you want to be matching that biden number and getting close to that biden number if you can. if you can excite and energize african-american support, you can do well here. we're talking about a small number of votes. radford is giving us something. this is radford university, the city of radfort. this is an area that donald trump was more competitive it in when it comes to cities. he didn't actually win it, but you're looking at same-day vote in the city radford. when you factor in the mail-in ballots, if you're youngkin, you want to be winning radford at the end of the night. you want to get a win here. trump got 44. you want to be over 50. we'll see how things shake out when we get all of the vote in. i'm seeing if anything else has come in. doesn't like it has. there is one more there in wise. we've actually got -- i'm sorry, this is tiny, but this is the first county where it looks like we've got the vote in. i do just want to show you, far southwest virginia, remember what we say, trump surge. the question is, can youngkin hit the trump number? in little wise county, althoughtha 99% doesn't seem -- i want to check if that's a computation no error. there should be more votes than that. but youngkin, mostly small rural counties, mostly same-day votes that are coming in. those are some of the trends we're looking for. and i talked to the election officials in the big counties in virginia. some of them were emphatic that they were going to have their early vote out there, their mail vote out potentially in this first 15 to 20 minutes. not the first time we've gotten a promise like that from election officials that hasn't exactly panned out. >> steve, one clarifying question. you're talking about how counties are reporting different types of votes. is every county going to be explicit about which type of vote they are announcing, with every county. will we be able to disambiguate that? >> and unfortunately, we had a little thing set up here that was designed to display that for you. it sounds like there's a glitch with it. the big change that was made in virginia after 2020, they asked every county, the state told every county, we want you basically to organize your vote so that you are explicitly reporting out the mail vote, you're going to assign a precinct to report the mail vote, to report the early vote, to report the same-day vote by precinct. they all should be separated in every county. the state, going through the state's website, you should be getting it that way, and we are getting it that way now. so we didn't have a record of that in 2020. they didn't report it out that specifically. we only had estimates here of how that vote might have broken out in 2020. tonight, we're going to have exact numbers. we're also getting a ton in all of a sudden. let's just take a look here. we've suddenly got over 100,000 votes in statewide. now you see that count has tightened a little bit. right outside of washington, d.c., this is one of the core democratic counties in the state. this is arlington county. it's geographically small, but this produces -- joe biden got 80.6% of the vote here last year. and since this isn't quite functional yet, adam, do you know what type of vote we're looking at in arlington county here? this is key. this looks like we're getting the early vote reported out in arlington county. and i do have a point of comparison here for 2020. the absentee early vote -- okay. it was 85% for joe biden. the early absentee vote in 2020 was 85% and it looks like mcauliffe is running a couple points behind that. again, there was a ten-point cushion in the state for democrats. biden beat trump by ten points. mcauliffe can afford some slippage tonight from where trump ran in this state. so in arlington county, he ends up two to three points behind where biden ran, that one good news for terry mcauliffe. this is just one of those core vote-producing areas for democrats. this is the city of fairfax county. inside fairfax county is fairfax city. fairfax city is much smaller than fairfax county. they do tend to vote similarly. the vote in fairfax city was similar to fairfax county. i'll show you the 2020 result in fairfax city. biden won this 68-30 over trump. fairfax county was almost 70% for joe biden. let's pay attention, if we get fairfax city before fairfax county, you want to see how far under that number is. if mcauliffe falls more than five points or so behind the biden number in a place like this, that would not portend well for him in some of these other areas of northern virginia, areas that youngkin has targeted to try to make inroads. let's keep an eye as we get more in here in fairfax county. prince william, a small amount coming in. this is another one of these big, densely populated, right outside of washington, d.c., counties. joe biden was winning here with 63% of the vote in 2020. take a look at manassas, which is inside of the county. they've got these independent cities. take a look at manassas in 2020. biden was at 61%. mcauliffe right now with what we have is running at 62%. just take a look, reset to the same day. youngkin continuing to lead. the big mother lode of votes here in northern virginia is fairfax. loudoun county is right next door. we don't from anything from there yet. keep watching here as this comes in. >> we'll step away just for a second as this vote is starting to sort of pour in to give steve a chance to catch up with what is coming in. we'll take a quick break and be back right on the other side of this. stay with us. is stay with us this... is the planning effect. this is how it feels to have a dedicated fidelity advisor looking at your full financial picture. this is what it's like to have a comprehensive wealth plan with tax-smart investing strategies designed to help you keep more of what you earn. and set aside more for things like healthcare, or whatever comes down the road. this is "the planning effect" from fidelity. as a dj, i know all about customization. or whatever comes down the road. that's why i love liberty mutual. they customize my car insurance, so i only pay for what i need. how about a throwback? you got it. ♪ liberty, liberty - liberty, liberty ♪ uh, i'll settle for something i can dance to. ♪ liberty, liberty, liberty, liberty ♪ ♪ ♪ only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty, liberty, liberty, liberty ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ downy's been taking you back, since way back. with freshness and softness you never forget. feel the difference with downy. with schizophrenia, i see progress differently. it's in the small things i look forward to. with the people i want to share it with. it's doing my best to follow through. it's the little signs that make me feel like things could be better. signs that make it feel like real progress. caplyta effectively treats adults with schizophrenia. and it's just one pill, once a day, with no titration. caplyta can cause serious side effects. elderly dementia patients have increased risk of death or stroke. call your doctor about fever, stiff muscles or confusion, which can mean a life-threatening reaction or uncontrollable muscle movements which may be permanent. dizziness upon standing, falls, and impaired judgment may occur. most common side effects include sleepiness and dry mouth. high cholesterol and weight gain may occur, as can high blood sugar which may be fatal. in clinical trials, weight, cholesterol and blood sugar changes were similar to placebo. if you're affected by schizophrenia, ask your doctor about caplyta from intra-cellular therapies. it's another day. ask your doctor about caplyta and anything could happen. it could be the day you welcome 1,200 guests and all their devices. or it could be the day there's a cyberthreat. only comcast business' secure network solutions give you the power of sd-wan and advanced security integrated on our activecore platform so you can control your network from anywhere, anytime. it's network management redefined. every day in business is a big day. we'll keep you ready for what's next. comcast business powering possibilities. welcome back to our election night coverage here on msnbc. we are closely watching the first returns come in in the very, very tight virginia governor's race. i say it's tight because the polls were tighter than a tick heading into polls closing tonight just about half an hour ago. since then, the race is too early to call, but we are still seeing significant numbers of results coming in from counties across the state. i will tell you that one very, very closely watched democratic-leaning county in the northern part of the state of virginia has made some news. "the new york times" reporting, nbc news has not confirmed this, but reid epstein at "the new york times" is reporting that fairfax county in northern virginia is delayed in reporting its early vote ballots. now, we don't know when we are expecting those ballots to be counted, but it will not be by the self-imposed 8:00 p.m. deadline. we've been talking about this a little bit with steve kornacki over the course of the evening thus far that some of the voting reforms passed in virginia over the past couple of years directed localities to start pre-processing early votes seven days before election day. meaning, they've had six or seven weeks of early voting in virginia already. seven days before tonight, in the -- a week ago, counties could start pre-processing those ballots. and a lot of counties sort of projected, predicted, promised that that would mean that they would be able to report a significant number of those early votes, right when the polls closed. if this "new york times" reporting is borne out this evening, fairfax county will not be among the counties that is reporting its early vote right away. we don't know the reason for the delay, but fairfax county is a bank for democratic voters and so this will be significant in the way the contours of the race june fold over the course of the evening. back to steve kornacki, whose board slighting up over there. we are still too early to call statewide, but what are we learning? >> we're starting to get some very significant vote here. this is 2021. this is the lieutenant governor. here we go. 2020 -- i am sorry. this board has been acting up like crazy here. this is what i was trying to get for you. glenn youngkin, leading in this sort of scattered vote that we have right now. as you mentioned fairfax county, we thought we would be getting a ton there early. we're getting nothing. we are getting a chunk here next-door in loudoun county. we've talked so much about loudoun county, d.c. metro area. the area here where joe biden really surged in 2020, where democrats have had such great success during the trump presidency. how much could youngkin improve? let's show you here. how much in a place like loudoun county with that message on education could glenn youngkin improve over donald trump? you see almost half the vote right now is in in loudoun county. and you can see youngkin is running at 45%. i'm just going to use my little cheat sheet here, what i'm looking at here is a fair amount of the early and the absentee vote in loudoun county. and i'm just looking back here and see if we can grab this here. so it looks like, yeah, about 85,000 left to come here in loudoun county, the question here, there still is more early absentee, i believe, to come, so the question here, you know, for loupden is can -- for youngkin is, can he sustain this level of support in loudoun county as the rest of the vote comes in here. because this is absolutely about 45%. if youngkin could walk away in a place like loudoun with 45%, that's definitely meeting or exceeding the republicans' goals in a place like that. the goal is not to win a county like loudoun county. the goal is to erase as much of that trump deficit as you can. if you can take a 25-point loss for donald trump&cut it down to ten points, you're putting yourself in a much better position than to rack up votes in core republican areas and make ate game statewide. let's see, as the rest of the vote comes in there, we've got a little bit less in the rest of loudoun county, let's see if youngkin can sustain that and stay within ten points of terry mcauliffe. again, we're just starting to get vote in here. prince william county, this is about the same size as loudoun. you're just outside of washington, d.c. here. this also a core biden county last year. this is a much smaller share of the vote here. again, we just want to see, as we get more vote, more different types of vote here, but again for youngkin, can he crack 40%. ever, can he get somewhere around there in a prince william county. this looks like we're getting montgomery county. and i wanted to check in. this is where virginia tech is. this is one of the bigger counties, about 100,000 people here in southwest virginia. a county that joe biden won. we don't have many votes there. we just saw it light up. we're also just getting, this is right around charlottesville, albemarle county, charlottesville, is that little independent county in the middle. i was wondering if we were getting significant vote there. we are not a lot of small reports coming in. i'll check one more. this is a little more significant. just take you through quickly, this is richmond suburbs, just north of richmond. this is henrico county, in 2020 in henrico county, joe biden cleaned donald trump's clock here. he won by 20 points. this has been a democratic county for some time, henrico county. it's a big one. this has been a democratic county for some time, but if you went back to 2012, that's the last time republicans feel that a presidential candidate who wasn't donald trump. republicans only lost here by 12 points. you can see how much ground they lost in henrico county. here's trump losing by nearly 30. we're only getting a quarter of the vote in here right now, but if you're glenn youngkin, can you get anywhere near -- if you could cut that 30 in half, cut it down to 15, that would be terrific news if you're glenn youngkin, if you're a republican. but again, i believe we have mail vote to come here in henrico county. that mcauliffe number could go up. but keep that in mind if you look at the numbers and the rest of the vote come in in henrico county. is youngkin above 40? the more he can get above 40 in a place like henrico county, that's a good night for him. if he can get a couple points over 40 there. let's just check in what's coming in so far. you see the statewide total. as you said, we got nothing from fairfax county. that's the mother load. one out of every seven votes in virginia tonight is going to come out of that county. i'll light it up for you. fairfax county. we've got nothing from there so far. core democratic county, you're starting to see trump country down here in southwest virginia. that's starting to fill in here. a lot of other trump-friendly rural counties here, lighting up red again tonight. that's why youngkin is out to this lead. but it's still very much a smattering of votes. we're looking for but don't really have completed counties to give you a comparison to 2020. giving you a sense of what we're looking for as the vote fills in. virginia beach, this is the closest thing there is to a bellwether county or city. a small amount of the vote in right now. here's glenn youngkin, up 20 with the tally we have. this is a city that jihadi joed whon by more than five points. it's a city that biden flipped from donald trump. there's about 450,000 people here. this is the biggest city in virginia. glenn youngkin, this is one he wants to win. this is one he wants get up to probably to 52% or so tonight. that's probably the youngkin campaign's goal in virginia beach. win it and get a pad in virginia beach. youngkin friendly vote. let's see when everything gets factored in virginia beach by the end of tonight, can he keep that a few points above 50? this is the city of which is pique. there's a couple hundred of thousands people in chesapeake, very similar to virginia beach. it was won by joe biden in 2020, after going for donald trump in 2016. again, youngkin, when you get to the end of the night, is he 52, 53%. a scattering of vote there right now. there's a lot of scattered precincts reporting out there same day vote. where you're seeing same-day vote anywhere, that's the most youngkin-friendly type of votes. still big areas here where there's nothing or very little from. and just keeping an eye on this. >> steve, just to sort of bring together all of these things that you're saying. it seems to me like if i had a choice right now behind the veil of ignorance to be either terry mcauliffe or glenn youngkin, i would rather be glenn youngkin. although nothing is determinative, nothing is defined, nothing is decided, it's all still too early to call, but from the numbers we're seeing, nothing is bad numbers from youngkin. >> however, as i say, a lot of this is same-day vote. and i can't emphasize enough the difference between the same-day vote goes. it's the most pro-republican you're going to see. in 2020, let's take fairfax county, the big one that we're all waiting on here. so in fairfax county, and remember in 2020, they didn't officially report this out by method, but here's what we can glean from the results in 2020 in fairfax county. i want to take one look here to make sure i got this right. in the absentee vote in fairfax county, that is to say the main maile vote plus the in-person early vote in fairfax county in 2020, joe biden won that type of vote by 57 points. that's a 7 right there. won by 57 points. in the same-day, the election day vote in fairfax county, that was won by joe biden by 7 points. so a 50-point difference. again, we saw this in so many states in 2020. in this area of mail voting and early voting, different methods, there is there's a strong preference democrats seem to have to vote by mail. republicans seem to have a much stronger preference, for whatever reason, to vote on lech. so it's so critical here and it looks like we've got some fairfax in. it's so critical here to see the type of vote. and it looks like -- so -- okay, here we go. we just got as i was speaking in fairfax county, it looks like a third of the vote came in here in fairfax. this is 74% for mcauliffe. and i wanted to see -- right, this is -- and let me see if we actually were able to break this out by type. this thing has been funky tonight. it's not actually working the way i had hoped it would. but let's see if i can get back to this. at 74%, that's in line with what i was just telling you. remember, trump won the absentee vote in this county by 7 points last time around. here, the difference is about 48. youngkin is within 48 right now, trump lost by 57. i believe what you're seeing here is just the early vote. there is still just based on the numbers that we have here, there's still a chunk of mail-in votes that need to come in here to fill out the absentee. so what i expect would happen is, i believe this is the early vote. there's a smaller chunk of mail-in votes that you would need to also add into this that, again, fairfax told us they would report early. let's see if they do. when you add that in, this mcauliffe number would go up, i believe. then you would have all of your absentee vote, and then just a question of the same-day vote -- to answer your question, i'm throwing all sorts of numbers and terms out here. but to answer your question, when i'm looking at these numbers right now, it's not at all clear to me, despite the fact that mcauliffe is running at 73.7 right now, it's not at all clear to me that youngkin is in any better shape than trump is in a place like fairfax or statewide. bec completed counties here. >> the decision desk just changed its characterization of this race, which is an important change. it was too early to call, it is now considered to be too close to call. with that tranche of vote that we just got in from fairfax county, which steve was just going through, you will note overall -- oh, it's changed back again. we went -- youngkin had been ahead overall in virginia in terms of the amount of vote that we had in, then mcauliffe had shifted to being ahead when we got that first tranche of vote in from fairfax county. now with 25% of the vote in, youngkin appears to be back out ahead in the lead. but the characterization of this race at the decision desk has changed from too early to too close. we'll give steve a chance to catch up. let's go to claire mccaskill. i know you've been making calls and hearing from people inside the mcauliffe campaign about how they're feeling and what they thought about the turnout. >> they thought the turnout was strong. there was a few hundred thousand people who voted early in 2017. they had over a million that voted early. it doesn't look like they'll end up with over two-thirds of the vote will be election day map. it's a thing that played in my head over and over again in rural missouri. margins matter in areas that you don't win. how badly you lose makes real difference. there's no question these culture wars have really worked in southwest virginia. and those numbers down there are pretty bleak. and they're little counties, but they add up when the margins are so great. and make no mistake, mcauliffe is trying to fight history here. because even when obama won big in 2008, a republican got elected governor in virginia the next year. >> that's right. and that's been the pattern in virginia all the way back to the 1970s, everybody time we've had a newly elected president, the party from the other -- the other party's gubernatorial candidate wins in virginia the follow year. claire, we'll be back with you in just a moment. i know that steve has just gotten in, i think, completed vote counts from certain counties, steve? >> this is the key. like we're saying, there's just these different types of votes and you're only getting partial in each county. we can't start to get a picture of this until we get completed counties and we say, how does that compare to last time around. how does that change? we are starting to get a few. let me show you what we got. i introduced this at the start. we're very small -- we're not completed here. i'm sorry, i was told that we were completed here. bland county, it looks like we are completed. this is a very similar story to what i'm talking about. very small, rural, southwest virginia area where donald trump really drove that republican number up. question coming into tonight for glenn youngkin, could he be reaching the trump level of support in this region? you can see certainly one county we're getting in here. youngkin has matched and slightly even exceeded the trump number here. so, again, there's a lot of small counties like this all throughout southwest virginia, in the shenandoah valley. let's see if this is replicat ed elsewhere. we also mentioned this one earlier, brunswick county. and again, you're getting just a little bit, west of the fall line here. this looks like it's completed, too, mcauliffe winning this by about five points over glenn youngkin. we put this up a minute ago, compare that to 2020. that's a drop of five points, mcauliffe versus biden. again, there's a large african-american population right here. if you're mcauliffe, you can probably afford statewide about five points of slippage give or taker from joe biden's 2020 number. remember, joe biden, 54, donald trump, 44. you could probably lose about five points and still potentially eke out a victory. if you're the mcauliffe campaign, this is right on the line of what you want to be seeing. you don't want to see any worse than this. you could potentially get by with getting 52% in brunswick county. i also believe, now, getting into northern virginia here, this is the city of manassas, and it looks like you've got completed vote in manassas. again, northern virginia, core democratic area. and you see here, terry mcauliffe, 50 -- this is a ten-point margin. basically round it to 55/45. here you go, biden -- this is slippage now of a little bit more than six points. this is about six and a half points slippage for mcauliffe relative to the biden number. so this is, you know, these numbers can vary by county if you're mcauliffe. you can get by if you can make up for it in some places with a number like this, but this is not a great number in this one place if you're terry mcauliffe. let's see if that's replicated elsewhere. but again, if you're youngkin, you want to be gaining five or six points over trump in northern virginia. that's a small independent city that's within prince william county. we want to see -- i'm just seeing if we've got anymore that's come in in the big ones here. we've got a bunch now in loudoun county. check that out. so looks like about three quarters, a little bit more than three quarters of the vote is in in loudoun county right now. i'm tempting fay faith by pressing this, but let me see if i've got our breakdown here. we've got the -- let me just confirm this. adam, is this correct? this is the -- okay, it's -- we've got to confirm the vote type. we've had all sorts of glitches with that tonight. but i can tell you this, this is about three quarters of the vote in loudoun county that's in right now. again, this is a large county. we're talking more than 400,000 people and this is the point of comparison for loudoun county. biden biden by 25 last time around. youngkin, his rally last night was held in louden county. he believed education would resonate for him. in he could finish anywhere near this, this would be a massive, massive positive sign for youngkin. the question is, that outstanding 23% of the vote in loudoun county. if it's the mail vote. that's the most pro mcauliffe, most democratic, mail vote is dramatically -- if it's the mail, it could come up differently. we are trying to find out what's missing in loudoun county. we are at more than three-quarters of the vote. it's a critical question what type of vote remains. if youngkin is able to finish where he is, that is more than his campaign was hoping for. again, if that were to get knocked down three or four points, it would be more in line with what the mcauliffe campaign was hoping for. we will try to get clarity. we have three-quarters in. see if we can get completed vote shortly. reset statewide, a little more than a quarter of the vote. >> while we watch those results come in, i want to bring in senator mark warner, former -- u.s. senator from virginia, former virginia governor. senator warner, it's a pleasure to have you with us tonight. thanks for being here. >> thank you, rachel. it's another exciting night in virginia. >> it's always an exciting night in virginia. the country is always watching in these off year elections because virginia sort of stands alone, alongside new jersey, in terms of having one of the big statewide races. you are at mcauliffe headquarters and watching these things come in as we do. how confident are you that your colleague, mr. mcauliffe, will pull this out tonight? it looks like it's going to be very, very close if he does. >> it's going to be close. i felt very good about the fact that we got our early vote up to 1.2 million votes beforehand. that's probably going to break 60/40 for terry. that's one of the things expanding voting rights that could be in jeopardy if his opponent is successful. i point out to our viewers, we report kind of strangely in virginia. last year, when i won the state, ran ahead of president biden, won by over 500,000 votes, it wasn't until 10:30 that i actually went ahead. i would say to your viewers, particularly those who want terry to win, chill out a little bit. grab a beer. get a pizza. whatever is your beverage or food of choice on election night and settle in. we will have a long evening. >> i endorse the beer and pizza prescription for everybody who is watching. senator, do you think that the beltway press has been right to look at this race as a referendum on national politics, a referendum on president biden, on how you and your democratic colleagues are going as far as washington? is this a race that we should extrapolate to national narratives? is this something that's really specific to virginia? >> rachel, are you suggesting that maybe the national press sometimes overstates the case? clearly, you know, there's gambling in this establishment. candidly, as somebody who wants the president to succeed, i wish we would have passed the infrastructure deal two months ago. that would have given the president a big win and would have helped here in virginia. that being said, we will get them both done. we will get infrastructure done, i hope this week. we are going to get the second half that deals with childcare, climate, lowering prescription prices. i'm up to my eyeballs in the details on that. we will get that done. timing-wise, if we had got infrastructure done earlier -- we got it done in the senate in july. we are where we are. >> senator mark warner of virginia from mcauliffe headquarters where everybody is watching the results as they come in. sir, thank you for your time tonight. i appreciate you making the time. >> thanks so much, rachel. >> we are in the thick of these as results are coming in. we will take a quick break. i can tell you that when we come back, we have a poll closing in new jersey which is the other governor's race tonight. polls close in new jersey in five minutes from now. we will have those results as soon as they come in as well as this too close to call race in virginia. we will watch until the cows come home. stay with us. hi, my name is cherrie. i'm 76 and i live on the oregon coast. my husband, sam, we've been married 53 years. we love to walk on the beach. i have two daughters and then two granddaughters. i noticed that memories were not there like they were when i was much younger. since taking prevagen, my memory has gotten better and it's like the puzzle pieces have all been [click] put together. prevagen. healthier brain. better life. wealth is breaking ground on your biggest project yet. worth is giving the people who build it a solid foundation. wealth is shutting down the office for mike's retirement party. worth is giving the employee who spent half his life with you, the party of a lifetime. wealth is watching your business grow. worth is watching your employees grow with it. principal. for all it's worth. ♪♪ thousands of women with metastatic breast cancer are living in the moment and taking ibrance. ibrance with an aromatase inhibitor is for postmenopausal women or for men with hr+, her2- metastatic breast cancer as the first hormonal based therapy. ibrance plus letrozole significantly delayed disease progression versus letrozole. ibrance may cause low white blood cell counts that may lead to serious infections. ibrance may cause severe inflammation of the lungs. both of these can lead to death. tell your doctor if you have new or worsening chest pain, cough, or trouble breathing. before taking ibrance, tell your doctor if you have fever, chills, or other signs of infection, liver or kidney problems, are or plan to become pregnant, or are breastfeeding. for more information about side effects talk to your doctor. ♪♪ be in your moment. ask your doctor about ibrance. discover card i just got my cashback match is this for real? yup! we match all the cash back new card members earn at the end of their first year automatically woo! i got my mo-ney! it's hard to contain yourself isn't it? uh- huh! well let it go! woooo! get a dollar for dollar match at the end of your first year. only from discover. i booked our hotel on kayak. it's flexible if we need to cancel. cancel. i haven't left the house in a year. nothing will stop me from vacation. no canceling. flexible cancellation. kayak. search one and done. still fresh unstopables in-wash scent booster flexible cancellation. downy unstopables when i was diagnosed with dupuytren's contracture, i waited to get treated. thought surgery was my only option. but then i found out about nonsurgical treatments. it was a total game changer. learn more about the condition at factsonhand.com welcome back to our special election night coverage here on msnbc. we have a call. this is a congressional election in ohio. this is a cleveland area district, a very blue district. this was opened up by marcia fudge. shontel brown has beaten laverne gore. nbc news making that projection in ohio's 11th congressional district. congratulations to the congresswoman-elect brown in ohio. in five, four, three, two, one, zero, new jersey's polls have closed. the governor's race in new jersey, one of two governor races we are covering tonight. it's democrat phil murphy trying to be re-elected. he is up against a republican challenger. nbc news projects this race is too early to call. we will be watching closely as the first results start to come in in new jersey now that the polls have closed in the garden state. at this hour, polls have just closed moments ago in the great american city of atlanta, georgia. they will elect a mayor tonight under unusual circumstances. the current mayor is the very high profile, very charismatic mayor. long considered a rising star. she was considered as a potential running mate for president biden. earlier this year, she made a shock announcement that she would not seek re-election as atlanta's mayor at the end of the term. she is leaving that seat. there are 14 candidates on the ballot in atlanta tonight running. in order to win, a candidate needs to get 50% of the vote. while that's seems reasonable in most elections when you run agains mathematically impossible. if none of the 14 get to 50%, the top two performing candidates in atlanta will go on to a runoff election that will happen november 30th. polls have just closed in atlanta. at this point, we are still watching virginia. virginia, the polls closed an hour and one minute ago. nbc news projects that race as too close to call. 35% of the vote in right now. you see, the republican candidate, trump endorsed candidate at 54%. terry mcauliffe at 45%. we are continuing to watch those vote totals come in. i am here in our new york city studios with joy reed and nicolle wallace absorbing what we have seen over the course of the last hour. i feel like in the virginia governor's race i would rather be youngkin than mcauliffe. our metric here is that we are comparing mcauliffe to how joe biden did last year. joe biden did very well in virginia. he won by ten points. terry mcauliffe only needs to win by one vote. how are you feeling looking at this? does it strike you the same way? >> i'm old enough to remember -- you are probably old enough to remember when it used to be that the absentee ballot was republican. it's so weird to me still to hear steve say that that mail-in vote is overwhelmingly democratic. that's a shift in the way elections have been. democratic voters were same-day voters. day of election voters. then they became early voters. republicans owned absentee. i wonder depending how this goes for youngkin, how the republican party is going to feel about giving away absentee, going forward will become more and more the way that modern elections happen. it's more convenient. if they are giving this to democrats -- >> i mean, let's say we will have 3 million vote in virginia. i'm picking a number out of a hat. over a million people are going to be -- will have voted by mail. what will be interesting to see is not only how campaigning changes, because you can't count on any one category of ballot being leaning any one way, but it may be we are looking at higher turnout in every state, in every election from here on out. we have made voting easier by allowing people to vote more easily by mail. >> that's the cause. the effect is 400 voter suppression bills in 48 states. the voter suppression bills are targeted at this, which you said started -- there are prominent national consultants who rose to fame in some cases infamy in the gop for being so good at turning out the mail vote. they were prominent consultants. it's now, along with same-day -- drive-thru vote, one of the most secure, it's on the chopping block. it's at the top of the list for the things that republicans want to outlaw. i think every time we talk about these three categories, two of them are in grave jeopardy around the country. >> can we talk about virginia as a state that's one of the easier states to vote in? they have done a good job of liberalizing the access to the ballot. terry mcauliffe, when he was governor, did something that's really important, was that former felons, people who served time, he took them off the jim crow list of states where they couldn't vote. he made it easier to vote in so many ways. if youngkin benefits from that, it will be a weird thing. >> in pure absolute value civic terms, more people voting is a good thing. having their votes count and finding it easy to vote, not having barriers, that's a good thing. consultants will have to change their game to not be able to count it, to not count on it being a partisan comfort. while we have been talking about this, steve has been eeping. it looks like the vote is coming in faster. >> we are up to 40% statewide. we talked at the start of the night, we were wondering if the traditional model of the republicans building a big lead in the vote tally and then the democrats trying to reverse it late with a lot of vote in northern virginia would change. that's the pattern that's shaping up here. the old patterns prevailing. the republican youngkin, a lot -- as you can see, a lot of the rural areas, the republican friendly parts of the state in right now. youngkin is building a substantial lead. it's going to shrink and very significantly. there's a lot out here in northern virginia. let me take you through two ways of looking at this. what is shaping up right now is two key questions. number one is, outside of the immediate suburbs of washington, d.c., the suburbs of richmond, outside of that more strongly republican counties can youngkin match or exceed donald trump's numbers? we are getting more that fit that pattern. we are not too far from charlottesville here. we are basically all complete. here is youngkin by 30 points. let's compare that to how donald trump did last year. trump won here by 23. this is an improvement. youngkin is running less than five points letter than trump. he increased the margin. that's a decent sign. they want to see this all over the place. they want to drive up that number. we have pretty much all the vote in when you see 95% tonight, at this point it means close to 100%. you can see here in kulpeper, pretty close to all the vote is in. provisions would come in. trump 59% here last time around. here is youngkin. he has jumped that number up 67% of the vote. if you are the youngkin campaign, that's what you want to see. you are talking about bath county, very small. again, one of the areas where trump did well for the republican party. here is youngkin running better. when i say two things are shaping up, one is the types of counties i'm showing you right now, one of the questions coming into tonight was, would youngkin be able to hit and then build on the trump levels? we are starting to see a pattern, as you could see. youngkin seems to be doing that. then the second question becomes -- this is going to be the question that defines the night here. can mcauliffe answer in the key and in the core democratic areas? we have been talking about northern virginia here. let's zoom in. this is the big one, fairfax. we have a big batch of vote, probably 20, 30 minutes ago. we haven't had anything since. more than a million people here. this is by far the biggest. this may take a while given some of the reporting. let's look next door to loudoun. we were talking about it a few minutes ago. this is a big question mark right now. 82% of the vote is in. you can see terry mcauliffe is leading by 5.5 points. if you compare this to 2020, holy cow, if you are youngkin, you love the numbers. we have a sense of what is remaining. the vote -- the type of vote remaining in loudoun county. they have not yet counted the mail-in vote in loudoun county. there are about 16,000 mail-in ballots to be counted in loudoun county. expect those to go overwhelmingly for mcauliffe. that's just the pattern we see with mail-in ballots. there's an opportunity there for mcauliffe with the mail votes to drive the number up. we are still also waiting in loudoun county, we have a good chunk of the vote that was cast today. that's the more republican friendly vote. there's more same-day vote to come as well. there may be a sliver, a smaller amount of early vote. there is a mcauliffe friendly mail vote to come here. there's still some youngkin friendly same day vote. it's shaping up as a key question here. i think this number should move more in mcauliffe's direction. how? what is the margin? trump won the county by 25 points. is mcauliffe able to get this up to a ten point victory? is this single digit? this is a key question. it's a key question because loudoun is important. we are waiting on fairfax county next door where we have the early vote here so far. we are still waiting on mail, same-day vote. we have the reports that it may take a while. we have seen this if fairfax county where they kept us waiting all night. we may wait all night again. whenever we get all of the votes finally reported out in fairfax county, it's going to be a big plurality for terry mcauliffe. that by itself would go a long way into eating this. youngkin is getting what he wants in the republican areas. can mcauliffe answer in what would have been the core democratic areas. >> switch gears on the fly, if i can. sorry. do you know if we have any results in in new jersey? we had the governor's race -- the polls close ten minutes ago. >> here we go. we have a chunk of the vote here in gloucester county. south jersey here. again, i think what you are looking at here is they now have mail-in voting in new jersey. we talk about the mail ballots, vote by mail being the most democratic friendly. i think we have the mail vote in one county in new jersey. you see murphy -- this was a 50/48 biden county. trump did fairly well in this part of south jersey in 2020. the mail vote very democratic friendly. see murphy out to 68%. that should come down as the same day comes in. if you are ciatarelli, you need to improve substantially in every county in new jersey tonight. you don't want to be getting -- when we look back here, you don't want to hit 48% when the night ends. you want to be adding 55%, 60%, up there in a place like gloucester. this is a chunk in essex. the biggest democratic vote producing county in new jersey. newark and the suburbs. you can see biden did 56 point victory. a scattering of votes here. about 15,000 so far. murphy doing what you would expect a democrat to do. again, tonight, we want to see monmouth county when it comes in. we want to look at somerset, morris, suburban counties that have moved away from the republicans. we want to see if ciattarelli can make massive inroads. they were strongly biden in 2020. it's a lot for him to pull out. >> i want to bring into our conversation our friends, our political analysts, claire mccaskill, david ploth and julio castro. i start with you david and something you said a couple hours ago. how are you feeling about the glass breaking in loudoun? >> not very good. that's the darkest part of the map. it's 150,000 votes now that mcauliffe is down. that margin will narrow. he is going to pick up a lot of votes in arlington, a lot of vote in fairfax. even if he dominates the rest of the vote, if it's mail vote, he still will be south of 20%. that's deeply concerning. i think that -- loudoun has been on a journey. when we won for the first time, it seemed historic. it's a long time. biden won it by 25 points. that's the thing that concerns me. that's a lot of raw vote. when you are down 150,000 votes, for the rest of the 58% of the vote that's out, every 1% or 2%, you want to eat into the margin. terry will eat into the martin. to get back to loudoun numbers are a warning sign. >> i want to jump in while we are talking about loudoun. i believe steve got in vote. we will go back to our friends in a second. >> we told you we were waiting open a terry mcauliffe friendly pile of absentee ballots. a lot has now just been counted. a minute ago, we were showing you about a five point gap in loudoun. this is not all of the vote. there is still some same day vote to come in. it's changed. mcauliffe with an 11 point advantage in loudoun county. what is to come, there are still same day precincts to report. that might move with what comes in for the rest of the way, it might move in youngkin's reference. 25 points for joe biden last year. 25 now sitting at 11 for mcauliffe over youngkin. that's a significant gain for youngkin in this county. we will see exactly where it lands. as you have been talking about, if you are youngkin's campaign, your number coming in, you want to hit 43%, 44%. you would love to do better. we will see what the remaining same day vote, if he is able to tick that up to 45. if they could hit 45 in loudoun, they would be ecstatic. if you are youngkin, you are looking at a number there that you were hoping to get tonight. >> we will take a quick break. we will come back as the results continue to come in. we will be back with our political analyst and more with steve. stay with us. and ask your doctor about biktarvy. biktarvy is a complete, one-pill, once-a-day treatment used for h-i-v in certain adults. it's not a cure, but with one small pill, biktarvy fights h-i-v to help you get to and stay undetectable. that's when the amount of virus is so low it cannot be measured by a lab test. research shows people who take h-i-v treatment every day and get to and stay undetectable can no longer transmit h-i-v through sex. serious side effects can occur, including kidney problems and kidney failure. rare, life-threatening side effects include a buildup of lactic acid and liver problems. do not take biktarvy if you take dofetilide or rifampin. tell your doctor about all the medicines and supplements you take, if you are pregnant or breastfeeding, or if you have kidney or liver problems, including hepatitis. if you have hepatitis b, do not stop taking biktarvy without talking to your doctor. common side effects were diarrhea, nausea, and headache. if you're living with hiv, keep loving who you are. and ask your doctor if biktarvy is right for you. feel stuck with student loan debt? move to sofi-and feel what it's like to get your money right. ♪ move your student loan debt to sofi—you could save with low rates and no fees. earn a $500 bonus when you refi-and get your money right. (vo) wildfires have reached historic levels. with low rates and no fees. as fires keep raging, the need to replant trees keeps growing. so subaru is growing our commitment to protect the environment. in partnership with the national forest foundation, subaru and our retailers are proud to help replant 1 million trees to help restore our forests. subaru. more than a car company. every day in business brings something new. so get the flexibility of the new mobile service designed for your small business. introducing comcast business mobile. you get the most reliable network with nationwide 5g included. and you can get unlimited data for just $30 per line per month when you get four lines or mix and match data options. available now for comcast business internet customers with no line-activation fees or term contract required. see if you can save by switching today. comcast business. powering possibilities. welcome back to our election night coverage here on msnbc. as you can see, the two marquis governor races we are watching tonight in virginia and new jersey. virginia is too close to call right now with 47% of the vote in. too close to call in new jersey. that's projected as too early to call. no surprise with just 3% of the vote in in new jersey thus far. we are watching returns come in in both of those states. we will be watching some important mayor races over the night as well. >> i want to bring back in our friends and political analyst claire mccaskill, julio castro. you are good at telling democrats hard truths. we are not projecting anything. if terry mcauliffe is not able to pull it out and he loses, what lessons do you think the party should take from it? >> how long do we have, joy? i started out this night optimistic. as we watch the results come in -- as steve has pointed out, with a lot of caveats, we are waiting for the mail vote and that tends to skew toward the democrat dramatically. but there are a few races that i have seen at this point that turn around by this many points. having said that, we will see what happens. the lessons i think, number one, we need to rethink in 2021 going into 2022 and beyond what we think of as an electable candidate. there has been a lot of oxygen spent blaming the progressives, suggesting that perhaps our best bet is always a centrist candidate. we need to rethink that. the midterms have been elections where you need to get the base out. you need to get them excited. if terry mcauliffe loses, one of the lessons is we didn't do that. we didn't get them out. i took note he was underperforming in one county which is over 30% hispanic. one of the biggest latino populations in virginia. a significant chunk of the voters. another lesson is, we need to get better about defending against these -- this cultural went play that republicans do over and over and over again, whether it's on immigration or bathroom politics or in this case about critical race theory of taking a fantasy world and making thatreality to win elections. democrats have not been good about making these elections play out on our own terms. it will be fascinating to see what happens in new jersey, where very early on phil murphy looks like he is doing better. the main issue was taxes. it was not one of these culture war issues. it will be interesting to compare. those are a couple of the lessons we need to think. rethink of electable. >> to stay on that note, i had cori bush on earlier today. she read the riot act to the moderates in the democratic party who have been essentially trying to in a sense sort of goad the progressives, that you have to pass the big infrastructure bill, that's all that's important. that's the thing. if they don't pass it, then it's going to cost the democrats virginia. all the anecdotal evidence i hear, motivated voters, what's making them feel de-motivated, it's the other bill thrown to the side. it's the idea that the build back better bill, the stuff for women and people of color, that's got all the stuff for environment, for young people, that that bill is seen as secondary to democrats in washington and all they care about is the bill that in their mind will win them back white independent voters. do you think democrats can take that lesson out of this? do you think they will take the usual lesson as go find another centrist and try the same game again next time? >> it depends on the district. the democrats will pass this bill. it will have not only the amazing program for women and families and health care, it's going to bring down prescription drug prices. they cut a deal today to get that done. it's going to be a really massive piece of legislation, a long with the hard infrastructure. we can talk about that next year. if it's a very blue place, then i think it's one thing to talk about just running a progressive candidate. but what happened in virginia tonight, if it holds up, is that the republican candidate won more suburban voters. what's really going on here is, can a republican get away with distancing himself from trump to get suburban voters back into the republican camp? that is really where these districts swing either way are going to be decided is in suburbs. i can't believe trump let him do it. will trump let all these republican candidates do it? will he let them say, don't you dare come to my state? will his ego take over? will he go after republicans that aren't willing to genuflect and do what he thinks is necessary to worship donald trump? i think there's a lot of republicans watching this tonight that are running in pennsylvania and running in wisconsin and running in ohio and north carolina that are trying to figure out how they can get those suburban votes back from joe biden. >> david, i want to press on this. i think we know the answer to some of this. i watched youngkin's interviews. he did not -- he worshipped at the altar of donald trump on fox. he flew an insurrection flag at his rallies. he played dumb about a zoom rally. he did not really put much distance between himself and donald trump on the big lie or the deadly insurrection in which police officers were maimed by flagpoles. i think the real ominous thing is that critical race theory, which isn't real, turned the suburbs 15 points to the trump insurrection endorsed republican. what do democrats do about that? >> i will point out, you know, the banning of the books and the flag flying, as appalling as they were -- they got a lot of attention. in virginia, youngkin spent months spending millions of dollars running ads, more like was a romney republican. i do think voters, what is clear i think in some of the research that happens after an election, which is important to dig into what happened here in places like loudoun, not everybody bought he was against trump. number two, we think critical race theory -- i'm sure it did have an affect here. this was also a terrible terrain for terry mcauliffe. he was a repeat candidate. it will be a change election. we still have the pandemic hanging around. most voters are weary of that. we have high gas prices. we have high cost of living. washington is not working. that matters less in most places, but this is over the river. democrats have to learn what was unique about virginia. we will see it maybe in new jersey. really understand why did vters move in the suburbs? claire is right, youngkin is past trump's up i numbers. people thought that was the ceiling. i agree with mr. castro who says such smart things about these message wars and. >> kyle: -- and culture race theory. are you scared for your kids to learn about slavery or lynching or housing discrimination? are we raising kids that to be that weak. sometimes we answer with facts that we don't believe people will believe. they are going to lie. they will say anything. if this is a boxing match, they are bringing heavier gloves and knives in their boots. we have to understand that. the terrain for democrats will be better a year from now. hopefully the pandemic will be in the rearview mirror. the economy is chugging. we need to learn these lessons and only have a year to course correct. >> on that point, in terms of the pandemic, one of the things we haven't talked about since we have been on the air is the cdc director announced that the cdc has endorsed the vaccine advisory panel's endorsement and the cdc is officially recommending vaccinations for kids age 5 to 11. that is a huge, huge thing toward what david just said. which is moving from pandemic to ending the pandemic. something that maybe willbe eradicated. something we live alongside if it's vaccine controlled. >> these education numbers have wrapped in them -- i heard this from republicans in virginia, wrapped in exaspiration about 18 months of school. some parents are angry about that still. as david is saying, and democrats still want to accept the results of elections and study why they happened. unpacking that education number, which is the number two most important issue driving voters, will have to include that. >> economy and then education. that's what we hear from voters. in terms of what motivated voters to do what and how they are voting, steve is getting in more information. steve, what do you got? >> it continues to be -- look at the counties that are getting into 100%, that are getting all the vote in. it continues to be this pattern. look, here is youngkin at 65%. there was donald trump at 57%. that's exactly what youngkin wanted to see. sheer middlesex county. from trump at 62, youngkin is building on that. we see this pattern. a lot of small rural counties, counties core trump counties, we see him exceed the number, sometimes dramatically. this vote is not complete here. this is one of the biggest counties in southwest virginia, mongomery, where virginia tech is. if youngkin is running over 50% at 52%, 53%, necessary a great place coming out of there. there isn't a county i have seen that fits this type where youngkin isn't getting exactly what he wanted to get. again, we are waiting on -- there's some more vote to come in loudoun, but not much. it will land somewhere right about here. if you are the mcauliffe campaign, you wanted more than this out of loudoun. if we didn't see anything else on this map tonight and we saw this, you could piece together, hey, maybe mcauliffe could make it up. but when you add in what we are seeing in these rural areas, the trump friendly areas in different parts of the state, that becomes a tougher pill to swallow if you are the democrats. a couple other big population centers here in northern virginia, we are waiting just on same day vote. in arlington county, outside of washington, d.c., i think this will tick up a few points in youngkin's favor before all is said and done. biden was at 80.5. this might come down a few more for mcauliffe. fairfax is the big one we are waiting on for the bulk of the vote here. what you are seeing with mcauliffe is, this is the mail vote right here that you are looking at. this is the vote by mail. this is the best democratic vote you are going to see in fairfax county. this is the best he is going to do. you have the early vote and you have a lot of the same day vote that's going to come into this fairfax total. potentially, bring that down a bit here. again, youngkin wanted his number into the 30s. he has taken the biggest hit mcauliffe can give him in fairfax county. the rest of it gets more republican friendly as the rest of the vote comes in here in fairfax county. there is an opportunity there on paper for youngkin to be getting into the 30s. does he get into the 30s? that's exactly what he would need to do, given everything else seeing here around the state. he wouldn't need to do much more than low 30s in fairfax county. a few other places where a little bit more than half the vote. we talked at the start, the suburbs of richmond, chesterfield county here. this swung to the democrats during trump's presidency. biden won it by about seven points. youngkin still vote to come, but youngkin, that's the number he was hoping to get there. henrico county, more democratic, just north of richmond. biden by 30. right now mcauliffe by ten with three-quarters of the vote in. take a look. we identified at the start of the night, virginia beach is the closest thing to a bellweather in the state. i expect this to come down. absentee vote to be counted here. in the same day vote that's coming in, youngkin is running where he wants to be run, about half the total vote is in. you see youngkin's numbers at 58. this is what it looked like a year ago. trump at 46%. i think with what's to come, youngkin's number will come down. there's all sorts of good signs here on the map for youngkin. if you are terry mcauliffe, what's missing? we don't have votes out of the state capital, richmond. that's 80% democratic right there. you are hoping you can get good news with what's left in fairfax county. that's a huge county. there's vote to come in, prince william county. core democratic area. this is same day vote we are looking at. there will be absentee vote that boosts the mcauliffe numbers. there are opportunities there still for mcauliffe. he is facing more than a 200,000 vote gap as we get to 60% in. the start of the night, if you put this up and said 60% in, this is where you are, this gets back to what you were saying, you were on to it early, if you are youngkin, this is where you would love to be. >> in terms of the raw vote totals -- i was struck by this because david was talking about it. tell us what the overall deficit is in terms of raw number of vote that mcauliffe is looking at. how many votes are outstanding in fairfax? >> as you can see, had is the different, 207,000 votes for youngkin. you look at 40% in here in fairfax county. that's about 160,000 votes. i do think we can end up getting somewhere upwards of 400,000 votes cast in fairfax county. there's still a significant amount right there. let me see what we are landing at here for our -- i think i have the exact estimate here right now. maybe about 250,000 remaining. there's an opportunity here for mcauliffe to get quite a few votes. you have to balance that with, there are outstanding votes and outstanding counties still that are going to be youngkin friendly. it's not just the democrats can get a big number out of fairfax and that's it. the lead here that youngkin is driving up is substantial. >> we will take a quick break. we will look at what's going on in new jersey. it's been 36 minutes since the polls closed. that's the other governor's race. it has been since 1977 that new jersey voters have decided to give a democratic governor a second term. phil murphy is trying to do that topt. we will have a look at how that's shaping up at the other side of this. stay with us. us [ sneeze ] are you ok? oh, it's just a cold. if you have high blood pressure, a cold is not just a cold. unlike other cold medicines, coricidin provides powerful cold relief without raising your blood pressure be there for life's best moments with coricidin. now in sugar free liquid. our retirement plan with voya, keeps us moving forward. hey, kevin! hey, guys! they have customized solutions to help our family's special needs... giving us confidence in our future... ...and in kevin's. voya. well planned. well invested. well protected. discover card i just got my cashback match is this for real? yup! we match all the cash back new card members earn at the end of their first year automatically woo! i got my mo-ney! it's hard to contain yourself isn't it? uh- huh! well let it go! woooo! get a dollar for dollar match at the end of your first year. only from discover. ebenezer. get a dollar for dollar match at the end of your first year. ebenezer. marley? first you will see the past. excuse me! coming through! ugh! and then...the present. and finally, ebenezer...the future! introducing the all-electric eqs. happy holidays from mercedes-benz. i booked our hotel on kayak. it's flexible if we need to cancel. cancel. i haven't left the house in a year. nothing will stop me from vacation. no canceling. flexible cancellation. kayak. search one and done. we have a change in the decision desk's projection on the virginia governor's race. we started off with it being too early to call. then it was too close to call. now the projection is that it is too close to call in the virginia governor's race, but republican youngkin holds a lead in the commonwealth of virginia. still too close to call but youngkin in the lead. at this hour, the projection in the new jersey governor's race is that it is still too early to call. as you can see, there's about 6% of the vote in. this is democrat phil murphy trying to win a very, very, very, very, very rare democratic second term as a new jersey governor. that's something new jersey voters have not wanted to do for the past 40 plus years. steve, we are looking at both of these races. i will give you dealer's choice in terms of what you would like to tell us. >> continuing in virginia right now, because 60%, you got the characterization from the decision desk, picture coming more into focus. a little while ago, the question was, youngkin was driving up the numbers more than the numbers he was going to need in the smaller counties, rural areas. the question was, would mcauliffe be able to answer equally in the big democratic areas? we talked about fairfax county. we got a lot more of the vote in. here you go now. more than half the vote is in in fairfax county. that includes the most democratic friendly, the most mcauliffe friendly vote there. that's the mail vote. by comparison to 2020, now that mcauliffe number is under by a few points where joe biden was. it could come down further. there's a lot of same day vote. it's the most republican friendly type of vote we tend to find. there's a lot of that that come. mcauliffe now running under the biden number. the possibility of going lower there in fairfax county. one little clue we may have in fairfax county, the way things work in virginia is, they have all these little islands you see within counties. they have independent cities within counties in some cases. here is the most confusing. inside fairfax county, they have fairfax city. fairfax city is smaller than fairfax county. it tends to -- the vote patterns are similar. when fairfax county moves this way, fairfax city moves this way. all a long way of saying we have all the vote in in fairfax city. i think this might be a clue of what's to come with fairfax county. check this out. in fairfax city, biden got 68% of the vote in 2020. mcauliffe now down to 63.5% of the vote. trump was under 30. youngkin up to 35 and change right here. if you are youngkin, fairfax city itself is relatively small. if you are doing that, if you are doing that kind of a jump in fairfax county -- that's exactly what youngkin's campaign wanted to do. they wanted to get into the mid 30s if they can in fairfax county. it's so critical for mcauliffe right now, because of the margins that youngkin is driving up in the republican areas. the only chance mcauliffe has is to answer with a huge performance of his own. he has to answer with a biden level of support at this point in fairfax county. he can't be within a few points of it. he can't fall off in a place like fairfax city. he has to answer. this is where he will get the votes. if he is going to make up close to 200,000 votes statewide, he has to get a ton out of here. the pace doesn't look like it's going to match that. you look, virginia beach, we showed you before, youngkin about half the vote in getting what he wants. chesapeake is not much in. again, for good reason, you see the characterization of youngkin from our decision desk, for good reason based on what we are seeing in northern virginia and we could check in on jersey if you basically looking at in new jersey. you are looking at mail. vote by mail. again, just most democratic vote. there's nothing in this mail vote that you would look at and say, wow, new jersey is in for a big surprise here. let's see when we start to get same day vote if there's a big shift here at all. this is about what you would expect. an example. we have some same day in in this county. give you a sense here. biden won 50% here. ciattarelli will need a huge number. it's very early. but there's no sign there that that one looks different than expected. >> steve, thank you very much. we are watching both of those come in. the characterization in virginia is that it is too close to call, but youngkin is in the lead. in new jersey, it's too early to call. polls have closed in both states. we are continuing to watch those votes as they come in. >> trump approved republican youngkin's closing message has almost singularly focus on weaponizing race. sing hysteria over race. pulling a work and vowing to ban critical race theory. it's not taught in any virginia public schools. with us now is a democratic pollster and political analyst who is a virginia native. i asked this question earlier and i will ask it of you. what lessons, if the results we see prevail and youngkin is the next governor of virginia, what lessons should democrats take from it? what lessons do you think republicans will take from it? >> a couple of things, joy. i said this earlier. even more so than youngkin versus mcauliffe, i think trumpism and critical race theory is on the ballot. what you are seeing, whether terry -- a lot of votes out. but whether terry makes this up or not, i think tonight is a victory for critical race theory. if you look at mcauliffe -- it's still early. if you lock at mcauliffe's margins, they are way off of what biden's margins are. in a place like loudoun, biden won by close to 20 points. he is only winning it by 10. virginia beach, a critical swing area, swung for biden. that's now too close to call. wherever you look, it looks like these college educated suburban white voters who democrats thought were breaking their way, they rallied back around critical race theory. for me, critical race theory is the most recent more eloquent iteration of the southern strategy. right? whether it be crosstown bussing, the welfare queen, de-fund the police. this original sin of america keeps evolving and critical race theory is the most latest and most eloquent iteration of the southern strategy and to tribalize an election, tribalize an electorate and drive up the white vote. whether terry comes back or not, i think critical race theory was center to youngkin's close here. he has it so close. where democrats thought they were making ground in, i think we will see this again in the midterm and it's problematic. >> let me bring in jason johnson. to that very point, christopher roofo did a speech and he has been the most eager and active in pushing republicans to use this as a strategy to turn out their vote. to pull in suburban voters. he admitted that he had no idea what critical race theory is and doesn't care what it is. whenever -- what he wants is that when white voters see any story that makes them uncomfortable, anything that is about wokism or multicult multiculturalism, he wants them to think critical race theory and vote republicans. it's been very open. they have been very open it about it. what does it say that youngkin was -- we don't know how it will turn out. it's too close to call. if youngkin wins based on using that strategy, is cornell right? this is the new lee atwater strategy and it's going to be used over and over and over again. >> i rarely disagree with cornell on air. i have to disagree with him on this. this. the only reason that we're talking about critical race theory is because glenn youngkin had 18 months to convince people that he was not a fire-breathing horns out of his skull racist. this only -- you can only talk about critical race theory if you present yourself as the kind of neutral white guy, i don't dislike brown people, i just think this is going a little too far. so it only works if you've been able to present yourself as neutral or non-hostile on race issues. that's not something that a lot of republicans are very good at. and i saw somebody put this very eloquently online. they said look, you know, glenn youngkin ran pretending to be larry hogan. he's going to govern like ron dewynne. but to his base they think he's ron desantis. and that's what this is. it was a very sneaky triangulation. because if you run on critical race theory and you're a screaming maga hat-wearing maniac then you're going to lose those suburban people because they don't want to be associated with that. i think it's only an effective strategy if you've been able to put four or five, six other things in line. anybody else who runs on critical race theory if you don't have the proper candidate to promote the message it's not going to get you anywhere. >> cornel, i think monmouth had the last poll on independent voters in virginia, they swung 18 points. whatever the sins of youngkin's strategy, it would appear if he prevails by closing the gap 15 points in loudoun and really eating into president obama and president biden's margins in those kinds of counties that youngkin might be the talk of the next sort of presidential candidate in the gop. i mean, his stock, if he wins tonight, his stock will soar. and i wonder at what point figuring out how to defeat that kind of republican becomes the full focus of the democratic party. >> no, that's a really good point. and to my friend jason's point is that youngkin is a different kind of republican. and the question to you quite frankly is that i don't think either one of us think that youngkin can win a republican primary on the national level. i think when you look at sort of how he's tried to quite frankly be a more sort of -- i mean, his first ads, people in virginia thought is he even a republican, right? he sort of soft-pedalled his republicanism and kept trump at a distance. i don't think you can win a republican primary -- and by the way, the virginia republican primary as we know was -- was set up for him. i don't think you can win a national primary not being -- not being full-on trump. but i think what republicans do take from this, and i know whether he wins or loses, he's made virginia so close that republicans are going to take this and they're going to try to do this again and again and again, going into the midterms. and believe me, the republican congressional campaign committee and the republican senatorial campaign committee, they're going to try to recruit candidates who look more like youngkin than they do the trumpers. now, i think they'll have problems in the primary but i think that's the battle going forward for the republican party, is can they recruit and win in a primary with youngkin-like candidates because if they do they can make a lot more of these districts competitive. >> can i just say, though, bob mcdonnell, since 2005 there have been 14 major statewide races in virginia. democrats have won 13 of them before tonight. bob mcdonnell was the exception. after barack obama won the presidency in 2008, bob mcdonnell won in 2009. and what did the republicans do? they instantly elevated him to presidential status. he gave the response to the state of the union. he was going to be the he answer to you can't be obama by being a fire braething guy you have to seem mild mannered you have to carry yourself like a dentist. he was going to be their savior. and then bob mcdonnell was a terrible governor in virginia who ran on crazy policies that made no sense and that made virginia a scandal and got them boycotted nationwide. remember the mandatory vaginal ultrasound stuff? and he gets run out of office on a bizarre corruption scandal. i mean, how you comport yourself once in office is going to make the difference here. that's part of why one of the things we need to watch tonight is whether or not youngkin is going to have republican control in the state legislature. house of delegates, if that flips tonight and becomes republican controlled, he may ultimately be putting together something that looks like a governing republican party in virginia, which is going to be a much harder thing to get himself to the presidential aspirations than if he's got a divided government. >> you said that and i immediately thought george allen. that was the other one set up like he was going to be the man and then he was -- if he's able to set up this governing majority, then the question becomes what happens in 2024, when all republican governors will be under tremendous pressure to do whatever it takes and whatever they can if donald trump is running for president to swing the election to refuse to seat electors, to do the entire trump, you know, wish list. and the question is would he withstand it? he doesn't seem to be somebody that would withstand it. we'll see. >> we're going to take a quick break right now. i want to say thank you to jason johnson and cornell belcher. gentlemen, it's a pleasure to have you with us tonight. we're going to take a quick break. when we come back we're going to be checking in on both those governor's races. again, too early to call in new jersey. too close to call with republican glenn young kipp in the lead in virginia. stay with us. lots more ahead tonight. i earn 3% cash back at drugstores with chase freedom unlimited. so i got cards for birthdays, holidays, graduations, i'm covered for everything. which reminds me, thank you for driving me to the drugstore. earn big time with chase freedom unlimited with no annual fee. how do you cashback? chase. make more of what's yours. [oof] i'll also be needing, stain remover, club soda and a roll of paper towels. [sfx: doorbell rings] lifesaver! [blegh] you're weird, man. to each his own. align. fast acting biotic gummies helps soothes occasional abdominal discomfort, you're weird, man. gas, and bloating and it works fast. in as little as 7 days try fast acting biotic gummies from align. the #1 doctor recommended probiotic brand. an official message from medicare. did you try it yet? comparing plans? oh yeah. they sure can change year to year. i found lower premiums and lower prescription costs. that'll save you money. so uh, mark? on medicare.gov now. open enrollment ends december 7th use the plan finder at medicare.gov to compare medicare health and prescription plans. comparing plans really pays. paid for by the u.s. department of health & human services paid for by the ♪ ♪ ♪ hey google. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ we are just coming up on 9:00 p.m. eastern here at msnbc headquarters in new york. i'm rachel maddow. super happy to have you with us here this evening. i'm here in studio with my beloved colleagues joy reid and nicolle wallace. and we've got the eighth wonder of the news world, steve kornacki at the big board, who's been processing data for us over the course of the night. the marquee race of course tonight is in virginia, where the governor's race there is still too close to call at this hour. but nbc news is projecting that republican glenn youngkin holds the lead. we've been watching those votes come in over the course of the night. we've got about 63% of that vote in. again, still too close to call, but youngkin in the lead. in new jersey the race there is still too early to call. you see less than 15% of the vote in. that's the new jersey governor's race where democrat phil murphy is trying to earn a second term against republican challenger jack ciattarelli. we're going to be speaking -- checking back in with steve about where things stand in both of those races in just a moment. i do just also want to note that polls have also just closed in a few other key races that we are watching tonight. polls have just closed in the new york city mayor's race. the nation's largest city choosing a new mayor. mayor bill de blasio is done. he will be succeeded by either eric adams or curtis sliwa. polls, again, have just closed at this point in time. that race is considered too early to call. we're also watching mayoral races in the great cities of minneapolis tonight and buffalo, new york. in minneapolis it's the incumbent mayor jacob frey who's trying for a second term. in buffalo the incumbent mayor there, byron brown, was actually beaten in the democratic primary back in june. he is nevertheless trying to retain his seat, trying to get a fifth term as mayor of buffalo in a write-in campaign as an incumbent, which is a weird combination of factors. in terms of other major mayor's races, polls have also closed in the last hour in the great city of boston. the city is poised to elect the first female mayor ever elected to that office regardless of whether -- which of the two runoff candidates wins tonight in boston. so there's lots still to learn tonight. lots still to watch as the returns come in. but let's go back now to steve at the big board. i city we are all on virginia. 63% in overall. >> about 2/3 in statewide. right now the lead nor glenn youngkin continues to be basically 200,000 votes over terry mcauliffe. what is still outstanding here, what's keeping this thing from being called, i'll give you a couple things that our decision desk is looking at right now in terms of outstanding vote. number one, if you zoom in on where the state capital is, richmond, you can see there's barely any vote in here. this is an overwhelming democratic area. you see joe biden getting more than 80% of the vote here last time out. we know there's going to be a substantial number of democratic votes here in richmond. the other thing that's going on is if you take a look at virginia beach we've been talking about this a lot tonight. i keep saying kind of a bellwether county. it doesn't look like too much with youngkin up this much. what's happened in virginia beach so far is, again, this is what happened in 2020. what you're seeing here in virginia beach right now is just the election day vote. so they're still going to count the absentee vote. that's the more democratic-friendly vote. the vote still to come in virginia beach is going to strongly favor terry mcauliffe. he could pick up some more votes. certainly he could pick up quite a bit through that. virginia beach there's absentee vote to come. another big county right here. chesterfield county we've talked about a lot right outside of richmond. also no ab septemberee vote has been counted yet. the rest of the vote that's counted here in chesterfield county will strongly favor terry mcauliffe. and also obviously big piece still to come, we keep talking about fairfax. here it's mainly same-day vote that's still to come now. the same-day vote here still will be democratic. the problem for mcauliffe is right now it's just not as democratic as what you're seeing on your screen. so far mcauliffe is leading in fairfax county overall by this margin. but in just the same-day portion of the vote in fairfax county, and that's mainly the vote that's still being tabulated here, he's running about ten points lower than this. so the bottom line is when you factor that in, if you kind of extrapolate that out and if you kind of extrapolate out the trends we're seeing everywhere in the places i just talked about, you could see mcauliffe, you know, taking 125,000 or so votes out of that youngkin lead but he'd still be 75,000 short. and youngkin is still adding votes in a lot of these rural areas of the state. small pockets here and there. but they do add up. for mcauliffe this is going to come down. this is going to come down considerably as more vote comes in. but to actually get close to youngkin and potentially overtake him he would need numbers in the be absentee vote still to come in the places i'm talking about here, especially in the absentee vote, he would need, again, some more youngkin areas just came in, you see he's north of of 200,000. he would just need numbers we're not seeing him get really anywhere he is tonight. that's what mcauliffe is up against here right now. again, youngkin in those suburbs, and i think we can just show you again in those suburbs outside of washington, d.c., this is where i meant to go. loudoun county. we are basically all in now in loudoun county. i believe there's one precinct outstanding in loudoun county. and this may be by itself tells the story of the night here. mcauliffe is going to win it. he's going to win it by basically ten points. right now it's actually 9.9 points. and we said at the start of the night youngkin didn't necessarily need to win loudoun county. he needed to eat into the big gains that the democrats made during the trump era. those are the big gains the democrats made in the trump era in loudoun county. they rolled it up to 25 points. youngkin has cut that more than in half tonight. and if you're a republican and you can get back in the game that way in northern virginia, then the other piece of of it is just turn out the vote that donald trump was able to turn out. i mean, wow, that's the other piece of the story tonight. just going from one county to another. one small county to another here in southwest virginia in particular. youngkin is meeting and exceeding the donald trump total. i'll just take you through a bunch of these right here. trump 80, youngkin up to 83 in grayson county. 80.9. 83.5. a lot of of these counties in southwest virginia trump did much better than, for instance, mitt romney had done back in 2012, the last republican nominee before trump. it was not necessarily a given that any republican republican would come in and keep getting that high of a vote. but youngkin looks like he's driven it up further. that combination that youngkin needed tonight, we are absolutely seeing that in these results. again, we just reset statewide here. 207,000, basically exactly 2/3 in right now. >> so steve, again, just taking sort of a bigger picture look at it, and you're better at this math than i am, but sort of synthesizing everything you just said it sort of seems like what we've just seen is a shift toward the -- compared to 2020 we're seeing a shift, a steady shift toward the republican basically in every county in the state except for in loudoun county where we're seeing a big shift toward the republican. so while mcauliffe may have been able to still win or get it close to something that looked like a tie by underperforming biden by a few points in every county in the state since biden won by 10 against trump overall, losing that much, losing that much ground in one big democratic-leaning county that has a ton of voters in, it that could potentially be the fatal factor. >> i think it's that and then it's what we're seeing in, again, that kind of trump surge area of the state. this might be a good way of illustrating it. i think we have this. let me just call it up. what you're seeing here, what i'm highlighting is these are the counties that from donald trump's arrival on the scene in 2016 through the 2020 election that swung the hardest toward donald trump. these are basically the counties where trump brought new people into the republican party. voters the republican party didn't have before, trump brought them in. and this was the other question tonight. could youngkin keep them? and i think they were somewhat of an open question here. but youngkin is -- look at this. he's absolutely keeping those voters tonight, sometimes by dramatic margins, in one county after another. so i think the map has changed here a little bit in virginia. i think we were talking about this, he we were taking a look at this sort of from the standpoint of hey, could youngkin roll this thing back to where it was before donald trump came along in northern virginia? the answer to that is kind of no. loudoun, as you say, is his best one. he still is not going to roll it back to where it was in 2012. in 2012 mitt romney was within 4 1/2 points in loudoun county. tonight youngkin's going to lose this probably by 10 points. so he didn't even get back to mitt romney numbers. and i don't have to remind you, mitt romney lost virginia in 2012. so what's happened here is youngkin has eaten in somewhat to what donald trump's deficit was in northern virginia and then he has supplemented it with these significant -- and they do add up. i know each one i show is very small here. 5,000, 10,000 people. they add up. he's supplemented that with trump-level support in the rural parts of the state. and that is adding up to this youngkin lead you're seeing. >> that is fascinating. let's bring into the conversation now larry sabato. he is director of the university of virginia center for politics. he's known for his crystal ball predictions of political races. just before the election that we're looking at tonight, mr. sabato and his crew changed this to a lean republican prediction on this race. mr. sabato, it's a pleasure to have you here. thanks for making time. >> thank you, rachel. thanks so much. >> i want to ask you -- i'll warn you in advance. i'll ask you a little bit about what's going on in the house of delegates tonight because if glenn youngkin is going to potentially pull this out and be i new republican of virginia, whether or not he's able to govern with republican party principles, the legislature will have a lot to do with that. i'm going to ask you about that in a moment. but looking at the governor's race and this topline marquee race, what do you think the story is tonight thus far? >> the story is -- i'm not going to call it a blowout because we don't have the final numbers. but i will tell you somebody high up in mcauliffe's camp was there with mcauliffe put it this way to me about an hour ago. it's a bloodbath. and so far everything we've seen pretty much falls along that line. and while we don't have complete figures, anything close to complete figures for the house of delegates, you can guess based on what i've just said. >> given the distance that republicans had to come in order to pull this off tonight, i'm struck that it has been 12 years since a republican has won a statewide race in virginia. going back to 2005. of the 14 major statewide races there have been in virginia, 13 of the 14 have been won by democrats. what had to change in order to make this possible tonight? >> well, first, donald trump left office. he was the greatest producer of democratic votes in modern history. but of course the democrats started winning in 2008, with president obama's first term. so it was more than donald trump. but donald trump supercharged it. and you know, let's be honest, president biden's ratings even in virginia, which he carried by a little over 10%, are 42%, 443, 44%. that is not good news for a democratic nominee running for governor. and on top of that the clown show in washington on capitol hill, the democrats couldn't get it together -- if they had gotten the two bills passed in september, mcauliffe would have had something to campaign with and he could have sold very specific items. he knows how to do it. he's a great salesman. he had nothing. and he was given all kinds of promises, as everybody else was, by democratic leaders on capitol hill. and we all know where it is. nowhere. at least to this point. it's certainly too late to help mcauliffe. so you know, i'd say those are two big points in favor. and then you have the issues that youngkin was running on. you may have the same view i have of critical race theory which is it was a phony issue, it certainly is in virginia, where it isn't taught. but people believe what they want to believe. we're still in the trump era, right? you don't have to have the facts backing you up. if people want to believe what you say, they will believe it. >> it strikes me that the other option that the democrats had in terms of making their case to voters here is to run on what they've been able to do with their control of virginia state government over the past couple of years, getting a half million virginians health insurance who didn't have it before, backing up voting rights, backing up abortion rights, backing up a woman's right to get contraception, doing other things that are playing the other side of some of these culture war issues but also have a real practical impact in terms of people's lives. if glenn youngkin is going to be a republican governor in virginia, if he is going to pull this out tonight, the legislature is going to be an interesting factor. the state senate is not up tonight. the house of delegates is. democrats have had a five-vote majority in that 100-seat body. how are the republicans doing in their efforts to try to take over that house of the legislature tonight, and what might that mean if youngkin is elected? >> i've only seen early returns for most of the critical swing house of delegates districts. but if youngkin ends up winning by a decent margin, three, four, five points or maybe it's more than that, the odds are very, very good that he will pull in a republican majority in the house of delegates because we live in a highly partisan polarized era and people start at the top voting for a governor of one party and they usually stay in that column until they're finished with the ballot. so i'd say the odds are pretty good. not certain. haven't seen enough returns to be able to tell you that. let's assume, rightly or wrongly, that the republicans get a majority in the house of delegates. it's true what you said. the state senate is not up this year. but the state senate's very close. it's 21-19 democratic. however, there is at least one democrat who votes with republicans on a number of issues including, by the way, abortion rights. again, if youngkin wins by a decent maintain, as he appears to be doing early, he could pull in the republican nominee for lieutenant governor. so then you've got the tie-breaking vote with youngkin in addition to potentially one democratic senator who at least on some issues will vote with the 19 republicans. so there you go. it's amazing how things potentially, if the elections are called the way we're talking about, potentially one night can change the entire coloration of a government in a state. and some of this matters obviously for 2022 when 36 governors are up and loads of legislative seats. >> and it could mean huge changes in the state in terms of the policies that affect virginians' lives in short order. larry sabato, director of the university of virginia center for politics. huge night in virginia politics. thank you for helping us understand. >> we are going to bring into our conversation our colleague chris jansing. she's at mcauliffe headquarters. i hear they're still looking for some of the outstanding vote and they're also in touch with reality, not sounding particularly hopeful at this point. >> yeah. i was just in touch with somebody who's very close to mcauliffe, and i asked him what the mood was in the room and he answered in one word. glum. now, he also said they do still believe there's a path. whether they can overperform in some of the votes still to come in fairfax county. and two or three minutes ago a senior official within the mcauliffe campaign came over to tell me we still believe this is too close to call, we think that there are still ways for us to make up this vote difference. having said that, we've been talking for the four days that i've been here about this enthusiasm gap. and i certainly have seen it on the ground when i've gone to youngkin campaign events. they have been louder. they have been much larger. than the ones run by terry mcauliffe. and in fact, who would have thought even a couple of weeks ago that glenn youngkin would come into what had been deeply blue loudoun county where joe biden won by 25 points and governor northam won by almost 20 points and have his final campaign rally? and then he was very loose, out this morning shooting hoops at a middle school. so this is obviously not where they wanted or even expected to be. i will say that they are looking less, many of the democrats i talked to close to terry mcauliffe, at this whole issue of education. they realize that it played a role in this. but they're also very disappointed at what's going on in washington. they think that democratic voters and many of those important swing voters looked at that as well. and so they are really looking at what was for them they thought an uphill battle because people are looking for change. they're not happy about what they're seeing. nicolle? >> chris jansing, msnbc's senior national correspondent. you've been really ear to the ground in virginia all day long. thank you so much for being part of our coverage. i want to bring in our colleague garrett haake, who's at youngkin headquarters. garrett, i talked to a washington strategist who said that the real turning point for the youngkin side, when the mo really flipped and never came back, was when terry mcauliffe made that comment at the debate about parents not having sort of -- i don't want to misquote him. but the role that parents should play in education and curriculum. youngkin jumped on that. some might say he distorted it and exploited it. but in terms of the momentum and energy on the race that was when the youngkin campaign really set its sights on places like loudoun. and that was when they see this turning in their direction. >> yeah. i think that's right. that'll be a pivotal moment. but my sources in and around the campaign actually think the momentum started to shift their way even earlier than that. they saw it shift around the time of the pullout from afghanistan where biden's numbers, the president's numbers started to get soft. and as the president's approval numbers ticked down, so too did every democrat in the state of virginia. they felt like it gave them an opportunity to try to exploit, to try to raise their guy up. the education issue obviously became huge both from that moment in the debate and the kind of dual track campaign strategy that the youngkin campaign used. if you watch broadcast television in the d.c. market or anywhere else in virginia, you're seeing ads from glenn youngkin about education, talking about hiring teachers and investing in public education. if you're watching cable news on the right, you're hearing education talked about in terms of critical race theory and race issues in schools. critical race theory not taught in virginia schools. the education issue was a rorschach test for virginia voters, and it played big. i think as we're seeing in exit polls, supporters of glenn youngkin that i've been speaking to. the other thing i've heard from the youngkin campaign is they think that terry mcauliffe fundamentally misread this race, that terry mcauliffe is running a nationalized campaign talking about donald trump and really trying to make glenn youngkin, as mcauliffe said on the stump, as we heard, into donald trump in khakis and a fleece vest. and they think mcauliffe essentially failed to make that connection. and that gave independent voters, be maybe moderate republicans who turned their back on the party during the trump years, a hall pass effectively to vote for youngkin and to not be embarrassed about it. that generated the kind of momentum and the kind of energy it has them feeling tonight, the youngkin camp does, like they've got this just about sewn up. >> garrett haake, i can hear there's some energy at least in the room. not sure we can extrapolate that across the state. we're still watching and waiting. but i appreciate your reporting. rachel, this point that garrett makes about the turning point for biden is something i picked up from pollsters that poll just independents, not democratic, not republicans. and when i sort of set out in september to understand where this president was, i heard sort of three analyses. i shared this with you guys in the break. that he lost independent voters and women around the pullout from afghanistan. and i said at the time i thought 95% of the public was for leaving but it turns out a whole lot of the public did not like the way we left. and especially some of that softer part of the biden coalition that came and voted for him in 2020 but was always going to be watching the news. they were always going to be sensitive voters. they were always going to be -- and not sticking their finger in there but they were always going to be watching. they were going to be watching and seeing how he performed, seeing how the vaccines rolled out or seeing what happened. i don't know that anyone predicted afghanistan would weigh in with those voters. but according to people who poll center-right to independents that was really damaging for him. and garrett pointing that out is the first time i heard someone report it out from inside the youngkin side. the other piece was this frustration about the lack of fire. why not fight for voting rights? why not give speeches about -- there was one speech given. one speech about democracy. it was beautiful. it was in philadelphia. but no one's touched it since. and what is happening in sort of republican america is not just critical race theory. it's saying fraud happened. people believed there was fraud so they're fixing it. republican voters -- never mind that it's fake. critical race theory isn't taught. it means something different to voters. they think it is. so republicans are fixing it. youngkin's going to ban it. and some of it is just a question for democrats now. do you adjust to a terrain that is not fair, that is not just, that is not fact-based but that tonight looks like it advantages republicans? >> well, the way that you confront and defeat an opponent that has framed things in a way that is fake is that yes, you can create your own competing fake framework and run on that or you can accomplish real things and then run on that and say yes, these guys have invented a bogeyman about a form of racial hierarchy that you've fantasized into existence that isn't actually taught in schools. but look, you have a child tax credit and you have the biggest climate change legislation that's ever been passed in this country. and we have an infrastructure bill and all of the terrible traffic problems in virginia are going to get fixed because republicans are talking about fantasy stuff and democrats are talking about real world stuff. >> who has done that successfully ever? other than in an aaron sorkin movie. i've just never seen that campaign. >> the other alternative is that i think you hit on the word that i think is the most important. it's fight. it's that you not only have to fight for what you believe in but you have to be seen to be fighting. >> yes. >> and the problem is the only part of the democratic party right now that is visibly fighting for people, the base of the party that votes for them -- because yes, independents are important. but you need your base. and the progressives in the house are the only ones who are showing fight. the democrats in texas that walked out and flew and went all the way out of town, flew to d.c. and were like we're not going to be there, we're walking out of here, fight. if you're not seen to be fighting the other way you respond to a fake campaign that is racially based is that you need to be seen fighting for those same voters. and democrats, i never saw them fight for them. they didn't fight for criminal justice reform. they did not fight for voting reform. have they lifted a finger to make sure that people of color are going to be able to vote? fight. and they don't know how to do that and to communicate that we care enough to fight. and to actually take risks. what the progressives did, even though they were getting bullied by the conservatives in their party and run over by people like manchin and sinema, is they said we're going to hold up this bill. you want this thing so badly you ain't getting it because we're fighting for the other bill because that's our base. >> we're fighting for something of -- >> the problem is they have a 43% approval rating because they're fighting. i guess if they want to fight and lose or reis it assemble the obama coalition, the biden koegs and clinton coalition which were winning campaigns. >> part of the problem with the obama coalition unfortunately is there are a lot of americans who don't want to deal with the history. they don't want to deal with it. and they might have voted for obama but they're in the n. that coalition too. but when confronted with the opportunity to say who really was thomas jefferson they don't want to. so they'll leave the coalition in a heartbeat. the people who stay with you are your base and they don't think you're lifting a finger for them. so it's hard to convince them to come out and vote. >> i can tell you right now that we have a little bit of news, which is that nbc news now projects that eric adams will be the next mayor of new york city. mayor bill de blasio has just completed his term. eric adams, the brooklyn borough president, was up against a republican named curtis sliwa, who ran on a number of issues. he made his largest headlines in the campaign for letting everybody know that he had a very large number of cats. very large number of cats. he brought a cat to a polling place today. he was also hit by a taxi cab during the campaign. but curtis sliwa was not able to parlay those advantages into a win in heavily democratic new york city. eric adams will be the next mayor of the nation's largest city. all right. we're going to take a quick break right now. our friend chris hayes is going to be joining us when we come back. we're going to be checking back in with steve kornacki as we watch those two governor's races that are not yet called tonight, as we watch the results come in there. stay with us. we were alone when my husband had the heart attack. he's the most important thing in my life. i'm so lucky to get him back. your heart isn't just yours. protect it with bayer aspirin. be sure to talk to your doctor before you begin an aspirin regimen. ♪ ♪ ♪ hey google. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ my retirement plan with voya keeps me moving forward. they guide me with achievable steps that give me confidence. this is my granddaughter...she's cute like her grandpa. voya doesn't just help me get to retirement... ...they're with me all the way through it. voya. be confident to and through retirement. do you struggle with occasional nerve aches in your hands or feet? try nervivenerve relief from the world's #1 selling nerve care company. nervive contains alpha lipoic acid to relieve occasional nerve aches, weakness and discomfort. try nervivenerve relief. (judith) in this market, you'll find fisher investments is different than other money managers. (other money manager) different how? don't you just ride the wave? (judith) no - we actively manage client portfolios based on our forward-looking views of the market. (other money manager) but you still sell investments that generate high commissions, right? (judith) no, we don't sell commission products. we're a fiduciary, obligated to act in our client's best interest. (other money manager) so when do you make more money? only when your clients make more money? (judith) yep, we do better when our clients do better. at fisher investments we're clearly different. ruggs. it is just about 9:30 on the east coast right now. we do have a projection to make. this is the ohio 15th congressional district. this is a seat that was vacated in may. a surprise resignation from a moderate republican congressman named steve stivers. running tonight to succeed him, republican mike carey and democratic state representative allison russo. there was a late endorsement for russo from president biden in this race. but this is a fairly heavily republican district. this is a district that trump won by 14-plus points. nbc news now projects that the winner in ohio 15 will be the republican lobbyist mike carey, who's running for that seat. this follows our earlier call earlier this evening in the 11th congressional district in ohio. this is a district that was vacated when representative marcia fudge left to become hud secretary in president biden's cabinet. that's a cleveland-area district that's very heavily democratic. tonight shontel brown is the congresswoman elect to succeed marcia fudge in that district. want to welcome our friend chris hayes to the set. chris, it's great to see you. thank you for being here. >> great to see you as well. that's a plus one in the house margin with shontel brown's election. >> that's right. because the republican seat stays republican and that one -- >> that was just unoccupied. which when you're dealing with a four-vote margin i think is what the house dems are at right now, is not nothing. >> if it is a d plus 50 -- >> it was never in doubt. it's just that there's going to be some -- right now there's some very treacherous negotiating and navigating that nancy pelosi has to do, so she's got one more. >> let me just check in in terms of where we are. nbc news just projected the winner of the new york city mayor's race will be eric adams. we are expecting eric adams to give his victory speech shortly. we're going to dip into that as soon as that's happening. i want you to know i may interrupt you at any moment because i want to hear that speech. steve kornacki is watching results as they come in tonight. steve, can we talk about both. both new jersey and virginia in terms of those governor's races? neither of them has a call at this point. >> that's right. and again, now you see 3/4 of the vote in virginia statewide, we've been saying for a while it's been stuck at about 200,000. youngkin's margin over mcauliffe. again, we do expect this is going to tighten pretty significantly. i just read off, you know, fairfax county we got a ton left to come in in terms of some same-day vote there. chesterfield county just south of richmond. we've got absentee vote. virginia beach we've got absentee vote. prince william count are why big democratic county d.c. metro area, again, it's absentee vote is the most democratic vote, democratic-friendly vote there is out there. long way of saying just from what i just gave you right there, just from that you can see mcauliffe netting let's say 75,000 votes. that would take a chunk out of what youngkin's got there. there are some other areas like that there. it's just hard right now to look at what else is left on this list and to get it up to anywhere near 202,000. you could certainly take a big bite out of that. certainly with what we see is left here. but mcauliffe's going to have to find a way to take an even bigger bite to actually overtake youngkin. so that's the situation in virginia. if you take a look in new jersey right now, a quarter of the vote is in. you see the democratic incumbent phil murphy. this is four points right now. now, keep in mind what you're seeing is there's two things here. a lot of the vote that you're seeing so far here is from ocean county. this is one of the biggest republican vote producing counties anywhere, frankly. 3/4 of the vote is in in ocean county. you can see jack ciattarelli, the republican, leading murphy 2-1. not a huge surprise right there. trump won this thing by almost 30 points. ciattarelli's doing a few points better. ocean county right now is going a long way to driving that statewide public you just saw. also monmouth county, which we expect this as well to be a republican county. not as republican as ocean county. in fact, it was very competitive in the 2020 presidential election. ciattarelli again running better than trump's number here in monmouth county. he's going to have to run significantly better, eight to ten points better than trump kind of across the board to have a shot at winning in new jersey. so monmouth and ocean are going a long way to driving the number here that you're seeing statewide. meanwhile, if you take a look, essex county, this is one of the biggest counties in the state. this is the biggest democratic vote-producing county in the state. i think you basically just have the mail-in vote here in essex county. you can expect a lot more votes here. that's a big murphy stronghold. you take a look at bergen county. bergen county kind of a bellwether county here. it votes kind of the way new jersey votes. we don't have much more in there. this is the largest county in the state, he no. so we really don't have much from bergen county at all right now. couple other places we can show you. mercer county, this is where trenton is. again, this would be i abig democratic county, give you a sense of it joe biden got almost 70% of the vote here. we really don't have much in here from mercer county so far. so the vote that's in right now also i think skewing this a bit. hunterdon county. this is a core republican county. getting close to 100% here. again, this thing actually got close, trump over biden by five points here in 2020. that's a really bad showing for a republican in hunterdon. ciattarelli is moving that up nine points. he's getting that done in hunterdon county. the question is is he able to do that in like a bergen county? is he able to get a shift in bergen county? another one to keep an eye on where we don't have any vote on right now is burlington county. south jersey. this is another one that is sort of a bellwether. it votes kind of the same way the statewide vote goes. we don't have anything going here. question is can ciattarelli be improving on trump's number? again, by eight, nine, ten points in a place like bergen county. it's one thing to do it in hunterdon county. traditionally republican county. it's another thing if he can do it in a bergen or burlington. not much in the way of votes there right now. the vote that's in so far is skewed pretty heavily toward republican areas. plus we just have a lot of mail here in some of these other places. so i would take that margin you're seeing right there with a grain of salt. let's see what we get when bergen starts to report. let's see what we get when burlington starts to report. keeping a close eye on those. we'll keep you updated here. >> new jersey, in terms of keeping the context in mind here, president biden as steve was saying won new jersey plus 16 over donald trump. but phil murphy himself was first elected after the bridgegate scandal and he won by 14 points over kim godano when he won that seat. while new jersey residents have not proven willing to re-elect democratic governors at any time since 1977, murphy would seem to have the wind in his sails for this. >> yeah, and i think it's obviously too early to do big analysis of new jersey and virginia because these are always the two big races on this night because of when they happen. but you go back to 2009 and of course the big story on that night was bob mcdonnell and chris christie. the republicans flipping both of those. christie obviously the bigger upset because new jersey is a deep blue state. but let's imagine a universe plausibly which in both states republicans outperform donald trump by ten points. right? to the extent that's true you've got to look at macro issues more than you're looking at what ads which candidates are running and what the campaign was. a lot of focus particularly because virginia is in the heart of the nation's political media capital is very focused on what was the messaging and what were the campaigns and education. and all that stuff matters in campaigns. the macro environment matters a lot too. and to the extent we're seeing similar benchmarks, you know, you can run ten points ahead of donald trump and lose the new jersey election and win the virginia one if you're just a generic republican. to the extent you're seeing similar kinds of driving factors you've got to look to the macro environment that's driving that politically more than the specifics of who cut what ad and who said what -- >> what was the difference in the macro environment now versus november? it was a year ago. >> oh, i think there's a huge difference. i mean, i think the story is that there was a real hope the virus was going to be suppressed and life was going to get back to normal. and basically through july it looked like that was happening. and then it wasn't happening. i mean, it just wasn't happening. like inflation is higher than it's been in recent memory. and the gdp of the country slowed down to only .5% growth in the third quarter. and there's 800,000 -- nearly 800,000 people who died -- >> schools have reopened. the wave from the delta variant is coming down. there are some variables that are moving in the right direction at this point. >> and the exit polls showed that -- which was interesting. that the coronavirus, or that the virus was a very -- of not importance to many voters. >> which was fascinating. >> it was education. which is code for white parents don't like the idea of teaching about race. unfortunately, race is just the most palpable tool in the toolkit. it used to be of the democratic party back in the day when they were dixiecrats. and now the republican party. which is powerful. >> i don't disagree with that. i just think the other thing that happens here is the thermos tattic public opinion, which is a term coined by a political scientist in 1955, which is the reason that virginia has, right? the big exception to the rule in virginia was mcauliffe's 2013 win. it had gone past the party in power in the white house out of 12 times 11 things. mcauliffe is the one thing. that's because what tends to happen, and you see it in the midterms, in the new deal with fdr. right? that the party in power faces a backlash. and that is one of the -- it's almost like gravity. right? there's lots of things that can be done in individual races above and beyond that. but the thing that's pulling on all of these atoms as they circle around is that. >> in addition to the top of the ticket races in new jersey and virginia one thing to watch in virginia tonight, i mentioned this a couple of times, i want to sort of bring this home, is that every single seat in virginia's house of delegates is up for election tonight. there's 100 seats in virginia's house of delegates. they're all up tonight. before today democrats had a majority. 55. republicans had 45 of those seats. that means republicans need to take six of those seats tonight back to regain the majority. that should be noted the same number that democrats flipped their way just two years ago in 2019. so far tonight republican candidates lead in several of the key tossup races likely to determine control and the republicans do appear at least on the cusp of taking back control. if glenn youngkin is going to now be the republican governor of virginia, and again that race is not called, and the democrats -- mcauliffe campaign reportedly say they still see a path. but if youngkin is going to end up being a republican governor, there's a one-seat majority effectively for the democrats in the state senate and one of those democrats is, as larry sabato was saying, a democratic state senator who is more than happy to vote with republicans a lot of the time. if republicans are also going to get control of the virginia state house of delegates, that's going to be a sea change in terms of governance and policy in virginia all in one night. joining us right now is somebody for whom this is a very, very, very key question. she is virginia's house majority leader, sharnel herring. she was just re-elected tonight. congratulations. i should also tell you she's the first african-american woman from northern virginia ever elected to the virginia legislature. representative herring, it is great to see you tonight. thank you so much for making time. >> thank you so much for having me. >> so give us your take on how this night is going for you. you being re-elected, you will be back in post. you and a number of your colleagues. the specific number is very important, though, in terms of whether or not democrats are going to continue to govern in virginia. >> oh, no, absolutely. but it's early now still. results are still coming in. i feel good. i've been traveling across the commonwealth the past month. and the energy for democrats is strong. we're turning out the vote. we've had a record number of absentee voting in virginia, and that's one of our successes. we expanded voting rights here in virginia. we protected women's reproductive health care. we expanded clean energy and fought for clean energy. two years in a row we've been named best place to do business while at the same time expanding workers' rights. so we feel very good tonight. >> in terms of running on that record, all the nonsense coming from people like us from the national media covering this governor's race tonight have been all about how national dynamics come into play here. the former president comes into play. feelings about the current president come into play. their little discussion about whether or not democrats should have or could have been running more on what you all have been able to do since you held the reins with full democratic control of the state government over the last couple of years. do you feel like that record should have been more front page, should have been more the story of this election rather than everyone trying to make this a national story? >> right. well, i will tell you, we've been talking to voters face to face. my members have been sending mailers and newsletters and keeping up with their constituents, and that's what's key, is that grassroots face-to-face communication. so while it may not have made front-page news, we have been working the ground for two years. that's why i feel good tonight. >> in terms of how this is going to resolve over the course of the evening, if there is going to be a shift in the governor's -- in the state house, if there is going to be a shift and we are going to have a republican governorship in virginia going ahead, and i don't want to get ahead of the numbers but we are watching these numbers and nbc does say that glenn youngkin is in the lead tonight. how do you expect that you and your fellow democrats in the legislature may be able to work with him? >> to -- i'm sorry, you cut out. how -- look, youngkin may be in the lead right now, but all the votes have not been counted. so we're going to just continue to stay the course. we'll wait for all the votes to come in. but we still believe that virginia is a progressive state and we have governed well and that we will continue to govern well. >> virginia house majority leader charniele herring joining us live from virginia as she has just been re-elected to the state house of delegates. charniele herring, thank you so much for being with us tonight. i appreciate you being here. >> thank you so much. i appreciate it. >> all right. so we are still watching those results come in. we are going to take a quick break. as i said, we are still waiting for a victory speech tonight from eric adams, who is going to be the next mayor of the great american city of new york. he has defeated curtis sliwa tonight and will be new york's next mayor. we're expecting his victory speech momentarily. we're also still looking for more returns on both these governors' races we're watching tonight, new jersey and virginia. stay with us. night, new jersey virginia stay with us [ sneeze ] are you ok? oh, it's just a cold. if you have high blood pressure, a cold is not just a cold. unlike other cold medicines, coricidin provides powerful cold relief without raising your blood pressure be there for life's best moments with coricidin. now in sugar free liquid. super emma just about sleeps in her cape. but when we realized she was battling sensitive skin, we switched to tide hygienic clean free. it's gentle on her skin, and out cleans our old free detergent. tide hygienic clean free. hypoallergenic and safe for sensitive skin. for people living with h-i-v, keep being you. and ask your doctor about biktarvy. biktarvy is a complete, one-pill, once-a-day treatment used for h-i-v in certain adults. it's not a cure, but with one small pill, biktarvy fights h-i-v to help you get to and stay undetectable. that's when the amount of virus is so low it cannot be measured by a lab test. research shows people who take h-i-v treatment every day and get to and stay undetectable can no longer transmit h-i-v through sex. serious side effects can occur, including kidney problems and kidney failure. rare, life-threatening side effects include a buildup of lactic acid and liver problems. do not take biktarvy if you take dofetilide or rifampin. tell your doctor about all the medicines and supplements you take, if you are pregnant or breastfeeding, or if you have kidney or liver problems, including hepatitis. if you have hepatitis b, do not stop taking biktarvy without talking to your doctor. common side effects were diarrhea, nausea, and headache. if you're living with hiv, keep loving who you are. and ask your doctor if biktarvy is right for you. with voltaren arthritis pain gel. if you're living with hiv, keep loving who you are. my husband's got his moves back. an alternative to pills, voltaren is a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory gel for powerful arthritis pain relief. voltaren, the joy of movement. emergency planning for kids. we can't predict when an emergency will happen. so that's why it's important to make a plan with your parents. here are a few tips to stay safe. know how to get in touch with your family. write down phone numbers for your parents, siblings and neighbors. pick a place to meet your family if you are not together and can't go home. remind your parents to pack an emergency supply kit. making a plan might feel like homework, but it will help you and your family stay safe during an emergency. welcome back to our special election night coverage here on msnbc. it is still too close to call with republican glenn youngkin in the lead in the virginia governor's race. as you can see there, about 81% of the vote in. and just under 200,000 votes separating youngkin and mcauliffe. right now about 184,000 votes between them. in the new jersey governor's race this is considered to be too early to call. you see about a third of the vote in there and the candidates very, very tight. but that is considered to be too early to call which is different than too close to call. in terms of some of the other results that we are following tonight i can tell you that the associated press has just projected that detroit's incumbent mayor mike dugan will be re-elected this evening. the associated press has also projected that in the closely watched manhattan d.a.'s race, which has national implications, that you can imagine, we'll talk about in just a moment, alvin bragg will be the next district attorney in manhattan. the reason that has national implications is in part because of the existing ongoing criminal case brought by the previous manhattan d.a. against president trump's business. including felony charges against both his business and the chief financial officer of that business. that prosecution will now be in the lap of alvin bragg as that d.a.'s office makes its transition to its new elected d.a. i should also tell you we've been watching an interesting ballot question in minneapolis. minneapolis voters tonight considering whether their police department should be replaced with a department of public safety with a broader and sort of more holistic remit. and right now it's just over 70% of the vote in in minneapolis. it looks like that measure is behind. 16-point gap between those voting no and those voting yes with the nos out ahead. but we'll be watching that in minneapolis. that's super interesting. that's also happening of course alongside minneapolis's mayor jacob frey facing a large slate of challengers as he tries to get re-elected to a second term. in terms of the mayoral race in new york city, nbc news has projected that eric adams will be the next mayor of new york city. we are still waiting for his victory speech, which we expect any moment now. his raucous campaign headquarters has been sort of having a great time since this is projected pretty soon after poll closings. but we'll watch to see eric adams make his victory speech when that comes up, we'll bring that to you. but steve kornacki has had his finger on the pulse in terms of these two governor's races that we have been watching. steve, let's talk first about virginia where we are with youngkin versus mcauliffe. >> rachel, it continues to be a similar story to what we've been talking about with glenn youngkin's lead. you see now it's fallen a little bit. it was 200,000 the last time we checked in. now it's 184,000. it's fallen just a little. now we're over 80% of the vote is in statewide. and again, basically what we've been waiting on here is there are some of the bigger counties in the state had absentee vote and still do have absentee vote to be reported. the absentee vote is the most democratic-friendly. so again, you would expect youngkin -- youngkin. you'd expect mcauliffe to be making up a significant amount of ground here. but again, even when you give mcauliffe, i was just running the numbers here, when you give mcauliffe biden levels of support with the absentee vote that we know to be out in places like chesapeake, virginia beach, chesterfield county south of richmond, if you just say hey, he's going to get the same number joe biden did, which would be very good for terry mcauliffe with that absentee vote, even when you do that he's still not making up 184,000 votes. there's still a significant gap there, about 50,000 or so for youngkin. there are also still some republican-friendly areas of the state that are also still reporting vote. so opportunities still exist for youngkin to build on his lead as well. so again, waiting to see these big chunks come in here, but they'd have to be massively big and kind of out of whack with what we've been seeing elsewhere in the state tonight for mcauliffe to have a shot here. so mcauliffe continues to trail here, running out of votes left in virginia. meanwhile, i will put up new jersey. and again, you see there's just over a third of the vote in right now. and you see phil murphy, the democratic incumbent, ahead by just 6,000 votes over jack ciattarelli, trying to get a handle on exactly how to read this right now. it's a little complicated. i'll show you why -- >> let me interrupt you for just a second to tell you the nbc news characterization on this race, steve, is that it is still too early to call but that phil murphy leads. that characterization was just changed. i don't know if that impacts at all the way you're looking at this. >> no, that's pretty consistent. what i'd say is this. take a look at like hunterdon county. i think we showed this a minute ago. most of the vote, just about all the vote is in in hunterdon county and you see here trump got 51, ciattarelli basically at 61. and ciattarelli needs to be showing about eight to ten-point improvement over trump in every county. just on average if he's going to pull this out. that's an encouraging one there for ciattarelli. you take a look here, monmouth county now 83% of the vote is in. let's compare it. 50 -- again, ten points. you see monmouth, when you see hunterdon it starts to get a little interesting in terms of hmm, is he getting those kinds of numbers? you take a look at gloucester county here, now in south jersey there's improvement here. it's only a six-point improvement with 85% of the vote in. we can go next door to atlantic county. still a little bit early in the atlantic county count. there are some areas here right now where ciattarelli's putting up some very good numbers. the problem for him becomes you take a look here, essex county where newark is, this is the biggest democratic vote-producing county. we don't even have 20%. and there's going to be a lot of democratic votes still to come here. hudson county right next door. again, core democratic county. this is where jersey city is, for instance. and again, look at that. a ton of votes still to come in here. you could even take a look at union county. this is another big democratic county. only 25% in. there are some big, big remaining pockets here of democratic vote. mercer county down where trenton is, pretty good-size place. murphy only up six right there. but early. again, what i want to see here in new jersey, we've got 13% now in bergen county. bergen county's the one i want to see a substantial amount of vote in. because if this could hold in bergen county, if ciattarelli could continue to -- you see 41% for trump. ciattarelli's doing 11 points better than trump right now in bergen county. if that could hold, that's the kind of improvement that ciattarelli needs in bergen county's the largest county in the state. there's a million people there. and it's typically pretty much a bellwether county. not always but usually as bergen goes so goes the state. i want to see bergen, and other one i want to see where we have no votes so far is burlington county in south jersey. and again, burlington county i think is a lot like bergen county. this was the result in burlington county in the 2020 presidential election. that's not far off what the statewide result was in new jersey. is ciattarelli getting like -- is he getting 49%, 50%? is he ever winning a burlington county? those are big, big lifts for a republican candidate. if he could do that in bergen, if he could do that in burlington. especially with what's to come in these core democratic areas. in some areas that have more republican voting history so far we've seen ciattarelli putting up some good numbers. but we've got to see first of all how many votes exactly the democrats squeeze out of essex, where newark is, hudson. we've also got to see bergen and burlington. that's really what i'm looking for right now. >> and steve, in new jersey is this the sort of thing where we've got 13 votes out from these individual county, we know what kind of votes those are? that's the distinction that's been important in virginia. >> new jersey is a little different from virginia where the absentee vote in new jersey there's a lot more of the absentee vote in new jersey is the mail vote than it is the in-person early vote. in virginia it's the other way around. the people who vote early absentee are more likely to do the in person early than do the mail. and the mail tends to be more democratic friendly. for example, we have a fair chunk of mail vote in essex county so far. we've also -- let's see in fact if we've got this here. i want to see if this was working. yes, here we go. we've got a mix of it right now in monmouth county. with 83% in. so it's actually -- there's not one dominant type of vote here left in monmouth county. if i can get that off the screen. get that -- get that off the screen. >> unplug it and replug it in. >> one of these days i'm going to learn it. but that's a good sign for ciattarelli within monmouth county. i don't know what i'm pressing. okay. that's a good sign for ciattarelli in monmouth county. but i think the key is only 13% in bergen right now. and with ciattarelli up there that wouldn't be the mail vote there. and nothing in burlington. these are two pretty big ones. especially bergen. so i think as they go that's really going to tell us our story. >> all right. steve kornacki watching what's coming in in new jersey. again, the characterization there has just changed in the past couple of minutes. nbc news now projecting that in the new jersey governor's race it is still too early to call but nbc is characterizing this race as being one that phil murphy, the incumbent democratic governor, is leading. again, one of the things that we are watching for in the next few minutes is that the new york city mayor's race has been called. eric adams, who's currently the brooklyn borough president, is projected to be the next mayor of new york city. this is a shot of his headquarters where we believe that is him taking the stage. you see him about to give his speech. if he is i would like to take it if we can. >> mayor for the city of new york, eric l. adams! [ cheers and applause ] ♪♪ >> the champ is here! ♪♪ the champ is here! ♪♪ the champ is here! the champ is here! the champ is here! ♪♪ the champ is here! the champ is here! >> i don't know if he's going to crowd surf a little bit here or if this is going to become a speech soon. chris, you're closer to the monitor. what's happening? >> he's just soaking it in and putting together a kind of rainbow coalition on stage of supporters. an incredibly new york-looking picture. of all kinds of folks representing all different slices of the incredibly diverse and complicated city that is new york city. and he's i think enjoying being the winner right now and taking something of a victory lap. he doesn't seem to be in a rush. >> literally a victory lap. this has been a couple laps around the room and a couple laps around the stage while we've been watching. you never ever get that moment again, which is just before you give your first victory speech as new york city mayor. you only get this moment once in life. >> not only that it's like christmas eve, you know? it's better than anything. it's all expectation and hope and possibility. there's no burdens yet. you don't have to run new york city. >> his victory speech is perfect. >> by the way, i would still argue and no one will ever be be table to talk me down from this, new york city mayor is the greatest mayoral job in america. it's the most interesting. it's the most colorful. >> and hard as heck. >> and it's hard as heck. just the subway issue alone. >> i wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. >> me either. >> you think presidents get amgd aged by be being president? what happens to new york city mayors? >> and it's occupied by someone who's interesting. only the second black mayor after david dinkins. in a city that's very diverse. >> the team, the team told me, the team told me to come through the back, come around the stage, come directly in. and they said this is the way we want you to move. and i said to them, i'm the mayor. [ cheers and applause ] and if they only knew the level of energy i get when i walk in your crowd. there are days on this journey when i was just so depleted and tired and just weary. and historically i was able to just go out to queens and sit down with mommy and she would re-energize me, dealing with mommy transition in april. i would move among you somewhere at a train station, at the grocery store, walking inside the laundromat, or just going to some of the barbershops late at night in brownsville and bed stuy and go inside when they finish cutting hairs. and we'd just sit there and just talk. you don't know how much you fuel me. you just fuel me every day. and let me tell you the uniqueness about the fuel that -- it's a shakespearean tragedy that many of you don't know. it doesn't matter if you are in borough park in hasidic community, if you're in flat busch in a korean community, if you're in sunset park in a chinese community, if you're in rockaway, if you are in queens in the dominican community, washington heights. all of you have the power to fuel us. we are so divided right now. and we're missing the beauty of our diversity. we have to end all of this division of who we are, what do we wear. no. today we take off the intramural jersey and we put on one jersey, team new york. [ cheers and applause ] so new york city, brothers and sisters, i just need to pause for a moment because it's so important for me to do this. five people -- i must acknowledge. i'm going to acknowledge all of you within time, but there's five people i must acknowledge. first is my sister, ingrid martin. where's ingrid? [ cheers and applause ] if i can quote one of the most philosophical geniuses of our time, drake, started from the bottom, now we're here. [ cheers and applause ] >> you're watching eric adams, who is going to be the next mayor of new york city. only the second african-american mayor in new york city's history. he defeated republican curtis sliwa. a real character in his own right. tonight in order to win the new york city mayoral race. i want to let you know we just got in a little bit of news. we still don't have a call in the virginia governor's race. it's characterized right now as being too close to call, with republican glenn youngkin in the lead. but a senior official in the mcauliffe campaign has just told us that we should expect to hear from terry mcauliffe within the next few minutes. we are hearing from the mcauliffe campaign that their take on this race right now is that there's lots of votes still to count and so we expect that that will probably be the kind of speech that terry mcauliffe is about to give in virginia. but we shall see. i want to bring back into the conversation now our friend david plouffe, who was campaign manager for president barack obama's 2008 presidential run. he knows what it takes for a democrat to win statewide in virginia because he's done it. david, as this story has ripened over the course of the night and the picture has become more clear, what do you feel like democrats will take away from what's looking like may end up being a split decision between new jersey and virginia? obviously looks like it may be disappointment for democrats in virginia, both at the governor's race and potentially in the state legislature as well. >> well, rachel, what will matter most for people in virginia is now they may have republican control, and i think a lot of people in that state are going to see real negative consequences. but listen, the virginia margin is probably going to be anywhere from 10 to 14 below biden's margin. my sense in new jersey back of the envelope is maybe you're 10 to 12 points below biden's margin there too. so let's remember, democratic party in 2020, we won the presidency, won the senate because of georgia, but we lost 13 house races when biden was winning virginia by 10 and new jersey by 18. so the conversation you and chris hayes were having is interesting. there's unique elements to these races in terms of virginia and new jersey but there's also the national political environment. and i think democrats need to be clear-eyed and sober that if the race for the house or senate happened next week and it's not in this national political environment they probably lose both. i expect the political environment can and should get better for democrats a year from now. they're going to have a lot of accomplishments to run on, particularly incumbents. and i think they need to prosecute the case against the republicans. but i think we should not say, well, this was virginia or this was new jersey. this is really, really dark and bleak in terms of what this means for next year unless we turn it around in the next 12 months. >> yeah, david, i wonder how much -- i mean, there's a few things to jump off. i wonder how much you think that is the conditions in the country and how much that's messaging obviously as a political professional you want it to be messaging as much as possible. but you know, my read of this is the most bullish case for biden and the democrats is that you pass both elements of this agenda, you get the country vaccinated, you suppress covid, inflation goes down, supply chains kind of become unkinked and you have like a good economy and the country feels back to normal a year from now. and that's more important than any message or ads that you run. >> i tend to agree with that, chris. and as someone who's spent a career in messaging it's painful to say. but when you've got powerful headwinds or tailwinds you know, a message can make a difference but it's not going to overwhelm those things. so yeah, maybe it can get worse. i think the bullish view that a year from now democrats will have had big accomplishments that they can do storytelling to to everybody in america, republicans would have stood in opposition. the pandemic hopefully is either completely in our rearview mirror or endemic. i think it's important at some point the democratic leaders in the country say 80% of the people have now been vaccinated, 5 to 12-year-olds can start getting the shot tomorrow, we can move on and that should help the economy. i'm bullish that the case will get better in the next 12 months in terms of the environment. but it's pretty dark right now. and i think we need to learn a lot about which voers moved in these states and why. both swing and base. >> i have some stats that the great sahill kapoor just tweeted out. mcauliffe is slightly ahead with non-white voters. so that was not his issue. he's slightly behind with white male voters. that seems fairly typical for a democrat. he's getting clobbered among white women voters. in 2020 white women voters went 50% for biden, 49% for trump. in this election per the exit polls they're going 57-43 for mcauliffe. that is not macro. that's issues. with education being the number one thing on the minds of these voters. that means that terry mcauliffe lost a very specific messaging war on race. so i wonder what would be your advice to democrats about how they should answer that. is it a candidate that's different that is somebody maybe newer, maybe a candidate of color, just somebody who knows how to message that? what could they have done differently? because that is not a good number for them going into next year. >> no, it's a massive shift. i will say, joy, some of it is i think -- first of all, youngkin portrayed himself as not a trump republican. okay? he ran as kind of almost a romney republican for most of the race. there's no doubt critical race theory is a weapon that he utilized to great effect. but i think a lot of those white women they've now gone negative on joe biden's job performance, they're worried about the economy, they're worried about the pandemic. we've been dealing with school issues for a year and a half in terms of kids in school. so i think it's a blend. i think the mistake democrats would make is to say we just lost 16 points with white women, which is a massive shift in 12 months, and it's only because of the race glenn youngkin ran. i think it's a blend, and i think you have to understand these are big, big warning signs that are blinking as bright as they can. >> you know, one more thing on this on youngkin and trump, which i think is an interesting takeaway tonight, david, and i'd be curious to hear what you think. one is youngkin -- donald trump blew up so much about our politics that reclaiming the most conventional wisdom pretrump feels like some innovation. this is the way republicans always used to run. they would say it was about education, it was about welfare, it was about a handout. you know, there were these sort of coded appeals that were able to weave together different coalitions that the guy at the back of the rally with the confederate flag was there for you but so was the relatively affluent suburban mom who doesn't like donald trump saying send them back and we're going to ban all the muslims. right? this is not rocket science. this is how republicans used to run. i actually wonder the extent to which in republican political circles there's an understanding that like donald trump, you don't maybe need him in the way that you think you do given how much the transformation of your base into this kind of very backlashy base right now is going to be there whether you court him or you don't. >> well, chris, i think that's true in the general election. i agree with you. it's a very low bar to kind of portray yourself as not donald trump. >> yes. >> but right now most of the united states senate races that will determine control i think you'd say maybe with the exception of new hampshire the lead candidates right now are trump-like figures. so in republican primaries that gate i think still slants in that direction. >> yeah. >> and that's another reason i think to be more optimistic about the democrats, is they may nominate a bunch of people who aren't glenn youngkin. i can't believe i'm saying glenn youngkin is some ideal candidate. he's not. but i think they are going to come out of the senate primaries owning everything. you know, all the trump. not apologizing for anything. and by the way, someone who came across as less of a moderate voice might not have been able to pull off the critical race theory thing because they might just come across as a flat out racist. i think youngkin came across as somebody wrongly in my view but was able to convince voters including a lot of those white women voters, you know, that he's not a racist and he thinks race should be taught but it just shouldn't be this critical race theory, which of course doesn't exist. so i think we have to look very carefully about the type of republican candidate that comes out of house republican and senate primaries next year. >> in terms of how things are resolving right now in virginia, there's still more to learn in terms of how this is breaking down. i know that steve kornacki is looking at new data that we've got out of fairfax? is that right, steve? >> yeah, we've been talking all night about fairfax the biggest county in the state. this is sort of the ultimate test of the northern virginia area here. we finally have basically all the vote in in fairfax county. so i think this really does kind of give you a clearer picture of everything we've been talking about tonight about what happened in virginia. basically all the vote now in in fairfax county. again, 1 out of every 7 votes cast in virginia cast in fairfax. mcauliffe 64.4, youngkin 35%. a margin of a little under 30% for terry mcauliffe. this is the story of the night right here because this is what it looked like in 2020. donald trump won -- excuse me, joe biden won virginia by ten points. big reason joe biden had such a big margin statewide, he won by far the largest county by 42 points. tonight that margin is falling to about 29 points. mcauliffe over youngkin. we said the youngkin campaign's goal in a place like fairfax county was probably to get it to about 33, 34. they're going to land at 35%. again, if you had told him at the start of the night you're getting 35 in fairfax, they'd be ecstatic. so we have a much more complete picture of northern virginia right now. we talked about the question at the start of the night, could youngkin win back some of the voters lost by donald trump? he did in fairfax. he improved seven points over donald trump. he did in loudoun county next door. we've talked about this. he's going to improve eight points in loudoun county over donald trump. take a look closer here. prince william county, we are still waiting on prince william county. this is one of those places where the absentee vote is still to come, and we can see in arlington county here this is right outside washington, d.c. and again, even here youngkin's improving by about six points over donald trump. so he's getting -- didn't have to win this area. didn't have to come close to winning this area. but he got the five, six, seven, eight-point improvement, youngkin, that he needed to combined as we've been talking about with -- when you look at some of the margins he's rolling up here in these rural counties, just massive, massive numbers for him there. and that's the recipe for what you're seeing here statewide. >> and steve, overall we've got 87% of the vote in in virginia. in terms of this potentially being called, we are expecting right now that mcauliffe's about to give a speech. we don't expect that it's going to be a concession speech. a senior official with the campaign telling us that he's due to speak any minute. and we expect that the message will be there's more vote out there, there's a lot more votes still to count, don't give up. is that a rational message at this point? >> yeah, i'm just taking a look at our spreadsheet to see where there is still vote left. like i said, what the democrats still have here are a couple of places, prince william is an example of this. i just put it up on the screen. you see about 60% of the vote is in in prince william county. what is still to come in prince william county is going to be the absentee vote. so it's going to be the more democratic vote. but i'm just looking at the numbers here. what's left, even if you applied like the level of support that joe biden got in 2020 and you applied it here, you know, mcauliffe might be be able to net 15,000 votes. he's trying to make up 126,000 statewide. there also still are some places i'm looking at on the map here, there are still some places left, much, much smaller than a prince william county but places where there's still vote out that are republican, where the vote is going to be republican. not every area that reports more vote right now is cutting into that youngkin lead. so it's just tough to look at what's left on here, and i think especially just to look at the trends that are so well established. again, throughout the state tonight. i'll just take you down to virginia beach. again, now we're starting to gept a lot of the absentee. virginia beach is not moving that much toward mcauliffe. the trends are so well established it's hard to see where mcauliffe could come up with 125,000 votes and change at this point. >> in terms of the timing here, obviously the decision desk makes an independent decision in terms of when it makes these calls. they're not influenced by us and we have no ability to try to influence them if we wanted to. but we can watch the scene -- watch the signs from the campaigns. and as i said, we are expecting terry mcauliffe to be speaking any moment. and there's no sign that this is going to be a concession speech. again, we've got some advance word about what the word is going to be. but we've got eyes on that room. right now we're showing that live shot right now at mcauliffe headquarters. you're starting to see people get up on stage. can we take that full frame for just a moment? just so we can see how they are setting up these remarks expected, again, from terry mcauliffe. there he is. let's go to this live. he's greeted by his supporters at his campaign headquarters in virginia. [ crowd chanting "terry" ] >> well, good evening, everybody! what an honor to be here with you tonight. let me first of all thank you for coming out here tonight. and i want to thank our great governor ralph northam and pam northam. [ cheers and applause ] the great work that they have done. so we've still got a lot of votes to count. we've got about 18% of the vote out. so we're going to continue to count the votes because every single virginian deserves to have their vote counted. [ cheers and applause ] let me first of all -- i want to thank everybody here with us tonight. it has been a great campaign. i started this campaign 328 days ago. i have done an average of 7 to 10 events a day for the last 328 days. and it was great to be here. we opened up this campaign, when i kicked off this campaign down in richmond with my great co-chairs lavar stoney and louise lucas and charniele herring to talk about how we need to rebuild all our schools in the commonwealth of virginia and raise teacher pay and get every child access to a pre-k education and to get everybody access to broadband here in the commonwealth of virginia. and we have continued to take that fight throughout this commonwealth. but first of all, i want to thank my family. i want to start by thanking -- [ cheers and applause ] i want to thank my wife, dorothy. she has been a champion. a true policy expert. and through her efforts, as you know, 13 million more meals served to needy children here in the commonwealth. and i want to thank my family. you know, you don't get to pick your parents, as you know. you're born into the family. and they have survived campaign after campaign. and i want to thank dory, who is here with me tonight with her fiance nick, who's here. jack mcauliffe, who is here with his fiance shannon tonight. sally mcauliffe. and peter mcauliffe. so let's count all these votes. but let me thank each and every one of you. over the course of the last 11 months for the doors that you've knocked down, the phone calls that you made. just last weekend 450,000 doors knocked on. 2 million during the course of this campaign. i want to thank you. the mcauliffe family loves each and every one of you. thank you for what you've done for this campaign. and i want to thank my campaign staff. it was the greatest campaign staff ever assembled. and give them a great round of applause for all the great work they have done. but folks, as i said long ago, this is a different state. i was elected eight years ago. we made our state open and welcoming. but the fight continues. we've got to make sure we continue to protect women's right to choose here in the commonwealth of virginia. we've got to make sure everybody gets quality affordable health care here in the commonwealth of virginia. everybody's entitled to a world-class education here in the commonwealth of virginia. and we are going to continue that fight tonight and every day going forward. so i just want to thank all of you for what you have meant to us. i look around this room and i see so many friends we've worked with for many years. this is a different state. we are the greatest state in the united states of america. and it's because of you. thank you. god bless you. and let's go out in form. thank you. >> democratic candidate terry mcauliffe. he is the former governor of virginia. he's in the running tonight to become the next governor of virginia as well. an upbeat speech and a weird little dance from terry mcauliffe tonight. not a concession. although the nbc news characterization of that race right now is that it is too close to call with youngkin in the lead. again, we've got a lot of the vote in in virginia. we've got about 87% of the vote in. there's a difference of about 120-something votes, 120,000-something votes between the two of them. we are expecting i think that we will also get remarks from glenn youngkin. again, that was not a concession speech from terry mcauliffe talking about how much vote remains to be counted and thanking everybody for participation in his campaign. we have no way to characterize youngkin's expected remarks either other than to show you this live shot of his headquarters. his very exuberant crowd. and we are i think expecting to hear from him sometime soon. again, no characterization of what those remarks may include. our beloved colleague lawrence o'donnell is here. it's so nice to see you in person, my friend. >> nice to see you. great to be here. >> how's this night been for you so far? >> well, i think people have to remember we were watching to see if terry mcauliffe could do something that has never been done before. virginia has one-term governors, apparently for a reason. apparently, virginia voters like it that way. there has been exactly one, one who managed to get a second term. and that was mills godwin. he won as a democrat in 1965 and in 1973 he won again but as a republican that time. so that's virginia. this is if terry mcauliffe pulls this off the very first time in history a democrat will have won a second term. so that's how high the mountain was that he's been trying to climb. and there's four years of this campaign that has been largely ignored, and that was the four years of his governorship. so those virginia voters had an opinion about that that they carried through this campaign. i think many of them immune from the entire campaign because their mind was made up at that point. so that's another hard thing for mcauliffe because that's usually a negative decision they've made about incumbents. so it's remarkable if he can pull this off, and it is simply history behaving itself if he does not pull this off. >> that's exactly right. as i said, we are expecting glenn youngkin to speak, we think, shortly. we think. we're going to take a quick break because we don't think that's immediately imminent. but when we come back we're going to check in with that new jersey governor's race which is too early to call with democratic incumbent governor phil murphy in the lead. we're also going to check back in with this very tight race in virginia that has not yet been called. and we do think we may get remarks from glenn youngkin. lots still to come today. lots still to be decided. stay with us. the night is young. bogeys on your six, limu. they need customized car insurance from liberty mutual so they only pay for what they need. woooooooooooooo... we are not getting you a helicopter. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ there's a different way to treat hiv. it's once-monthly injectable cabenuva. cabenuva is the only once-a-month, complete hiv treatment for adults who are undetectable. cabenuva helps keep me undetectable. it's two injections, given by a healthcare provider once a month. hiv pills aren't on my mind. i love being able to pick up and go. don't receive cabenuva if you're allergic to its ingredients or taking certain medicines, which may interact with cabenuva. serious side effects include allergic reactions post-injection reactions, liver problems,...and depression. if you have a rash and other allergic reaction symptoms, stop cabenuva and get medical help right away. tell your doctor if you have liver problems or mental health concerns, and if you are pregnant, breastfeeding, or considering pregnancy. some of the most common side effects include injection site reactions, fever, and tiredness. if you switch to cabenuva, attend all treatment appointments. with once-a-month cabenuva, i'm good to go. ask your doctor about once-monthly cabenuva. at vanguard, you're more than just an investor, you're an owner with access to financial advice, tools and a personalized plan that helps you build a future for those you love. vanguard. become an owner. if you have this... consider adding this. an aarp medicare supplement insurance plan from unitedhealthcare. medicare supplement plans help by paying some of what medicare doesn't... and let you see any doctor. any specialist. anywhere in the u.s. who accepts medicare patients. so if you have this... consider adding this. call unitedhealthcare today for your free decision guide. ♪ tonight, i'll be eating a club sandwich with fries and a side of mayonnaise. [doorbell rings] wonderful! mayonnaise? on fries? a little judgy, don't you think? ♪ that's weird. so weird. ♪ oouf. i'll also be needing, stain remover, club soda and a roll of paper towels. [doorbell rings] lifesaver! you're weird, man. to each his own. with xfinity home, you can keep your home you're weird, man. and everything in it more protected. i can wrangle all my deliveries. thanks, hoss! and i help walk the dog from wherever. *door unlocks* ♪ ♪ well, i can bust curfew-breakers in an instant. well, you all have xfinity home, with cameras to home security monitored by the pros. *laughs* learn more about home security or get our self-monitored solution starting at just $10 per month. in addition to these big high-profile governor's races we're watching we've been watching some interesting mayor's races around the country including this our first look at the boston mayoral race. this is a runoff between the two candidates who placed as the first two contenders in the earlier -- in the earlier boston mayor's contest, michelle wu was the first place finisher in that earlier contest. annisa essaibi george is running fairly close. this is about 30% of the vote in. michelle wu with a 13-point lead. i would never forgive myself if i didn't ask lawrence o'donnell for an instant reaction to that. >> well, michelle wu has had bigger leads than that in the polls just about every day of this campaign. so the expectation here has been that it will be michelle wu. it would be a gigantic upset if she didn't win. and if she wins not only will she be boston's first elected woman mayor, replacing boston's first woman mayor, kim jany, a black woman who took over when mayor marty walsh went into the cabinet, but she will be the first person born outside of boston's orbit. almost all boston mayors were born in boston. the other -- the expanded geography that boston voters are ready to accept were mayored born in new england somewhere else like maine, maybe in the summer. and you could also be born in ireland. that was allowed. >> it's okay, yeah. >> she's born in illinois. that's just a wild thing. it's outrageous. and she came there to go to harvard college. and so this is boston kind of adjusting to you don't have to be from here anymore. >> wow. it will never fully -- let's be clear. we are watching sort of a split screen here. the virginia governor's race. we just heard from democratic candidate terry mcauliffe, who gave not a concession speech but a there's still more vote out there speech. we are expecting we think glenn youngkin, the republican candidate, who is leading in this too close to call race, we're expecting remarks from glenn youngkin. his headquarters is hopping and his supporters are very excited in virginia tonight. we'll bring you those remarks from glenn youngkin if and when he makes them. but again, the characterization of that virginia race is too close to call with glenn youngkin the republican in the lead. that's with 88% of the vote in. but we've also got an interesting situation in new jersey. the characterization there is that it's too early to call. just about half the vote is in. 52% of the vote. but nbc news characterizes this as phil murphy, the democratic incumbent, is in the lead. that's not what it looks like on our screen, steve. so can you explain that call? >> yeah, it's an interesting situation here. ciattarelli leads in the count, in the running tally. you can see it ticked up a little bit more. by about four points over murphy. let me take you through what we know because it is a little bit complicated. one thing that we're seeing is that areas that in the recent past i should say when republicans like chris christie won in new jersey, when other republicans have been competitive in new jersey, ciattarelli is making big, big gains in those areas tonight relative to donald trump. i'll just take you through them. hunterdon county is a very good example here. almost all the vote is in in hunterdon county. here's how trump did last year. here's how ciattarelli did this year. that is a significant improvement. if you're ciattarelli, you're very pleased to see that. but put this in some perspective. when donald trump lost statewide to joe biden last year in new jersey, the margin was 16 points. right? joe biden won the state by 16 points. so if you just did kind of a flat improvement, the same improvement for ciattarelli in every county, he'd need to jump 16 points kind of everywhere. so here ciattarelli's winning by 22 tonight. right? trump won by about 4 1/2. we'll call it say 4 1/2. that is i adifference of about 17 1/2. it's more than 16 but it's not much more than 16. so it's an encouraging sign for ciattarelli that in an area where republicans have done very well in the past he's making that much of an improvement. the question starts to become okay, is he also making improvements like that in areas that are harder to win for republicans and also by the way bigger in terms of the vote they bring out? so that takes us for instance to essex county. essex county one of the biggest in the state. this is newark and the area right around newark. now, here joe biden won by 56 points basically last year. right now this is mainly mail-in vote that we see right now in essex county. that's why murphy's up into the 80s right now. we've got a lot of the same-day, the vote that was cast today, to come in essex county. so we want to see what that does. but again, using this as a benchmark, if biden won by about 56 points here last year and ciattarelli's goal is to be improving by 16 points, can he keep this within 40 in essex county? that's a monumental ask for a republican. let's see what happens when that same-day vote comes in. but this is a big core democratic county. it's a hard number for ciattarelli to hit here. we will see if he does. but if he doesn't, if he falls short of it, then it becomes the kind of situation where that good number he had in hunterdon county is a good number that's not quite good enough because he didn't match it in the democratic area. we're kind of looking for that dynamic. the other thing i would tell you is i flagged two big kind of suburban counties here and said let's keep an eye on bergen and burlington counties. these are kind of bellwether counties in new jersey. so we're starting to get more vote in in bergen county. this is interesting because ciattarelli is making a significant jump over trump's number in bergen county. however, the key to this is there is no mail yet included in this bergen county tally. some of the counties have included it. the mail is overwhelmingly democratic. so ciattarelli's doing very well with the election day vote here. what we need to see in bergen county is when you factor in the heavily pro-murphy mail vote here what's that going to land at? is ciattarelli still going to end up winning this county? is he still going to end up having a double-digit improvement over donald trump there? same story in burlington county. again, right now ciattarelli is improving leaps and bounds over trump in burlington county. there is no mail vote that is part of this. so again, that's a big kind of outstanding question here. when the mail vote gets factored in, is ciattarelli still going to be showing anything like that kind of improvement? that's the kind of improvement he needs to be showing in order to have a shot here. so if you're ciattarelli right now, again, we can reset this to statewide. places like hunterdon county they're very happy with what they're seeing. we can show you in monmouth county getting close to 90% of the vote is in in monmouth county. monmouth county is the kind of place when chris christie was getting elected governor of new jersey he was racking up massive margins in monmouth county. you can see trump barely carried it last year and now here's ciattarelli with that almost 20-point improvement in monmouth county. he's getting it in a place like hunterdon. he's getting it in a place like monmouth. we're taking a look at ocean county. core republican county here in the state. ciattarelli is outpacing donald trump. the margin of difference between ciattarelli and trump's performance isn't a ton -- although the turnout, we're seeing extremely high turnout in ocean county. that's something for the republicans to smile at too. ciattarelli's doing a lot of things in these counties i'm showing you to make this a very competitive race statewide. but i've got to see -- in bergen and burlington the question is the mail vote. we've got to see what bergen and burlington look like when we actually have the core democratic vote counted there. and then we've got to see the same-day vote in a place like essex county to see if ciattarelli can land somewhere much better than he's running right now in essex county. when you can get a county in like a bergen or an essex or a burlington, something like that, if you can get all the vote in one of those counties and ciattarelli's doing in one of them something like he's doing in a hunterdon county or a monmouth county, then it's game on. so my curiosity is absolutely piqued here, but i want to see. i want to see something outside of one of these sort of traditionally republican counties swinging back to ciattarelli. i want to see if it's matched in one of these others i'm talking about. >> steve, you are the only election guru who i would ever ask this question to because i'm so confident in your knowledge of new jersey politics. what does it mean that essex only has 18% in? in the sense that i want to know if i'm going to know who the governor's going to be before i go to bed. how long will it take essex to get that number up in terms of how much it's reporting? i mean, not to mention bergen and burlington without having any of their mail vote counted. but essex at only 18% of the vote and hours after the polls have closed, what do you expect from essex county in terms of their counting pace? >> yeah, and actually what's interesting in essex county like i'm saying is they have a lot of the mail vote counted. when i look at this right now in terms of being concerned about getting a result tonight, these two are jumping out at me, bergen and burlington, for that reason of the mail vote. new jersey does not allow the counties to open up the mail ballots until midnight of -- last midnight they could open these ballots and begin processing them. i don't think they all did. i think there's going to be some -- i think there's the possibility -- this is what we saw in the 2020 election where the mail ballots are being counted for a couple days after the election. i'm looking at bergen. i'm looking at burlington. i'm looking at a few other places like this on the map and i'm definitely seeing that possibility right now. >> we're going to take a quick break. when we come back, we are expecting remarks from glenn youngkin, the republican candidate for governor in virginia. we just had remarks from the democrat terry mcauliffe, who said there are more votes to count. this is a race that is characterized as too close to call with youngkin in the lead. we're expecting remarks from youngkin any moment. we'll take a quick break and come back with that right on the other side. stay with us. ever notice how stiff clothes can feel rough on your skin? it's because they rub against you creating friction. and your clothes rub against you all day. for softer clothes that are gentle on your skin, try downy free & gentle. just pour into the rinse dispenser and downy will soften your clothes without dyes or perfumes. the towel washed with downy is softer, fluffier, and gentler on your skin. try downy free & gentle. recognized by the national psoriasis foundation and national eczema association. ♪♪ three times the electorlytes and half the sugar. ♪♪ pedialyte powder packs. feel better fast. to make progress, we must keep taking steps forward. we believe the future of energy is lower carbon. and to get there, the world needs to reduce global emissions. at chevron, we're taking action. tying our executives' pay to lowering the carbon emissions intensity of our operations. it's tempting to see how far we've come. but it's only human... to know how far we have to go. after my dvt blood clot... i was uncertain... was another around the corner? or could things take a different turn? i wanted to help protect myself. my doctor recommended eliquis. eliquis is proven to treat and help prevent another dvt or pe blood clot. almost 98 percent of patients on eliquis didn't experience another. ...and eliquis has significantly less major bleeding than the standard treatment. eliquis is fda-approved and has both. don't stop eliquis unless your doctor tells you to. eliquis can cause serious and in rare cases fatal bleeding. don't take eliquis if you have an artificial heart valve or abnormal bleeding. if you had a spinal injection while on eliquis call your doctor right away if you have tingling, numbness, or muscle weakness. while taking eliquis, you may bruise more easily... and it may take longer than usual for bleeding to stop. seek immediate medical care for sudden signs of bleeding, like unusual bruising. eliquis may increase your bleeding risk if you take certain medicines. tell your doctor about all planned medical or dental procedures. what's around the corner could be worth waiting for. ask your doctor about eliquis. we're back with our election coverage tonight here on msnbc. this is the situation in the new jersey governor's race. and i did say situation there on purpose. it's my only reality tv show reference of the entire night. i get one. that's the situation. it's too early to call the democratic nominee. excuse me, the democratic incumbent phil murphy is characterized by nbc news as being in the lead even though the numbers don't look that way on your screen. that's because of which vote has come in thus far in new jersey. we're continuing to watch that closely. it's turning out to be super interesting. this is the situation in virginia. nbc news characterizes this as too close to call with 91% of the vote in now. too close to call with republican glenn youngkin leading. we are expecting remarks from glenn youngkin fairly soon. we've also been watching down ticket races in virginia because if glenn youngkin is elected the new republican governor in virginia, one of the big things that will make a big difference in the lives of virginians is whether he's also got republicans in the state legislature with whom he can form a governing coalition. democrats have controlled the governor's house -- excuse me, the governorship and both houses of the state legislature for the last two years in virginia. that's a very rare thing. the democrats are struggling to hold on to their majority in the state house of delegates tonight. nadarius clark is a 26-year-old candidate for the virginia house of delegates tonight. i want to show you a little piece of tape. from earlier this year. this is the night that he won his spot on the ballot tonight. he won this spot on the ballot tonight by beating a three-term incumbent in the primary back in june in order to become a candidate for this seat that night. watch this. if you haven't seen it before, this will stick with you. >> this is just truly so remarkable. i'm so happy that i was able to do this, to show virginia that we needed new representation, that the time is now to make a change. and we did that. >> talk to me about the emotion. >> yeah. >> all time and effort you've spent. >> yes. it's been a long six months. day in and day out knocking doors, making calls. it's just so emotional because i didn't think this would happen. people like me don't normally get this opportunity to represent their community. so it's just so remarkable that we got the opportunity to do this, to show virginia that a young 26-year-old can make a difference in their community. >> that was june 8th. nadarius clark beat a three-term incumbent to become the democratic nominee for the virginia house of delegates in his district that represents parts of portsmouth and chesapeake and norfolk. tonight nadarius clark is leading in that race by i think it's 13 points at this point. mr. clark, thank you very much for joining us tonight. thank you so much for making time. >> yes, thank you for having me. >> am i right that you're up about 13 points right now looking at the returns in your district? >> yes, you got it right. we're up by 13. >> how are you feeling about the prospects tonight? obviously your race is an important one. every race in the house of delegates tonight is important. but these governorships -- the governorship returns tonight are pretty spooky for democrats thinking that the prospect there may be a republican governor elected tonight in your state. >> yeah, definitely we're still hopeful. we've got some early votes that still is coming in. you know, we're still staying optimistic. we ran a great campaign. democrats up and down the ballot. and i'm hoping that turnout will come out and results will give us what we're looking for. but we're still ready to fight for these great causes democrats have been fighting for up and down the ballot. there's so much still on the line. we're still keeping our fingers crossed and hoping for the best tonight. but it's looking like -- i believe terry will pull it off once the numbers come in. >> mr. clark, this is joy reid. quick question for you. you really are at the polar opposite in many ways in terms of the politics of today from the man who's running for governor, terry mcauliffe. he's someone who's been around politics for a very long time. you're obviously a 26-year-old new face. tell me what you think -- if you're able to pull this off, what should that tell democrats about the kind of candidates who resonate? and what was your core message in the general election to the voters in your district? >> yes, thank you for that question. the main thing we see is when you get out here, when you're in your community, in your district, knocking doors, making phone calls, sending text messages, you have to be available to your community and they will be -- and they will come out and show up for you. and that's what we've been seeing in the general and the primary. we knocked 20,000 doors in the general. we've been helping candidates up and down the ballot with door knocking. and i think what resonates is that people can be tangible, be in their community and stand up for their community. >> mr. clark, if you win tonight, you'll be the youngest person ever elected to the virginia house of delegates. you'll be be the first african-american person elected in your district. breaking those kinds of of glass ceilings is important on any night. on a night when your state seems to be swinging somewhat in the other direction, it has to be not daunting but it has to be -- you must feel the weight of that. you must feel the responsibility of that but also the history of that on this evening. i have to imagine. >> yes. definitely. as we know, virginia has a long history that is a sad history. as we know, virginia was the capital of the confederacy and it was also the first state that introduced slavery. so now just to see that i'm the first african-american to represent my district, i'm the youngest democrat ever elected for the virginia house of delegates, this is a long time coming and voters agreed and they said it's time for fresh blood and new ideas and innovative thoughts. so that's why the voters put me here. i'm just so thankful that they showed up for me. being out there day in and day out knocking these doors, meeting the voters. they were so appreciative that someone was out there. and have turned out for me. >> nadarius clark, 26-year-old candidate for the virginia house of delegates, currently leading in his race tonight. sir, good luck. thank you for joining us tonight. come back soon. >> thank you. thank you for having me. >> all right. again, the results are still unsettled tonight as of virginia and as of new jersey. frankly, watching our new jersey results come in, to have the distance between that characterization of the race with the democrat in the lead, but we are looking at the republican in the lead in terms of the count that we've already got, having absolutely no idea about when any other count is coming in. >> yeah. >> there's a lot of drama tonight. this is a dramatic night. >> but in a way it's part of the way that we wind up getting republicans able to put forward these anti-voter laws because these elections are not a thing where you get a result. there's a thing where you get an early result based on who votes that day and then that could completely change based on when they start counting the absentee and they start counting the early -- once you start counting more votes, things can dramatically change. and i think for a lot of voters who were used to having a call in an election and it seemed a lot simpler it's really easy to manipulate people into thinking there's something sneaky going on when it flips. >> and there's nothing wrong with having these different types of vote that take different amounts of time to count. >> it's normal. >> provided people aren't already wired by propagandists who have been trying to wire them this way, to believe that any delay or anything that seems to switch over time against their proven candidate shows that there's something nefarious in the election and the results should be rejected. >> exactly. >> yeah, and we used to have elections going on overnight and into the next day. many presidential elections. 1960 wasn't decided till the next day. '68 wasn't decided till the next morning. and no one thought there was anything strange about that. it takes a while to count. and then you have the mail-in ballots. everyone always understood the mail-in ballots would be counted later actually because they tended to arrive at the last minute. ballots twrfrom overseas. and all of that stuff that we've been doing forever now is considered suspicious activity on the republican side of elections. it's just the most -- it's one of the strangest outcomes, especially as you've been making the point earlier tonight, that mail-in voting used to be a republican strength. it used to be something that they were kind of really wired into in a stronger way. and so it's -- i don't know how you cure this new disease of the mind that has them looking at the votes this way. >> it's funny. i've seen a lot of the sort of snark from -- dark snark from progressives tonight, particularly on line, saying oh, it looks like if your republican candidate is going to win the governorship in virginia, does that mean there weren't any shenanigans? does that mean the election did have integrity? trump has been -- trump personally has been stoking all of these fears and all of these efforts to undercut the legitimacy of the vote in virginia. and now that the candidate is winning suddenly they're being very quiet about that. i think what that ignores is even after trump won the presidency in 2016 he continued for four years to say that the election that elected him in 2016 was illegitimate and that there were millions of illegal immigrants who had voted and that actually he had also won the popular vote. the point is not just to contest election results that you don't want. it is that. but it is to reject the idea of knowable objectively true election results full stop. >> and also the issue that g.o. tv on the republican side has become completely wrapped up in the results of elections. right? they're passing these laws because as nicolle said earlier they say a fake thing happened, the election was stolen from trump. but they're saying we're going to fix that. we'll do all of these things to fix a thing that didn't happen. but that's get out the vote strategy. it encourages their voters when you tell them don't worry, if you come out we'll guarantee that you're going to win. trump has actually asked for audits to happen in florida, in states where he won. >> texas. utah. >> he wants them all redone because it's a get out the vote strategy to tell his voters i care about you. when you say you don't trust this process, we believe you and that's how republicans operate. they fear their voters. democrats, i don't know. something different. >> i will say as we are coming up on 11:00 p.m. eastern time our good friend brian williams is going to be here with a special edition of "the 11th hour" starting just moments from now. we've got both the new jersey governor's race and the virginia governor's race not yet called, plus some important mayor's races not yet called. it may feel like we're getting into the shank of the evening. ask brian what that means. but the night is young. stay with us here on msnbc. this is wealth. ♪ ♪ this is worth. that takes wealth. but this is worth. and that - that's actually worth more than you think. don't open that. wealth is important, and we can help you build it. but it's what you do with it, that makes life worth living. principal. for all it's worth. ♪ ♪ ♪ hey google. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ most bladder leak pads were similar. until always discreet invented a pad that protects differently. with two rapiddry layers. for strong protection, that's always discreet. question your protection. try always discreet. at vanguard, you're more than just an investor, you're an owner with access to financial advice, tools and a personalized plan that helps you build a future for those you love. vanguard. become an owner. - [narrator] every three minutes, a child is born with a cleft condition. without surgery, some will die. those who do survive face extreme challenges. operation smile works to heal children born with cleft conditions. we need you. there are still millions in dire need of healing. go to operationsmile.org today and become a monthly supporter, or call. (gentle music) i booked our hotel on kayak. it's flexible if we need to cancel. cancel. i haven't left the house in a year. nothing will stop me from vacation. no canceling. flexible cancellation. kayak. search one and done. well, good evening once again. the late shift begins, and what a night this is turning out to be. day 287 of the biden administration. more importantly, of course, for our purposes here this evening the first election night of the biden era and the most closely watched race of the night, governor of the commonwealth of virginia. joe biden won