early votes cast could break turnout records. also tonight the state of emergency in florida. hurricane and tropical storm watches up as subtropical storm nicole takes aim. we ve got the new track. the new numbers on child rsv cases. 77% of pediatric hospital beds filled nationwide. what parents need to know. the chaos at twitter under new owner elon musk. after laying off nearly half its workforce the company reportedly scrambling to hire some key workers back. and is facebook next in line for mass layoffs? and the world record powerball jackpot. nearly $2 billion up for grabs tonight. announcer: this is nbc nightly news with lester holt. good evening, everyone, from our nbc news election headquarters. with 40 million early votes already cast, millions of election day voters will soon add their votes as the first poll openings here in the east are now just hours away. control of congress and the direction of the country to be decided. democrats defending their slim
ago georgia shocked the political world by turning purple. joe biden and jon ossoff and raphael warnock squeaked out narrow victories here by corralling a coalition of voters including suburban women and young people. women s right reporter: 20-year-old kayla chambers now voting early for warnock. but i will say that of course going to the store and seeing those prices hike up you re like what s going on, y all? reporter: here in georgia just 15% of registered voters ages 18 to 40 have voted so far, compared to nearly 50% of those between 50 and 75. why do you think more young people haven t voted early? and is that a problem for democrats? well, i think there is a way in which our politics has become so divided that we still have a ways to go in terms of helping people to stay engaged in the process. reporter: still, a record 2.5 million people in the state have already cast their ballots in person or by mail. governor, what do you see as the key
very dangerous chemicals. what we are seeing more recently, especially during covid, is big supply chain disruptions of established cartels. you have a lot more experimentation, a lot of new chemical synthesis methods that is being called heroin or fentanyl. but what is in them has changed. these machines may represent the future. but for now they are costly. just a handful of group like louise s around the country even have access to them, which is why fentanyl test strips are so important right now. that s your one lie. see where it s turning purple. what does one line mean? it s positive. if another line is there it s negative. so this has fentanyl in it? absolutely. this is fentanyl.
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yesterday may have been the announcement of the retirement of johnny isakson. this means there will be two open senate seats in georgia which is getting swingier in 2020, sarah. so as a republican looking at this, and we know one or two senate seats could tip the balance of power, how concerned should republicans be that control of the senate is in jeopardy? this is a big test for both parties. we also have a race in texas as well. there are two open seats. you re going have two options. can the parties, you know, work this out in georgia? and i think that there will be a ton of money spent in georgia. a lot of that, this will in a lot of ways be its own presidential race in georgia now. i think it s a huge deal for texas and georgia to show whether they are, in fact, turning purple. i think all indications are that they haven t been up until now. texas in particular, tons of