Update.

Congratulations to President Obama, who clearly won re-election.

The states I said to watch were:

Wisconsin, Nevada, Ohio, Iowa, Virginia, New Hampshire, Florida, Colorado

Obama was ahead in all of them but Florida and Colorado.  He clearly won all of them except for Florida, which has not yet counted it's votes?  Why?  Because they killed early voting and had huge lines.  Exit polls show Obama up by 46,039 votes, or about 1%.

The Justice department is said to be looking into the problems Florida and deciding if they were severe enough to violate federal voting rights.



While technically not all votes are in, Obama won by such a large margin of electoral votes and also by the popular vote.  His re-election is a done deal.

Note, many of the rest of the results below are PRELIMINARY.  They are projections, not final vote tallies and may change in the coming weeks.


SENATE

In the Senate, the two rape comment republicans (Akin from Missouri and Mourdock from Indiana) lost to McCaskill and Donnelly

The republicans picked up one senate seat in Nebraska, but lost three - Indiana (thank you Mourdock), Massachusetts and Connecticut.  That's a total of of +2 to the Democrats.

In addition,  two more senate seats are not finished counting.  Both were held by democrats last week.  The democrat Senator Tester of Montana seems to have kept his job with a 4% lead but only 81% of votes are in.  North Dakota was an empty seat, the old democrat retired, but Heidi Heitkamp has a slight lead of 2,994 with 93% of the votes in.

Worst case, the senate balance stays the same, but we might pick up two seats.

House of Representatives

After the 2010 election the House was 193 democrats, vs 242 republicans.  In 2010 this was a huge year for the republicans, they picked up 62 seats back then.


Not all the results are in, but it is good news for the Democrats.  The results are in for 191 Democrats and 231 Republicans, that leaves a total of 13 seats unclear as of now.  But the Democrats did not lose more than 2 seats, and could have gained all 13.  Honestly, I expect the Democrats to get about half of the remaining undeclared seats, which would give them a gain of +4 members of the house.  Not a huge move, nothing compared to the 62 seats from 2010, but it still going in the right direction.


Governor:

Democrats won 5 Governorships, vs four Republican wins.  Two are not yet decided (Montana and Washington - both of which have the Democrat ahead by a small amount)

Ballot Measures:

There were 18 ballot measures, for five main issues.  Here are some quick summaries (these are projected results).

• Obamacare: Alabama, Florida, Montana and Wyoming tried to limit Obama care.  Expect more court cases.
• Marijuana: Arkansas, Colorado, Massachusetts, Oregon and Washington passed pro Marijuana laws.  Montana voted to ban it.
  
• Taxes: California passed a tax increase supported by the governor, but not the one he opposed. 
• Abortion: Florida voted against public funds for abortion
• Same Sex Marriage: Maine, Maryland and Washington voted to allow same sex marriage (Minnesota voted against banning it - i.e. in favor of same sex marriage.)

Take aways:
 The larger the election, the more likely Democrats were to win.  The smaller an election, the more likely the Republicans won.
 
The Democrats need to work on winning the smaller elections.  Local politics is where it all starts, we need to find a way to get appeal to the more moderate republicans in conservative states and convince them to vote for us in off year (non-presidential) elections.

The Republicans need to find a way to moderate their extremists.  While it plays well in conservative counties, it gets you laughed at on the national stage.  (See Akin, Mourdock, et. al.)  It also prevents serious moderate candidates like John Huntsman from winning the primary, leaving it to radicals and people that say one thing in the primary and another in the general election (Romney).   Neither of them can win.

As for issues, I think Obamacare is pretty much a done deal.  The Supreme Court ruled on it and the states just look stupid and childish trying to violate the federal laws.   Of course, I truly hope that republicans continue to waster their time and money trying and failing to change that.

Marijuana and Same sex marriage are both gaining support.  Abortion continues to be divisive issue - while Florida voted against public funds for it, two Republicans lost their seats for being too stridently against it.