1. The winners
Senate Minority Leader US Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) answers questions during a press conference after it became clear his caucus won the Senate. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
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Republicans will end the election with at least 52 Senate seats, at least 10 new seats in their House majority, and three net new governorships, while flipping a whole bunch of state legislatures. Click the link below for full results.
[Vox / Andrew Prokop, Danielle Kurtzleben, and German Lopez]
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Nine big takeaways from the election.
[Vox / Ezra Klein]
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The polls really underestimated how well the Republicans were going to do in Senate races.
[Vox / Andrew Prokop]
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Some beautiful, insanely detailed maps of Senate race from The Upshot.
[NYT / Amanda Cox, Mike Bostock, Derek Watkins, and Shan Carter]
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A deep dive into the GOP strategy behind the win: "Don’t make mistakes, and make it all about Obama, Obama, Obama."
[Washington Post / Philip Rucker and Robert Costa]
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The GOP Senate wins are large enough that it'll be hard for Democrats to take it back in 2016.
[Vox / Andrew Prokop]
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Democrats control fewer state legislatures than they have since 1860.
[National Conference of State Legislatures]
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One thing that the lame duck Congress will have to address (if something can pass that quickly): Obama's request for $6.2 billion to fight Ebola.
[Vox / Julia Belluz]
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The GOP victory makes Keystone XL approval significantly more likely.
[Vox / Brad Plumer]
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Obama will probably still pursue executive action on immigration. Here's how.
[Vox / Dara Lind]
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Matt Lewis: Democrats' "war on women" rhetoric utterly failed.
[The Week / Matt Lewis]
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National Review: Republicans shouldn't "prove they can govern" by cutting deals; they should put up legislation even if it won't pass to show voters what they stand for.
[National Review]
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Jonathan Chait: "Hillary Clinton is the only thing standing between a Republican Party even more radical than George W. Bush’s version and unfettered control of American government."
[NY Mag / Jonathan Chait]
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Danny Vinik at The New Republic on how Democrats should respond: "If Republicans are going to reap the political benefits of indiscriminant filibustering, then Democrats should do so as well."
[New Republic / Danny Vinik]
2. The voters
You can tell these are voting booths because it says "vote" on them. (Frederic J Brown / AFP / Getty)
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We don't have final numbers, but it looks like 2014 turnout is even lower than normal for midterms.
[FiveThirtyEight / Carl Bialik and Reuben Fischer-Baum]
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As expected, many fewer Millennials voted than did in 2012, but senior citizen turnout was high even for a midterm, helping Republicans.
[Vox / Matt Yglesias]
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Defeated Democratic Sen. Mark Udall is a great example of why these demographics matter; he aggressively pursued women voters, and won them, but they made up a smaller share of the electorate than they have in any Colorado election since 1992.
[Washington Post / Nia-Malika Henderson]
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Colorado and Oregon, which both only allow voting-by-mail, saw turnout pass 50 percent — a pretty impressive figure.
[Taniel]
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There were tens of thousands of voting complaints.
[Vox / Jenée Desmond-Harris]
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Republicans made really impressive gains among Asian Americans.
[Bloomberg View / Lanhee Chen]
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But Democrats still have the Jewish vote locked up.
[Vox / Zack Beauchamp]
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The shocking GOP win in the Maryland governor's race was because Democrats just didn't turn out and vote.
[NYT / Derek Willis]
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Ramesh Ponnuru: the election shows that Obama's coalition is precarious
[Bloomberg View / Ramesh Ponnuru]
3. The issues
Next season, on Portlandia ... (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
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Marijuana legalization passed in Oregon, Alaska, and DC (though DC's legalization doesn't cover sales, only possession).
[Vox / German Lopez]
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Alaska, Arkansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota approved minimum wage increases, but only Alaska and South Dakota had the foresight to automatically increase theirs in the future to account for inflation.
[Vox / Danielle Kurtzleben]
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It was a bad night for the pro-life movement.
[Vox / Sarah Kliff]
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Other big referenda: a really important prison/criminal justice reform measure passed in California, and Washington approved stricter background checks for guns.
[Vox / German Lopez]
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FiveThirtyEight's Ben Casselman: "So voters want a higher minimum wage, legal pot, abortion access and GOP representation. Ok then."
[Ben Casselman]
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How could voters back both Republicans and minimum wage initiatives? Josh Barro has a theory: "Most voters don’t live in households where anyone earns it, or are even close enough to it to get a raise when it goes up. If you ask people whether they favor a higher minimum wage, most will say yes, and even vote that way on a binding referendum. But if a politician opposes raising it, middle-class voters won’t necessarily get angry, and their votes may not be moved."
[NYT / Josh Barro]
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Sorry, federal workers — DC may have legalized pot, but you're still banned from using it.
[New Republic / Claire Groden]
4. Misc.
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Canada's blocking people from Ebola countries from entering. It's a bad idea.
[Vox / Julia Belluz]
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Political donations, by the occupation of the donor.
[Business Insider / Andy Kiersz and Hunter Walker]
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Disappointed by the military's response, vigilantes are fighting back against Boko Haram in Nigeria.
[NYT Magazine / Alexis Okeowo]
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Linguists are trying to prevent the North Korean and South Koreans dialect from diverging too strongly, in case the countries reunite.
[Agence France-Presse]
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What we know about how murderers use Facebook.
[Washington Post / Caitlin Dewey]
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Dartmouth's faculty voted in favor of abolishing the college's infamous fraternity system.
[Inside Higher Education]
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Happy birthday to Bryan Adams and Ryan Adams! (Yes, it's the same day.)
[Stereogum / James Rettig]
5. Verbatim
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"What a wonderful time it is for the scammer, the conniver, and the cheat: the underage drinkers who flash fake I.D.s, the able-bodied adults who drive cars with handicapped license plates, the parents who use a phony address so that their child can attend a more desirable public school, the customers with eleven items who stand in the express lane."
[New Yorker / Patricia Marx]
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"The only way to make progress is to use empirical methods to rip from the sea of the plausible the thing that actually matters. Otherwise we drown in storytelling."
[Dan Kahan to Chronicle of Higher Education / Paul Voosen]
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"I’ve long thought that the marshmallow experiment is nearly universally misunderstood: kids wait for the marshmallow for exactly as long as it makes sense to them to wait."
[mathbabe / Cathy O'Neil]
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"Vivien Thomas was paid a janitor's wage, never went to college, and still became a legend in the field of heart surgery."
[Washingtonian via Longform.org / Katie McCabe]
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"Modern Farmer is not widely read by farmers."
[New Yorker / Alec Wilkinson]
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In This Stream
2014 Midterm Elections: Results and reactions from Election Day
- A top UN official says marijuana legalization in the US violates international law
- Vox Sentences: Republicans, pot smokers, minimum wage workers, and other midterm winners
- 18,000: the number that shows voting in America is way too hard
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