We The People 2026: Post-election special coverage Part 1

election night 2026 i think we just made some history we just took back texas well now i am your woman democracy strikes back across america the american people have rebuked the depravity corruption and incompetence of the failed lame duck president donald j trump a total rejection of trump and his party chances are saying we're tired of the bullies let them know tomorrow that the bad guys lost tonight with major races yet to be called we are going to witness the president copes with defeat if i were on the ballot we would have won and democrats prepared to take power the bad news is it looks like nobody's gonna get their five thousand dollar check the good news is democracy works rachel maddow jim saki the nicole wallace chris hayes simone sanders townsend lawrence o'donnell michael steel and ari melber all here for ms now's continuing midterm election coverage we the people 2026 thank you so much for joining us tonight as our election coverage continues the democrat who flipped a united states senate seat in south carolina annie andrews is going to be joining us live here tonight we've got live reports coming up from mississippi for what is looking like it it might be the single closest u.s senate race in american history is just settling into the real nitty-gritty part of that vote count we're going to be going live to mississippi in just a couple of minutes we've also got a live report coming from texas where democrats appear to have swept state government for the first time since 1961 one of the key democratic party chairman in the incoming congress is going to be joining us tonight to talk about what he plans to do what democrats plan to do in washington to clean up the mess there in our huge 50 state national voter poll last night 90 percent of voters told us that the main issue driving their vote yesterday more than the cost of living more than anything else the single issue voters identified more than any other yesterday as the single largest motivation for their vote was corruption and you know when a democracy is fighting for its life when a democracy is trying to resist democratic backsliding and an attempted authoritarian takeover i mean one of the things you need to do is protect and make use of the machinery of democracy right the technical democratic process you have to take elections really seriously you need to defend them you need to protect them you need to participate in them you also need to compete in small d democratic terms you need a robust opposition party with credible appealing capable candidates who can run real campaigns and good campaigns and can govern when they win but the other thing you need to do to stand up for your constitutional republic when it is at risk is you need to rush to the proverbial barricades to insist on the rule of law to defend the rule of law you must police public corruption you must police bribery and nepotism you must police and punish ruling families looting the government well tonight we're going to talk with one of the key democrats who will be taking point on that in washington on cleaning up corruption we're going to talk with him about how they're going to do it and where they are going to start now that they are sweeping back into washington with massive majorities and we do not know the exact numbers yet because the counting is still underway but in rough terms we're going to talk about how they're going to do it and we're going to talk about how they're going to do it and we're going to talk about how they're going to do it and we're going to talk about how terms we can safely say that for the last two years of donald trump's time in public office congress is about to go from what we've had this year which is republicans with a like roughly four or five seat majority to instead democrats having a majority that looks like it's going to be somewhere in the vicinity of 80 seats an estimated 83 seat majority for democrats in the united states house and that is on top of a huge swing toward democracy and that is on top of a huge swing toward democracy and that is on top of a huge swing toward democracy and that is on top of a huge swing toward democrats in the united states senate the size of that swing is still yet to be determined because results in close senate races are still being tabulated in both mississippi and in alaska mississippi and alaska so we're going to get to all of that tonight um but you know to be fair we must acknowledge republicans did not lose everywhere they won that florida u.s senate race right um the last florida u.s senate race republicans won it by 13 this time they won it by less than three republicans also won that florida governor's race last night right well the last florida governor's race republicans won it by 20 this time they won it by less than two how about like the arkansas governor's race yes republican sarah huckabee sanders won re-election last night but arkansas governor's race won by 20 this time they won it by less than two voters shifted more than 15 percentage points toward democrats from where they were just two years ago and arkansas voters flipped between eight and ten seats in the state house which means democrats in arkansas broke the super majority in that state in louisiana this is the front page at the advocate newspaper out of baton rouge tonight yes this is a state where republicans won last night in that louisiana senate race but the headlines in the state are basically oh my god how was it that close in the last u.s senate race in louisiana the republicans won it by 44 points last night in louisiana yes republicans won again but they did not win it by 44 points they won it by less than two points and i know you know that john ossoff won the u.s senate race in georgia we called it so early last night but do you know that john ossoff won that senate race in georgia by 18 points he won it by an 18 points margin in georgia also north carolina i know you know that democrat roy cooper won that senate seat and flipped that senate seat north carolina for the democrats but you should know that roy cooper won that senate seat by 20 points that was a republican senate seat roy cooper won it for the democrats last night with a margin of 20 points the senate races that democrats won last night that we think of as having gone down to the wire democrats winning and you know really unlikely places so it must have been really close right it wasn't really close it wasn't josh turek won in iowa by more than four points i mentioned we're gonna have annie andrews here tonight who won in south carolina it was not a squeaker in south carolina she won by nearly five points sherrod brown running against an incumbent republican senator and what was supposed to be deep red lost forever ohio it was not close sherrod won in oh sherrod brown won in ohio by five points adam hamilton in kansas an absolutely unattainable democratic victory unimaginable even months ago it wasn't close adam hamilton ousted another incumbent republican senator in kansas by five points troy jackson in maine did not just beat susan collins he beat her by what's looking like it's going to be seven points susan collins was supposed to be unbeatable in maine for life she lost by seven troy jackson beat susan collins so badly in maine that i kid you not at her campaign watch party last night she was there she was present in the building but she never came out and conceded she never came out and said anything at all to the crowd her staff literally put the song closing time by semisonic on the pa system and then just started packing up all the chairs without saying anything you know who else lost by seven points excuse me you know who else won by seven points abdul al-sayed in michigan this i should mention was abdul al-sayed six months ago yesterday promising that if he became the democratic nominee for senate in michigan and i'm going to quote him exactly here here's him six months ago promising quote i'll smoke him by seven meaning i will beat i will beat mike rogers by seven points he said quote bet on it none of us bet on it we are contractually prohibited from doing so but if you did take abdul al-sayed's bet advice on that he was exactly right i'm going to quote him exactly here here's him six months ago promising quote i'll smoke you exactly right it was not close in michigan abdul al-sayed prevailed over mike rogers by yes he called it exactly in the stands i'm hitting it right there seven points in minnesota do you remember the flurry of democratic worry about holding on to that senate seat in minnesota it was like one or two shaky polls and people were like wow democrats are going to lose seats they thought they were holding peggy flanagan crushed that minnesota senate race she won by 10 in new hampshire do you remember the flurry of democratic worry about holding on to that senate seat in new hampshire chris pappas crushed it in new hampshire he won by 14 points the margins of victory here i think have not widely sunk in but as my beloved colleague lawrence o'donnell talked about insistently last night during our coverage here those margins of victory whether or not the public really gets it yet those margins of victory are sinking in indelibly into the minds of surviving republican officials in these states because there isn't a state in the country that feels safe Republican like it did before. Before Trump-era Republican politics brought about what Florida's governor today called a near-extinction-level event for that party. Thank you, Donald Trump. Texas has broken Democratic hearts in every election I have covered there in my adult life. Last night, when Democrat James Tallarico won that Senate seat, it was not a squeaker. He won by 12 points. And Democrat Gina Hinojosa ousted the supposedly impregnable governor for life, Republican Greg Abbott in Texas, not in a close race, not narrowly. She beat him by a healthy seven-point margin with plenty of room to spare. In Texas, Democrats won the lieutenant governor's race, and they won the attorney general's race, and they won the railroad commissioner's race, and they won the comptroller race, and they won the attorney general's race. And they won the land commissioner race, and they won the ag commissioner race. In Texas, Democrats appear to have flipped the state house, the state legislature. There were four seats that were up last night on the Texas Supreme Court. All four Republican incumbents lost those seats on the Texas Supreme Court, and all four of them will be replaced by the Democrats who ran against them. A couple of years ago, Greg Abbott and Republicans created a whole new court in Texas, a three-seat criminal appeals court that they immediately stacked entirely, entirely with Greg Abbott's Republican appointees. Last night, all three Republican appointee and incumbents on that court, all three of them were voted out and replaced by Democrats. No Democrat had been elected to a seat on the Texas Supreme Court or the Texas Board of Criminal Appeals since 1994. But last night, every single one of the seats on those courts that was contested went to the Democrat who contested it. Every single one. Democrats may yet take control of the state board of education in Texas when all the counting is done. The Texas Tribune summed that up tonight by saying, quote, no matter what happens in the remaining contest, the one that's still to be called, they said, quote, Republican power on the board will not look like the majority that recently authored an Islamophobic rewrite of social studies lessons that greenlit mandatory Bible readings for all public school students and that approved classroom instruction. Downplaying the horrors of American slavery. Yeah, that board is no more. It is almost impossible to get your head around the scale of the political change that just happened in Texas alone. Brandon Herrera, the Republican so-called AK guy who does Holocaust comedy on his gun influencer YouTube page, he lost in an absolutely safe Republican seat. He lost to this former teacher and first-time president. Bo French, the Republican who posted a poll online. The poll said, quote, who is the bigger threat to America? And then there were two choices, and the two choices were Muslims or Jews. Republican Bo French just lost in Texas. And yes, the Democrat he lost to is Jewish. Thank you very much. In Georgia, as you know, John Ossoff, yes. But you know what? In Georgia, Democrats won every statewide race in Georgia. And it looks like they flipped the Georgia state house. Keisha Lance Bottoms is going to be the governor of Georgia. Democrats also won secretary of state, attorney general, agriculture commissioner, insurance commissioner, school superintendent, labor commissioner, and public service commissioner. And do you mind me just stopping here for a second? I said Democrats in Georgia, yes, they won the Senate race. And yes, they won the governor's race. But they also won, what did I just say? Secretary of state, attorney general, insurance commissioner, school superintendent, labor commissioner, and public service commissioner. I just said they just won all of those. I need to also tell you specifically that it is Black women who won every single one of those races in Georgia for the Democrats. Governor, secretary of state, attorney general, agriculture commissioner, insurance commissioner, school superintendent, labor commissioner, and public service commissioner. Hello, Georgia. You have seen Black female Democratic political talent in Georgia growing, over the course of this past 15 years in American politics. And this is the fruit of that tree. In Michigan, yes, Abdul El-Sayed. But Jocelyn Benson is going to be governor. And both Supreme Court seats on the ballot in Michigan yesterday went to the Democrats. And three Republican members of Congress have been ousted by Democrats in Michigan. And Democrats also just flipped the Michigan house. And in Ohio, yes, Sherrod Brown. But Amy Acton is going to be governor. And Democrats will hold every other statewide office in Ohio except auditor. Democrats in Ohio, attorney general, treasurer, secretary of state. It is the first time in 16 years that a Democrat will be the top elections official in the state of Ohio. And Democrats broke the Republican supermajority in the Ohio House. And Democrat Marcy Kaptur held onto the congressional seat in Ohio that they tried to gerrymander her out of. And Don Leonard ousted Congressman Mike Kerry in Ohio. And Democrat Brian Poindexter ousted Republican Max Miller in Ohio. And Democrats just took most of Ohio's congressional seats. They took eight out of 15. And Ohio, I'm telling you, Ohio is a blue state. In Wisconsin, Democrats won that governor's race with David Crowley. But they also flipped the state house. And they flipped the state Senate, both to Democratic control. Wisconsin has a Democratic governing trifecta. Democrats won new governing trifectas where they have both houses of the legislature and the governor's race in huge, huge, important, big states. Really influential states in Wisconsin, in Pennsylvania, in Michigan, in Nevada, in Minnesota. It looks like they may get it in Arizona, too. Look at red state Indiana. Red state Indiana, Republicans saw their Speaker of the House lose his seat. They lost his seat. They lost his seat. They lost his seat to a Democratic scientist, a woman named Lauren Cole. In Indiana, Democrats haven't won a statewide race since 2012. But last night, they won the Secretary of State, and they won the state auditor's race, and they broke the Republican supermajority in the House, and they ousted a sitting Republican congresswoman. I could go on. Democrats flipped both houses of the state legislature in New Hampshire. Democrats flipped every single imaginable thing and a lot of in North Carolina, and we are sequestering that and setting aside because we're going to talk more about that in a minute. Utah is sending a Democrat to Congress. Oklahoma Democrats picked up six new seats in the state legislature. Tennessee Democrats flipped six House seats. They may have ousted at least one Republican congressman in Tennessee. Missouri Democrats flipped 16 state House seats, ousted a Republican congresswoman, smacked down a state abortion ban, and passed a new rule to stop Republicans in the Missouri legislature from overruling everything the voters keep voting for. Minnesota got themselves a Democratic governor in Amy Klobuchar and a Democratic senator in Peggy Flanagan. And they flipped the Minnesota House blue. Kansas got a Democratic senator in Adam Hamilton. They may yet get themselves a Democratic governor in Cindy Holsher, although that one is not yet called. It looks like Kansas may also oust their Republican attorney general, Chris Kobach. And Democrats broke the Republican supermajority in the Kansas City. And they flipped the Kansas House. Latinos in Kansas just roared in this race. Majority Hispanic counties in Kansas, listen to me here, majority Hispanic counties in Kansas shifted 45 points toward the Democrats. And don't get mad at me at home right now because I have missed the incredible Democratic leaps and bounds victories that happened in your state or in your county. I know I have missed a bunch. All those congressional seats that Democrats flipped in Iowa. All those congressional seats that Democrats flipped in Pennsylvania. I have left out more than I could leave in. And I am sorry. But we're still getting our heads around it too. The country has absolutely not absorbed the sheer depth and breadth of this force that just rewrote the map of American politics. But it is coast to coast. And it is still not done taking its final form. And the only thing that we here can pledge to you about it for sure is that we will be here with you for the duration covering every single second of it and everything it means. My beloved colleagues here, thank you for letting me spit some of that out because it was going to make me crazy if I didn't. I could go. You could go another 40. I'm all in. I'm here for it. Lawrence, your name was invoked there because I went to bed last night thinking about the way that you immediately were keying in on what these margins would mean and what the breadth of this Democratic political triumph would mean for office holders in places where they didn't necessarily get ousted, but they see what just happened. Well, now I have nothing to say because I have to absorb everything you just said. I knew about half of it, I think, you know, and I pay some attention to this, you know, for a while. I think it's astonishing. So where it brings us, I'm going to go beyond where I was last night and ask the question, when is Ted Cruz going to change parties? because in the comparable event on the other side of our politics in 1994 when the republicans won the house representatives for the first time in my life had been the first time in 40 years and i was working in the senate at the time and i had to move to a smaller office because we're suddenly in the minority and all of that it was totally shocking it was the shock level of last night two democratic senators immediately just switch parties because they just look at this and say we will never be in the majority again we'll never be chairman again we are abandoning this democratic party that's that's the kind of wipeout you have here and ted cruz is uniquely positioned in the wipeout every statewide election in his state every single one of them went to a democrat now he's the lone republican standing in that ultra important state ted cruz isn't ted cruz he's the lone republican standing in that ultra important state ted cruz isn't ted cruz he's the lone republican standing in that ultra important state ted cruz isn't ted cruz anymore he's not going to be the guy who insults james talarico when he walks down on the senate floor he's going to be the guy who has his arm around him it's going to be you're going to see this movement and we've you know when we used to have we used to have a lot of states that would have one democratic senator one republican senator new york had that for most of my life right when i was working in the senate for a democratic senator from new york we had a republican junior senator and that republican junior senator was a conservative republican however there were plenty of things for new york where he had to be with senator moynihan and they were together on these things and then that kind of softens the edges of everything else they do in the senate all the time and so you know you've got uh tim scott in south carolina how confident is he in his adoration of donald trump now yeah he's got a junior partner in the senate now who just showed him this isn't the south carolina that voted for you uh something has changed and he's got a junior partner in the and so it will change the behavior i know people were thinking like okay these republicans are just going to play you know tough guy and they're just going to be street punks and yelling insults across the you know the aisle all day no they're not no they're not they are afraid of what happened in michigan what can democrats do to press their advantage or to test the bounds of that what the what you do actually is is treat these republicans as if they are new friends because if you went there to legislate if you went there to do your job you actually want ted cruz to get on this legislation you want these people now if you went there just to pose and you went there to use it as a forum to get attention and just try to position yourself for presidential politics or something like that you might behave differently but if you really take your oath to do this job as a united states senator you go in there and you throw your arm around those people and you you have to it's inhuman it's not the way we're wired but you actually have to put you have to forget everything they've said everything in many cases everything they've specifically said about you as a human being you have to forget uh and and what happens is that they come together in this way that is surprising to the point where when you think about the senate trying to achieve a two-thirds vote to overthrow a trump veto that's possible this is not out of the realm of possibility and in the house they've got it they've got it already like that you know so so the trump veto that was supposed to be the sole remaining republican power in washington dc is not the power that they thought it was going to be that is fascinating nicole do you agree with that i i do and um james talarico almost signaled that on fox news today they were asking him what he could work with trump on and he said i think we could work together on housing i mean you look at trump's affinity for mayor mom donnie trump has never been ideological and he will himself forget who he was yesterday he he will be one of those new friends yeah he's actually very good at this correct correct and i i think he's gonna be like who started this iran war correct correct marco rubio's days are numbered but i i i think this is so important in terms of you know not having a failure of creativity or imagination if they can do it if they can forget everything that came before it they have these sweeping mandates on corruption and affordability yes i mean i i i have practiced politics i have i don't know of 90 10 issues like there aren't any and you now have one in trump's corruption i i've got a million takes but i but can i just throw one more story on the pile please lauren bober who basically it's not called but um she's uh she's down right now by about percentage point and i just think this is such a perfect encapsulation of our era which is like a person who kind of acts as a troll right that's kind of trolling politics very trump era thing she didn't go there to legislate she she trolled so much that she almost got caught napping in the last election in like a trump plus eight district where she almost lost her seat so then she moved into a neighboring district that's like plus trump plus 15 so she can make it easy to make it easy to troll yeah and she's down right now that's not her it's like no matter there's this idea that it was all fake that gravity didn't exist you know that like watergate only happened because republicans were weren't tough enough and they just stuck it out yeah that's what jd vance and tucker carlson said right if they didn't fuck and we had a water post watergate sized election literally numerically without ever getting the watergate it turns out that if you just try to bull through the people end up telling you to get the heck out whether the institutions function enough well enough to do it yes and whether or not the democratic party actually was prepared yes i mean the question is is there enough staff on the hill one of the things that you said last night was about that there are democrats who are waking up this morning being like i'm the water commissioner like the the scale i think of this is a surprise as much to democrats as it is to republic oh it is and so i couldn't help uh while you were reading this this this wonderful litany of success for democrats last night how how and what you were reading in 2010 on that election night when that list of republican success so those four judges uh were the four judges that we elected in 2010 uh and 16 years later uh this is what happens and as much as anything it goes to the heart of what lawrence uh talked about which is the thing that up till now my party has never learned going back to the 96 elections going back even further that you don't double down on the bad things that you did what you do is you learn from the mistakes that you made this was something that was very important in the bush administration in that era which is why they after uh oh four they made the conscious effort to move into immigration discussions and other things that they heard and learned what the american people were talking about republicans have this tendency to want to double down i've heard some in the last 24 hours say well we weren't conservative yes exactly donald trump says that greg abbott lost because he was a rhino he was a rhino he wasn't republican enough more republican he would have done great so this is that opportunity for democrats to say okay level set and what issue do you have that you like and here are the issues that we have that we want and let's see where we can line up that's right and if the republicans don't want to go there they won't go there but put it in front of them make them vote on it yeah get it in front of the president and let the american judge who's actually interested in governing on their behalf adam hamilton said last night in his uh victory speech which by the way i spent the day watching the victory speeches because we couldn't cover them last night there were so many but he made a great point he said i want to be jerry moran's best friend the junior democratic senator from kansas said in his speech i want to be the senior republican senator from kansas's best friend meaning this is the way to do this job this is the way to make it work now that means moran has to come to him he doesn't have to go the other way and so there's going to be a tremendous amount of gravitational pull and people like moran and others toward that winning democrat yeah and that person's position in their state the way that the capital d democratic party differs from the republican party more than just as much as anything is that they want to be a governing party and they want to do policy and this is their chance to prove that and do it fast they started counting votes again late today in mississippi in that oh so close race for the senate this may absolutely literally be the closest u.s senate race in american history we're going to get a live report from our reporters on the scene in jackson next we are still awaiting results from mississippi's neck and neck senate race as of now with 96 percent of the vote in democratic senate candidate scott cullum is leading republican incumbent senator cindy hyde smith by just 1138 votes officials are still tallying ballots from a handful of remaining counties including the state's two most popular states and the state's most popular state counties now these last batches of ballots include several thousand affidavit ballots which were filled out by voters who did not have their voter id or they had mistakenly been marked inactive on voter rolls those voters will have until tuesday november 10th to validate their ballots with their voter id and then there are the mail-in ballots or absentee ballots about 3600 of them in mississippi now mail-in ballots that are postmarked by election day can arrive as late as november 10th no wonder an army of voters is going to be in the mail-in ballots and they're going to be in the mail-in ballots quote army of lawyers has descended on mississippi to watch over the counting across two counties. Every single vote matters. Earlier today, Scott Cullum told the press and supporters he was confident he would win once all the votes were tallied. This is the beginning of a new direction for our state. We are going to win this. We have already showed the country that Mississippi matters, y'all. Now we're just going to finish the job by doing our part to protect the process, to make sure that we've got everything organized. I'm very confident about where we are, and I'm very confident that we're going to win. Let's go now to Jackson, Mississippi, where we have MSNOW reporter. Now, Nnamdi has been at the site. Nnamdi and Antonio are down in Mississippi. Nnamdi has been at the site where they are counting votes in Hines County, and we have host of the assignment, Antonio Hilton, at the state capital in Mississippi. Nnamdi, first to you, you know, where are they in the count? Do they think they're going to be done tomorrow? It'll probably take a little bit longer than getting these in tomorrow, but I want to bring you into where I am now. This is where all of those ballots in Hines County, the second most populous county here in Mississippi, are being counted. They're all stored here, the paper ballots. Earlier today, we saw a group of people were counting absentee ballots in this area. There's about 3,600 left, according to the Secretary of State's office. But the real unknown here are those affidavit ballots. This is Mississippi's version of provisional ballots. They are given whenever election workers are unable to assess or confirm the eligibility of a voter on election day. They're given an affidavit ballot, and then it is up to five commissioners, five commissioners, to go through those ballots to see if they can confirm the eligibility of those voters against the state election management system. So a couple examples. If you just got married and perhaps your maiden name is in the voter roll, but not your married name, that's something that these commissioners may be able to assess. If you just moved recently, but you still live in the same county, another thing that they may be able to verify to accept those ballots. But again, there are only five commissioners tasked with doing that, working in these cubicles, and there are 108 precincts in this county. So it just takes a bit of time. In addition to that, there is one group of ballots that these commissioners aren't even going to touch. And I actually want to ask the commissioner here about it, Commissioner Horton. Commissioner, let me ask you, if the issue is that a voter didn't have ballot ID, and that's why they were giving an affidavit ballot, where does that go? What happens? It comes to us with the other affidavit ballots, but we take it to the circuit clerk's office, and they have five business days to bring an acceptable form of ID there. Five business days. So the deadline is? Tuesday. Tuesday, November 10th. So what that means is that if that's the issue, those ballots aren't even going to begin getting counted until November 10th. And that is why the message from Scott Cologne earlier today was, hey, if you have an affidavit ballot, if the issue was that ID, you need to go to your clerk office. Make sure you're doing what you need to do to ensure your vote is being counted. Because as we all know, in a race this narrow, this close, every vote counts. I'll also point out that a source close to the Cologne campaign told me it's that group of voter that is giving them the most concern, because it's the only circumstance in which the onus to, I guess, prove your voter eligibility is placed on the voter, as opposed to these commissioners doing it for you. They have to go to that clerk's office and provide ID. And if they don't, their vote is not counted. It's that simple. No ifs, ands, or buts. So again, it's why they've enforced this message. You heard it from the commissioner. You have until November 10th. If you don't do that, your vote's not counted. And in this race, we know every single one of these votes, these affidavit ballots, can make a difference in determining the outcome of this race. Nnamdi, one more for you. Were the commissioners and the folks in Hines County, were they prepared for this influx, if you will, of voters and this very long process? Were they overwhelmed at all? Did they have all the personnel that they needed to sift through this process and have it go swimmingly, if you will? So that's a great question. We were here earlier today, and they held a press conference. And the message they were pleading almost is, this is going to take time. We need patience. You need to give us patience. Because the point they were reinforcing is there's not a group of soldiers that come in to help do this. It's just the five of them, five goodwilling people that are working tirelessly to go through these ballots. But again, only five people for all 108 precincts in this county. So they knew this is coming. A lot of these commissioners have done this before. But they're making it very clear. They know the stakes. They're aware of these election results. But it's going to take some time. So that it's urging the public, give us some time to make sure we're doing our job accurately and correctly. And Tony, I know you're standing out at the, you're at the state capitol. I know you've been talking to folks all day. Very interesting, because in Mississippi, the state legislatures, there were no state legislators that were on this ballot. The Mississippi state elections are happening next year. But these state legislators have been laser focused on talking about another mid-decade redistricting. I'm wondering if this very close race has sparked some new conversation in the state's capitol. Well, Simone, what I would tell you is from the conversations I'm having today, people here on the ground would tell you that these conversations are actually not new, that the, for anyone who's confused about why Scott Colom is so close here. And if you talk to people in his camp, I had a conversation with Mike Espy, who ran against this same Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith back in 2018, when she was first elected. They will tell you that they knew that there was going to be a backlash to this attempt to strip people of their voting rights at the state level and the sort of national pattern, that Black voters have been furious about this, that they are watching all of this, and that there was this sort of new Southern movement building. That's a term that I've heard here in Mississippi. That's a term that I heard in Atlanta this morning when I had a conversation with Senator Warnock, who has spent a lot of time supporting the Colom campaign here. And then I, had a conversation with the executive director of Mississippi's NAACP chapter here. And I found out some fascinating stuff about the work that's been happening behind the scenes here. They have been quietly building and organizing, going door to door, holding real events with people. They've been working with about 14 different church denominations that represent about 2,500 different churches. They themselves, just on their own, the NAACP here, got 17,258 new people registered to vote over the weekend. Over the course of about the past year, if you include some of their partner organizations, that number is more like 40,000 new African American voters on the rolls. And they did a lot of this, not just because they knew what was coming down the pike in terms of state leadership and what lawmakers might attempt to do. But they did this because the secretary of state, actual officials here in Mississippi, used what they described as faulty Experian data to start cleaning voter rolls. And that helps explain a lot of what you're actually seeing unfold where NAMDI is right now. There was this effort to purge a bunch of people, thousands of people from the rolls. Many of them, experts say, are eligible, real voters here, many of them black people. They knew that this was happening. The NAACP tried to get ahead of it, go to doors. They got, they told me, at least 800 of those people actually back on and confirmed before Election Day took place. And now they're part of this effort to educate people so that they actually do go bring their ID and try to correct this with the final days at hand here. But I think what it really tells you is that there has been a movement and a moment building here that perhaps actually the rest of the National Democratic Party, the rest of the country may not have felt. You have to remember, too, this is a state that's still mourning the black communities here, mourning the death of Nolan Wells. There is this real feeling here of pain and pressure that goes so far beyond, Simone, the sort of backlash to Trump story. It's a backlash to your attempt to put me down, your attempt to make it harder for me to vote. And they are. They are showing up and they are sort of the the the heart and soul of what you're seeing as this sort of larger, too big to rig story. But it's very personal for the black communities here in Mississippi and all across the South. They have been organizing their own communities for literally decades, frankly, and that is the culmination of this work. Antonia Namdi, thank you so much for your time, both in Jackson, Mississippi. Rachel, we'll give it back to you. That's fascinating. I mean, that's such an interesting point that you're hearing both from Namdi. And from Antonia there that it's a it's a feat of organizing for the Scott Colombe campaign to put itself in the position to win this U.S. Senate race. And it looks like if you had to bet today, you would say that Scott Colombe is going to win this race. But it will continue to be a feat of organizing to get to the finish line in order if there has been this massive voter purge, particularly of black voters in Mississippi, where the voter rolls have been purged in this way. People need to be organized in order to get down to between now and Tuesday. To go cure their ballot, to go show their ballot, to make sure that provisional affidavit ballot is counted. All right. At one point last night, we looked at the returns out of North Carolina and we saw Republicans trailing in pretty much every race in the state. By today, the dust had settled. The picture looks surprisingly, astonishingly great for Democrats. An architect of that particular blue shift is going to join us here live next. But first, actually, we do have a new call, a new call in a House race, a congressional race in California. Democrat Marnie Von Wilpert has defeated Republican Jim Desmond. This is yet another flip for Democrats and another congressional seat. California's 48th congressional district. We'll be right back. Out of all the. storylines to come out of last night, one of the best might be the Democrats' night in the state of North Carolina. Former Governor Roy Cooper gave Democrats their first Senate flip of the night very early on, called right after poll closing, handily beating Michael Watley, a former RNC chairman, by nearly 20 points. That was just the beginning. Democrats also won majority control of the North Carolina Statehouse for the first time since 2008. They broke a Republican supermajority in the state Senate. They're currently within 300 votes of winning a majority for themselves. And then there's a congressional map, which might be one of the biggest stories of the night. Last year, the Republican-led legislature, at Donald Trump's direction, redrew the map with the aim of leaving Democrats competitive in just three of the state's 14 states. But it backfired badly. Democrats currently appear to have flipped six seats in a state where Republicans currently hold a 10 to 4 congressional advantage. It is the Democrats who have now won or lead in 10 seats. Those losses include incumbent Congressman Richard Hudson. He's the chair of the. That would be the Republican campaign arm that's supposed to help Republican members of Congress defend their seats. He conceded today to Democrat Richard Ojeda, an Iraq veteran and a sort of itinerant candidate who's run a bunch of times before in other states. The AP has not yet called that race. Some of these Democratic flips were on nobody's radar, including mine, as I discovered in real time last night. North Carolina 13. North Carolina 13. I've never seen these people's names before. The Democrat, I'm like, who's this dude? No one before tonight had Paul Berenger and District 13 in North Carolina on the races to watch list. I guarantee you because I read every last one of them. That's what happens in an enormous once in a 50 year wave in a state like North Carolina where it shifts dramatically towards Democrats. The state as a whole moved 23 points to the left since 2024, according to The Washington Post. It is shocking to just about everyone. Except maybe our next guest, Anderson Clayton, is the chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party. And she joins me now. You had an incredible night last night. I want to start with just recruiting candidates for every single seat, even the ones that weren't in the top or second or third tier. Like how intentional was that up and down the ballot for the North Carolina Democratic Party? It was crucial in North Carolina to make sure. That we not just contested every congressional seat, but every state legislative seat, which is why you see incredible victories coming out of our state house that were unprecedented and no one necessarily anticipated except for the candidates that believed in their districts and that stepped up to represent them. Folks like Claire Kempner out in Pitt County, Mark Burroughs, Lynn Russo, an incredible number of new people that we've got that are going to represent both their constituents in Raleigh, but also new folks that are coming to Washington, D.C. And in fact, a congressional flip that nobody expected out of North Carolina. You know, in the run up to an election, there's always a sense of like, is there some secret private data that someone has that they know the future that none of us know? And generally, I think the public and private polling lines up. What were you did you think you're going to win the top of the ticket by 20 points and have this kind of night? Or was this somewhat surprising to you as the night went on? Governor Cooper is a once in a lifetime type of candidate, and we were lucky in North Carolina to have a 40 year public servant in the state. That was going up against a big oil lobbyist like Michael Watley, who had done nothing for the people of North Carolina except for back up a bad Republican agenda coming out of Washington, D.C. And now we have got Republicans that were caught off guard, I think, on election night, especially looking at Richard Hudson losing his seat to Richard Ojeda. I mean, we're talking about knocking out the chairman of the NRCC right now. And I think that it's impressive and exciting. And the type of candidates it's reflective of the type of candidates that we had in North Carolina. Quickly, in the last 30 seconds here, just what does this mean for states? State government going forward? It means that the people, the working people of North Carolina are finally going to get the help that they need. And we're looking at 2028 and making sure that we take back the North Carolina state Supreme Court so that we can end partisan and racial gerrymandering for good in this state. One of the most gerrymandered maps in the entire nation. Anderson Clayton, thank you very much, Rachel. She is nails, man. We've all been interviewing her for a long time, but like there are Democratic chairs and then there are Democratic chairs. Wow. The election was caused for spontaneous celebration. For capital D Democrats and small d supporters of democracy all over the country, the spontaneous outpouring of relief and joy and pride and excitement and elation from the Carolinas to Kansas and beyond. We'll have a look at all of it when we come back. Last night, there were spontaneous celebrations all over the country as the election results came in. In Texas, that looked like just a cacophony of beeping and and cheering as the election results started to percolate into the public in at James Tallarico headquarters in Austin. Just pure jubilation. It wasn't wasn't just Texas, though. Democrats in Atlanta were on. Their feet dancing with their hands in the air. Look at Keisha Lance Bottoms. I just don't care. Folks were also moving in Detroit, Michigan, with a pretty good rendition, ultimately, of the electric slide. There we go. To celebrate the victories for Democrats in Michigan in Des Moines, Iowa. Voters were hugging and jumping up and down and cheering for Senator-elect Democrat Josh Turek. For my money, arguably one of the best reactions. To last night's big blue wave came from a 96-year-old Democratic Party supporter in Columbus, Ohio. Oh, it's about time. I'm telling you, I've had enough of this crap. Whatever she's running for, everybody else stand down. These midterm election results mean so many different things to so many different people in states where Democrats did things they haven't been able to do. In generations. But while Donald Trump is still president for two more years, you may especially want to know what these results mean in D.C. What it means to have Democrats taking control of the House and chairmanships of the major committees with no shortage of potential crimes and corruption to investigate and questions to answer. We've got incoming House Judiciary Chair Jamie Raskin joining us live here next. You will not want to miss this. Thank you.