Tea Party’s Ken Cuccinelli has early lead in Virginia, but Terry McAuliffe is closing in

Today isn’t just Elec­tion Day in Wash­ing­ton; it’s also Elec­tion Day in New York, Vir­ginia, New Jer­sey, Alaba­ma, Col­orado, and many oth­er states.  The mar­quee race on the East Coast this year is the matchup between Tea Par­ty Repub­li­can Ken Cuc­cinel­li and estab­lish­ment Demo­c­rat Ter­ry McAu­li­ffe in Vir­ginia. This is the con­test that cable news net­works are focused on tonight, par­tic­u­lar­ly CNN.

As of around 5:53 PM Pacif­ic Stan­dard Time, with 1,725 of precincts report­ing, Ken Cuc­cinel­li had a slim lead over McAu­li­ffe. Ear­li­er in the evening, he led McAu­li­ffe by as much as eight points. Not anymore.

Gov­er­nor of Vir­ginia — as of 5:53 PM Pacific/8:53 PM Eastern
Repub­li­can Ken T. Cuc­cinel­li II:  47.52% (649,924 votes)
Demo­c­rat Ter­ry R. McAu­li­ffe: 45.22% (618,513 votes)
Lib­er­tar­i­an Robert C. Sarvis: 6.96% (95,163 votes)

These num­bers will con­tin­ue to change as results come in. The bot­tom line is, Cuc­cinel­li is doing well in areas of the state where Repub­li­cans tra­di­tion­al­ly dom­i­nate. But if Ter­ry McAu­li­ffe cap­tures the Dis­trict of Colum­bia sub­urbs, he’ll win. The coun­ties that are home to the D.C. sub­urbs tend to be slow in get­ting votes tab­u­lat­ed and report­ed — slow­er than the more rur­al coun­ties, anyway.

In the lieu­tenant gov­er­nor’s race, Demo­c­rat Ralph S. Northam had a com­fort­able lead over E.W. Jack­son, 53.17% to 46.61%, and seems on his way to vic­to­ry, giv­en that the votes yet to be count­ed will prob­a­bly break in his favor.

But Repub­li­can Mark D. Oben­shain is win­ning the race to suc­ceed Cuc­cinel­li as Attor­ney Gen­er­al over Demo­c­rat Mark R. Her­ring, 52.40% to 47.47%. We’ll have to see if Her­ring can close that gap. It won’t be easy.

Mean­while, Democ­rats were far­ing bet­ter in House of Del­e­gates con­tests than had been expect­ed. Dai­ly Kos’ Steve Singis­er has an update on those races:

5:49 PM PT (Steve Singis­er): As the night has wore on, the Vir­ginia House of Del­e­gates is show­ing signs of a bet­ter Demo­c­ra­t­ic night than pre­vi­ous­ly thought. Even though most of the leads are infin­i­tes­i­mal, five Democ­rats are now lead­ing against their GOP incum­bents. The good news for DK fans? Three of them are DK-endorsed can­di­dates: Kath­leen Mur­phy (HD-34), Jen­nifer Boysko (HD-86), and Rob Far­in­holt (HD-94). Our oth­er two can­di­dates (Atif Qarni and John Bell) are with­in a hand­ful of points. Two oth­er Democ­rats: Mon­ty Mason in HD-93 and Eliz­a­beth Miller in HD-32, also had leads.

The race between McAu­li­ffe and Cuc­cinel­li is obvi­ous­ly turn­ing out to be clos­er than what polling had sug­gest­ed. But it’s often the case that polls over­state the lead that a fron­trun­ner has, so it’s not too sur­pris­ing. Vir­ginia has been a Repub­li­can or  Repub­li­can-lean­ing state for a long time, and has only recent­ly begun to trend Demo­c­ra­t­ic, hav­ing now backed a Demo­c­rat for pres­i­dent in 2008 and 2012.