Early results: Democrats get their first U.S. House pickup, Florida contests very tight

Polls have now closed in a num­ber of states on the East Coast, and while many votes remain to be count­ed, Democ­rats are see­ing a few ear­ly signs of progress in their quest to cap­ture the Unit­ed Stat­ed House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, many gov­er­nor­ships, and maybe even the Unit­ed States Senate.

In Vir­ginia, Democ­rats net­ted their first U.S. House pick­up with Jen­nifer Wex­ton, who is the pro­ject­ed vic­tor over Bar­bara Com­stock in Vir­gini­a’s 10th Dis­trict. This is one of the House dis­tricts that vot­ed for Hillary Clin­ton in the 2016 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion but is cur­rent­ly rep­re­sent­ed by a Republican.

In Flori­da, Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates Andrew Gillum and and Bill Nel­son held leads for much of the evening, but after many Repub­li­can-dom­i­nat­ed coun­ties report­ed in, their Repub­li­can oppo­nents Ron DeSan­tis and Rick Scott took nar­row leads. Two vote-rich coun­ties that are key for Demo­c­ra­t­ic hopes, Broward and Mia­mi Dade, have many bal­lots left to count, so the Democ­rats could eas­i­ly recap­ture leads.

Exit polling by one of two media con­sor­tiums sur­vey­ing vot­ers sug­gests that many vot­ers con­sid­er health­care to be the most impor­tant issue in the 2018 midterms, rank­ing well ahead of immi­gra­tion, the econ­o­my, and oth­er issue buckets.