Major tele­vi­sion net­works have now begun call­ing states in the East­ern time­zone for the two major pres­i­den­tial candidates.

Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma is pro­ject­ed to car­ry Ver­mont, which has three elec­toral votes. Inde­pen­dent Bernie Sanders (per­haps the nation’s most pro­gres­sive sen­a­tor) is also pro­ject­ed to win in his U.S. Sen­ate race. Mitt Rom­ney has won in Ken­tucky and Indi­ana, accord­ing to exit polls, which gives him nine­teen elec­toral votes.

Exit polls indi­cate that Vir­gini­a’s elec­torate is split right down in the mid­dle between Mitt Rom­ney and Barack Oba­ma: 49% to 49%. The Old Domin­ion will remain too close to call for prob­a­bly the dura­tion of the evening.

Tim Kaine is said to be run­ning a lit­tle ahead of Barack Oba­ma in Vir­ginia (for the U.S. Sen­ate seat cur­rent­ly held by Jim Webb) which is good news for Democ­rats. Kaine’s oppo­nent is the guy Webb beat in 2006 … Repub­li­can George Allen. Allen is the guy who infa­mous­ly was cap­tured on video insult­ing a young man who was tap­ing one of his cam­paign events. His com­ments then ulti­mate­ly helped bring about the demise of his can­di­da­cy. Last year, as he geared up to run for Sen­ate again, he offered a long pub­lic mea cul­pa, hop­ing to atone for his racist remarks.

Indi­ana’s Sen­ate race, between con­ser­v­a­tive Demo­c­rat Joe Don­nel­ly and Tea Par­ty favorite Richard Mour­dock, also remains too close to call right now.

About the author

Andrew Villeneuve is the founder and executive director of the Northwest Progressive Institute, as well as the founder of NPI's sibling, the Northwest Progressive Foundation. He has worked to advance progressive causes for over two decades as a strategist, speaker, author, and organizer. Andrew is also a cybersecurity expert, a veteran facilitator, a delegate to the Washington State Democratic Central Committee, and a member of the Climate Reality Leadership Corps.

Adjacent posts

Enjoyed what you just read? Make a donation

Thank you for read­ing The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate, the North­west Pro­gres­sive Institute’s jour­nal of world, nation­al, and local politics.

Found­ed in March of 2004, The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate has been help­ing peo­ple through­out the Pacif­ic North­west and beyond make sense of cur­rent events with rig­or­ous analy­sis and thought-pro­vok­ing com­men­tary for more than two decades.

The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate is fund­ed by read­ers like you and trust­ed spon­sors. We don’t accept unso­licit­ed ad buys or pub­lish con­tent in exchange for money.

Help us keep The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate edi­to­ri­al­ly inde­pen­dent and freely avail­able to all by becom­ing a mem­ber of the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute today. Or make a dona­tion to sus­tain our essen­tial research and advo­ca­cy jour­nal­ism. Your con­tri­bu­tion will allow us to con­tin­ue bring­ing you fea­tures like Last Week In Con­gress, live cov­er­age of events like Net­roots Nation or the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion, and reviews of books and doc­u­men­tary films.

Become an NPI mem­ber Make a one-time donation