Democrat Colom Expands Lead in Tight Mississippi Race

0:01Are you ever shopping online and suddenly a discount that helps you save pops up? It makes your day, sometimes even your week. Want that feeling month after month? Well, new customers who save by switching their home and auto insurance to Progressive save hundreds. Cue your happy dance. Get your quote today at Progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates and other insurers not available in all states. This podcast is supported by Anthropic, the public benefit corporation behind Claude. Everyone's got a hard question about AI. Anthropic was built to surface those questions and share what it finds along the way, because there's hope in hard questions.

0:44Ask yours at claude.ai slash Spotify and keep thinking. That's claude.ai slash Spotify.

0:56After last night's results, Democrats are going to control at least 54 seats in the U.S. Senate and 240 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, with dozens more races remaining to be called in the House. Tonight we're going to be continuing to track the two Senate races still up for grabs. Democrats are in the lead in both. We just got more votes in from Mississippi's too-close-to-call Senate race in the last hour. Democrat Scott Colombe is leading Republican incumbent Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith. In Alaska, the race is too early to call. We're still waiting for about a quarter of the votes to come in.

1:29Right now, Democrat Mary Paltola, the former congresswoman, is holding a narrow lead over Republican incumbent Senator Dan Sullivan. Today, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries poised to become the speaker and, in fact, the first black speaker in the history of these United States. Hakeem Jeffries laying out his party's agenda, saying that Democrats will seek to end the war in Iran, seek to rein in the president's tariffs, and tackle affordability, while also making clear that the one thing that will not be an early priority. I haven't had a single member of the House Democratic caucus talk to me about impeachment.

2:07We've been relentlessly focused on affordability and on accountability because the House is a separate and co-equal branch of government. Anderson, meanwhile, across Washington, D.C. at the White House, President Trump is blaming the Iran war for pushing voters away from the Republican Party. He says he wouldn't do anything different, but he says the shellacking was not his fault. Yes. He said that after spending 20 minutes talking about the ballroom, which we'll probably show you a little bit later, which was a fascinating way to start off the morning. I want to start with CNN's Annie Greyer, who's covering the vote countdown in Mississippi.

2:45You just caught up with the Democratic candidate, Scott Colon. What did he have to say?

2:53Well, Anderson, you can feel the energy here at this local college event where Scott Colombe is meeting with local students and young supporters. And he told me that he is confident that he is going to win this race after he just pulled ahead by 1 ,100 votes, by the new votes that just came in. And he is projecting a lot of confidence here. Take a listen to what he just told me. Do you think that there needs to be a recount in this race with how close the march is? I don't want to get into the legal stuff. I got lawyers down on that. We got an army of lawyers that's ready. to protect the process, protect the integrity of the vote.

3:25But, you know, I'm confident we're going to win. I mean, you know, it's at this point, it's very obvious we're about to win. Republican Senator Cindy Ives-Smith is also confident. She thinks that when the votes are done counting, she will also be victorious. Well, she was claiming she was going to win last night. You know, bless her heart. She's got to wait and see what the voters are moving in my direction. It's very clear where it's going. And I'm going to do an interview with you. If she's so confident, she should get in front of a camera, answer questions. She won't do it. You won't get press statements.

3:49She's never answered any questions for the public. She never answers questions for students. And that's why the voters decided to go in a new direction. They want somebody that's going to fight for them. What is the outstanding vote that's left? Do you know where the outstanding vote is? I'm going to get the numbers. Yeah. God bless you. Thank you.

4:09Now, Colom, you saw going after his Republican opponent, Cindy Hyde-Smith, who is also confident that she is going to win this race and be victorious by the end. I'm told that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is deploying resources to Mississippi to help Cologne in these final days as these critical absentee ballots and other ballots are counted. Democrats are increasingly confident after the blue wave that we saw on Tuesday night and are trying to make an unprecedented upset here. Mississippi is a state that Trump carried by 23 points just two years ago. So Democrats have not sent a Democrat to the Senate in nearly four decades.

4:47So that Colom is trying to change that one day at a time. Yep. Giving his challenger, the incumbent senator, the old bless her heart. Annie Greyer, thanks very much. I want to go to Mana Raju, who is on Capitol Hill. Mana, what are you hearing from Democrats about their priorities? Well, the Democrats are planning to push a wide variety of bills dealing with the cost of living, affordability, as well as going after the Trump administration and a whole wide range of investigations. And on the Republican side, it's a reckoning. It's a blame game of sorts about what exactly went wrong. Greg Steubie, a conservative congressman, flatly blaming party leaders for, quote, kneeling down to moderates within their own party and not standing firm, in his view, to their principles.

5:35Others, including Congressman Marlon Stutzman of Indiana, a Republican, saying that someone at the White House should be fired, he said, including pointing the finger, actually, at Stephen Miller. Others have pointed the finger at Pete Hexat. Some have flatly blamed the president and his handling of the economy. Only one retiring congressman, Don Bacon, who saw his district turn blue, told me that this is a referendum on President Trump. Another Republican running in a swing district said that he was brought down essentially because of the weight of his own party, the unpopularity of his own party.

6:07And Mike Lawler, who's one of the three Republicans running in a district that Kamala Harris actually carried in 2024, said he ran as good of a campaign as he possibly could. But he said the bottom fell out in his campaign. And when I asked him more about that, he said, Jesus Christ could have run and would have lost. Guys. Wow. Manaraju. Quite a quote. Thanks very much. Appreciate it. Let's go back over to the panel. We are joined by none other than John King slumming it with us. The ledger. Wow. Need to get some steps in. Thankfully, John has brought his mini magic wall. You travel everywhere with this.

6:43It's stuck to my hand at this point. The question, I want to come over here and talk to the smart people at this end of the room, because Democrats just won this resounding victory. But it happened just two years after Donald Trump won a resounding victory. And so the Democrats today are saying America loves us. That would be a mistake. But America did just give them a lot of responsibility and just handed them the change baton, if you will. And so the question I want to ask the smart people is, so now, now, Democrats are going to have senators from a senator from the state of Texas. Right. They're going to have senator from the state of Iowa.

7:13They're going to have senators from all these places Trump won before and House members and governors. And once they take their hand off the Bible, gas is still going to be expensive, we presume. January is a little ways off. People are still going to want lower interest rates. So what do they do with the Republican president in the White House to deal with the change dynamics so that two years from now, the voters who just blame the Republicans don't blame them? Yeah. Yeah, they have the baton, but they don't have the whole orchestra here. That's the problem. They don't have power. Yeah. So but they have to be they have to try.

7:42They have to be caught in the act of trying to do something by presenting legislation that would help and then challenging the president to sign it. And they have to do that while pursuing this accountability agenda without allowing that to overwhelm the thing that people really elected them to do first, which is to reduce the costs in their own lives. They don't want to make the same mistake that Donald Trump made. I mean, to me, there's a couple of things that are going to be emergencies in the first quarter next year. Health care is going to be an emergency. All of these aid cuts, these hospital closures.

8:19Democrats should reach across to Republicans in rural areas and say, let's work together to fix that. Number two, this corruption has to stop. And the Republicans have their stop insider trading act or whatever. Democrats sniffed around it, didn't like it. Knock it off, guys. Reach across and get that fixed. and put something on Trump's desk about corruption. He's going to sign or not sign. And the last thing is, you know, the rate payers are getting hammered by the utility companies. The data centers are driving stuff up. That's another bipartisan area. If you can try to get energy costs down, get health care up, get corruption out, I think you can get something done.

8:55And if Republicans don't want to play ball, that's one thing. But there are things Americans want done and we can get done. And on the corruption piece, too, or I should say on the accountability piece, right, Democrats are going to have a choice to make. how do they try to hold Donald Trump accountable? Their voters certainly want that. Voters across the country, new voters for Democrats, seem to want something like that. But they can choose to make it personal and make some of the same mistakes they made before, or they can choose to go after what voters perceive to be the corruption in the administration.

9:24And now all of a sudden they have all sorts of tools to do that. My guess is that's where they're going to go. Certainly people I'm talking to who are leading the party are trying to focus on that, but there will be some voices in the party who will want it to be more personal. If I could just jump in, Scott, for the Republican side. So I'm just going to bring you up one district. So this district just flipped back. Donald Trump won this district, and Ryan McKenzie won two years ago. Ryan McKenzie just lost, and he lost by 13 points. I mean, look, that's a blowout right there. I've been in this district several times over the last three years as part of our project, and you meet a lot of families.

9:54I'll give you one. They own a bike shop in the Cutters Bike Shop in downtown Pennsylvania. The Affordable Care Act subsidies went away, and their health bills tripled. They blame Ryan McKenzie for that. and they say the Republicans never came up with an alternative. If you're going to take something away, what are you going to do about a health care cost? Do you think it's possible? A lot of these new Democrats are going to, some of them, you know, some of them want Medicare for all. But in the short term, they're going to say, can we restore the subsidies? Will Republicans work with them and send that to the president?

10:19Or does that carry over until the new Congress? Well, I think the president actually may want to work with them. Whether the Republicans in the House do or don't may be irrelevant. The Senate's a different story because the Democrats aren't going to have 60, close, but not 60. But I think the president is still thinking about his own legacy. I think they're going to find him in dealmaking mode. I mean, he has said as much in some of his interviews. I'd like to work with some Democrats. He probably won't sign everything. But it was his, what he calls the big, beautiful bill that took them away.

10:43Well, look, we're in the last two years of a lame duck presidency. All presidents on their way out want to do things that burnish their legacies. I think if they go to him with an open mind and an open heart, they might find a little more access than perhaps they're expecting. Of course, you're going to have to swallow the ego a little bit because a lot of their voters aren't going to want Donald Trump's signature, name or presence near anything. But if you could get him to work with you on a few things, it would be good for the people who won, maybe unexpectedly, probably be good for Trump. Some of the conservatives on Capitol Hill might not like it.

11:20But my imagination is, is there's room to run here on deal. I think that many of them ran on and they said, I will work with anyone to solve these problems. So they've opened the door to that. The question isn't what I think they should accept a deal if they can get a deal that would, for example, restore those subsidies. The question is at what cost, because if the cost is but you've got to lay off the accountability stuff in any way, you know, that would there would be there would be recoil on that. I mean, John, one one thing, too, about this, the size of these majorities gives Democrats the opportunity to govern from the center in a way that's been difficult for, honestly, either party to do in the modern era.

12:04Because when you have these incredibly narrow majorities, any very small group, often of extremists, whether it was the squad that Nancy Pelosi had to contend with or whether it was the Freedom Caucus in the House, could essentially wrest control of governing, make leadership's job a nightmare. Hakeem Jeffries has an opportunity. Chuck Schumer will have an opportunity to govern looking at the new map, looking at these members who are from Red District. As they do that, as they do that, I always talk about the Axelrod pendulum theory that we got Trump because of Obama and we go back and forth. Normally you talk about that in a presidential cycle.

12:38But we got, you know, a guy in seminary in school from Texas, a senator who says civility. You're my Christian brother. You're my Christian. The same thing. We got a pastor from Kansas who says the same thing. that a lot of people didn't vote for me, but they're part of my family. And we should talk to them politely. You have a governor of Iowa, Jake was talking about this earlier, whose speech after winning was very conciliatory. But we're standing in a town that has been a polarized partisan mess for years. I think you've got to listen to your constituents. I mean, I think that they are reflecting a weariness on the part of the country over this sort of scorched earth politics.

13:20And there was a real receptivity to it, to the idea of decency and civility and so on. Yeah, you have a boiling hot cauldron here of just upset and crazy stuff. You got some ice cubes coming. You got some people are coming here for the purpose of calming this down and getting something done. And leadership matters. And I agree with what you're saying. When you've got a big old caucus, you can take some of your nut jobs and tell them, go sit in the corner. The grown people are over here talking. And so Hakeem Jeffries went from having the worst hand, getting kicked in the face by Donald Trump for two years, to having maybe the best hand of any speaker in a very long time.

13:58And I think he will use it correctly. Whatever you do, I would just caution them to remember, you've got very little patience in the American people right now. A lot of people voted for Trump. They turned around and voted for Democrats, or they didn't vote at all. I wouldn't assume they're going to give you much leash. They're expecting you to show up and produce something. This is what hampered the Republicans. They did one big piece of legislation and then spent a year and a half not doing much. They're looking for actions. Yeah, but they had all three. They had all three. They had the presidency.

14:24They had both houses. So the expectation was they could get it done. Here you need to have some cooperation. You got people sitting on, as you know, David, sitting on a white hot stove and it's starting to sizzle. And I think people want action immediately. The gas prices will be very hard, but other stuff can get done and they got to get it done. The saying goes, the race for 2028 starts the day after the midterm. So now that we are here, which candidates are gearing up to jump in the race? We're going to take a look at that. Plus one of those frequently on that 2028 list. Maryland Governor Westmore joins us live in a few moments.

15:05Progressive's Accident Response can contact emergency services if you're in a major accident. The only thing worse than someone you love being in an accident is not being able to help them. So Progressive is here to help when you can't. So get peace of mind knowing your loved ones are protected with Progressive's Accident Response. Learn more at Progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Limited availability in California. Driver is responsible for emergency and towing charges not covered by the policy. Coverage subject to policy terms and conditions. Now for a quick message from Anthropic.

15:38The team behind Claude, the AI built for businesses. Customers count on their bank, and banks count on their most important systems. Now those systems count on Claude, and nine of the Fortune 10 companies use it for critical work. See why leading companies trust Claude at claude.ai.span.

16:01I want to bring you a key race alert now because obviously there are some outstanding Senate seats in the state of Mississippi. Democrat Scott Cologne has 49 percent of the vote and Republican incumbent Senator Sidney Hyde-Smith has 48.9 percent of the vote. Cologne, 1 ,138 votes ahead. That's with 96 percent of the estimated vote in. In Alaska, Mary Paltola, the former Democratic congresswoman, has 48.2 percent of the vote. The incumbent Senator Dan S. Sullivan has 47.9 percent of the vote. There are also a couple independent candidates and one Republican candidate, I should say. Paltola, 626 votes ahead, but we still have about 26 percent of the estimated vote in.

16:53With us now, Maryland Democratic Governor Wes Moore, who just won re-election last night. Governor, congratulations on winning re-election. I want to first get your reaction to this historic Democratic sweep. It wasn't really a surprise that you were re-elected in the blue state of Maryland. But this is not to take anything away from you as governor, but it wasn't really a surprise. But what happened last night was a shock in terms of all the places where Democrats won. Well, I would tell you, it actually wasn't, because when you're going around all of our communities and I can tell you whether I'm talking about even Republican or conservative communities in Maryland or when I was going out and campaigning for for some of my friends who are now going to be my colleagues as other governors.

17:46I think we were seeing it and we were feeling it, that that a frustration about gas prices was not a partisan issue. A frustration about grocery prices was not a partisan issue. A frustration about the fact that we are fighting wars that nobody understands and that this administration is not explaining to anybody, but is asking us to pay for was not a partisan issue. And so the fact that we have watched this type of routing is actually was not a surprise for me at all. In fact, I think it actually really reflected what I've been hearing now, you know, for these past months. A lot of historic firsts last night.

18:23But let's start with one with your fellow Democrat, Georgia Governor-elect Keisha Lance Bottoms. She will not only be the first black governor in Georgia history, the first female governor in Georgia history, but the first black female governor in American history. You were also a first. You're Maryland's first ever black governor. I know that that's not who you are in terms of only who you are, but help us understand the significance of what that meant to you and to others in Maryland and what that might mean to Georgians. I mean, I was so excited for for her, for Georgia, but also for this country and what it means.

19:09Yes. And I am very clear that, you know, the thing one of the things that I so admire about Keisha, who's been a friend for a while, is that making history is not the assignment for her. But I do understand there is a power in the fact that we have a Keisha Lance Bottoms, who is now about to be the governor of Georgia. And I think about it this way in context. And part of the reason why I worked so hard and campaigned on behalf of Keisha, campaigned on behalf of David Crowley, campaigned on behalf of Aaron Ford is, you know, when I as I'm right now, the only black governor in this country. I also wanted to make sure that no one ever has to hold that title ever again.

19:49And you think about it for a 250 year history of this country, we've had three African-Americans elected governor in 250 years. Come January, 10 percent of this country, 10 percent of the governors in this country will be black. That's one election cycle. And so this is a pretty remarkable time. And so I'm really proud of my colleagues. I know there's always a strange history with Maryland in terms of the side that Maryland was on. during the U.S. Civil War. But I just want to take a moment to note the advances in the South in this election cycle. First of all, you start off the governor of North Carolina is Jewish and the two senators in Georgia, once Jewish, once black.

20:36Now you have a new black woman senator, I mean, governor of Florida. And then you also have a new black governor, I'm sorry, of Georgia. And now you also have a black governor of Florida. In addition, Abdul Al-Sayed in Michigan is going to be America's very first Muslim senator. Deb Haaland in New Mexico will be America's very first Native American governor. Gina Hinojosa will be the very first Latina governor of Texas. Scott Colombe could could be the first black senator from Mississippi since Reconstruction. It's generally on the Democratic side, but not exclusively. What do you think this says about this country?

21:16You know, I think it's important that we have leadership that's reflective of the beautiful diversity of this country. But I think it also shows what happens when you invest in the South and when you invest in historic candidates. You know, oftentimes, you know, we have found ourselves getting into this into this traditionalist idea about where we invest and who the voters are and how you win elections. And I think that the status quo playbook of which states matter or what target demographics should you go after, I think it is being completely blown up. I think we need to do a better job of investing in the South.

21:54And you're right, where, you know, as a state that, you know, we're literally the Mason-Dixon line runs through the state of Maryland. You know, we know what that complexity is here in Maryland. But I can tell you, by investing in the South, by investing in potentially historic candidates, you are going to be able to energize a base and energize a conversation that I think will turn around and have electoral results as well. Do you wish that Democrats had invested more in Mississippi? We don't I mean, it's it's not I'm not calling Mississippi. Scott Colombe's leading right now and it looks good for him.

22:25But but in retrospect, do you think your party should have done more to boost him? I do. And I don't think it's just about investing in Mississippi in this election cycle. I think we should have been doing more to invest in Mississippi over the past generation, because I do think that would have mattered. And if you look at the demographics of Mississippi, if you look at who lives in Mississippi, you know, Mississippi has one of the largest African-American populations in the entire country. And so it isn't just about how can we focus on on on energizing a base or getting swing voters. It really is about understanding the states and the populations that you have, what exactly the needs are, and then being able to have candidates who can speak directly to those needs.

23:09So on the subject of redistricting, which is not separate from the subject of African-American voters, but on the subject of redistricting, you saw what happened with Republicans redistricting efforts last night, specifically in Florida and in Texas. It didn't work well for them. Ultimately, it was one of these. Be careful what you wish for. You've been pushing for redistricting in Maryland. Yesterday, voters in your state approved a ballot measure that you backed that would let you redistrict in Maryland. Are you going to do it? Yeah, I mean, we're very excited that we said that, you know, Maryland was not just going to sit on our hands while we are watching Donald Trump unilaterally try to redistrict this country.

23:54And, you know, and I am actually someone who is for national redistricting reform. I think this is an issue that Congress should take up. I also, though, believe that if Donald Trump is not for it and he is for him choosing what the map should look like, then Maryland needs to have the ability to respond. And that's exactly what question three asked. You know, question three, which I was which we championed and I know we had the naysayers, but it won overwhelmingly yesterday. And I was very proud of that is just simply saying who should be in charge of our democracy. Is it Donald Trump or is it the people of Maryland?

24:27And what question three lays out is that it's the people of Maryland who should be the ones to determine what our democracy should look like. And so so so, yes, if you're having these other states who are doing mid decade conversations about what their map should look like, I think Maryland should be a part of that conversation as well. So your name is often bandied about as a potential 2028 presidential candidate. But up until now, you've always been able to dance your way away from my question, whatever I ask you, by saying that you're focused laser like on the midterm elections. Sir, the midterm elections are over.

25:03You are legally no longer allowed to use that as an excuse. Are you thinking about running for president? And when will you make an announcement or decision?

25:14I have put no further thought into this at all. I have, in fact, I've spent most of my day-to-day actually calling my new colleagues and all these new governors because in about two weeks we're all going to be getting together with all the new governors and many of the current governors and helping them with their transitions because I serve as the chair of the National Governors Association, both Democrats and Republicans. And I'm looking forward to being able to welcome them and onboard them and making sure that governors are going to be the ones to help to lead the way into the future. OK, I'll let you off with it with that one.

25:49But you're not going to be able to use the midterm thing anymore, just so you know. Democratic Governor Westmore of Maryland, appreciate you. Thanks for your time, sir. It's great to see you, Jake. Thank you. A look at the race for us in Alaska tonight. One of only two Senate races we are not able to call at this point. When are we going to get more votes? When are we going to know the winner? That's next.

26:17Progressive's Accident Response can contact emergency services if you're in a major accident. The only thing worse than someone you love being in an accident is not being able to help them. So Progressive is here to help when you can't. So get peace of mind knowing your loved ones are protected with Progressive's Accident Response. Learn more at Progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Limited availability in California. Driver is responsible for emergency and towing charges not covered by the policy. Coverage subject to policy terms and conditions.

26:49Welcome back. We can now make some projections in the U.S. House of Representatives. CNN can project that Democrat Sam Forstag will win Montana's first congressional district. He defeats Republican Aaron Flint in a pickup for the Democrats. It's been almost three decades, three decades since a Democrat represented anywhere in the big sky state in the U.S. House. Forstag and Flint competed for a seat currently held by Republican Ryan Zinke. Forstag is going to join us here on CNN later this evening. Montana's House District, House 1, is the western part of Montana, beautiful area. Missoula is there.

27:26In Nevada, House District 2, CNN can project that the winner will be Democrat Teresa Benitez-Thompson. She's going to flip that district, too. She's going to win this open seat after a bruising race against the controversial Republican candidate David Flippo. So she flipped Flippo's seat. The outgoing Republican Congressman Mark Amadei has said he would not vote for Flippo. And that part of Nevada, that's like the northern part of Nevada. It's like Reno, Carson City. Let's take a look at the overall balance of power in the U.S. House of Representatives. Democrats have 242 congressional seats. That includes 33 pickups of Republican seats.

28:03Republicans have 145 congressional seats. There are still 48 seats that are outstanding. But this is, Anderson, a much bigger Democratic majority than a lot of people had anticipated. It certainly is. And we are looking at Alaska. Nearly three quarters of all the votes are in, have been counted still too early for CNN to make a call. CNN's Kyung La is at Glacier View, Alaska. What are you hearing about how long this is going to take? it's going to take a while and let me explain exactly why anderson if you look at the numbers that have the latest numbers that are coming out of the division of elections here in alaska it's 626 votes that separate democrat mary peltolo who's just slightly ahead of the incumbent Republican Dan S.

29:02637, 626 votes, about 600 and something votes. So what that division that is just so slight, but that's only 70, that's about 75 % of the votes that have come in. There's still 25 % outstanding in those regions. They are in the remote portions of Alaska. I'm just about an hour and a half outside of Anchorage and you can see how remote it is here. There are entire portions of the state where you can only access it by boat, by plane and by helicopter. So those ballots, if they are postmarked on Election Day, they have 10 days to make it in to be counted. 15 days of the ballots are overseas to come in to be counted.

29:42And then there's ranked choice voting. So those, if no one gets 50 percent plus one, then they go through different rounds before there is a declared winner. Now, what we're already hearing from the incumbent Republican Dan S. Sullivan is that he does fear that there is confusion with Dan J. Sullivan, the incumbent, the independent who was on the ballot. So that time, that that narrative, that argument is already being put out there by the incumbent, who is just slightly trailing behind the Democrat Anderson. All right, Kim, thanks so much. Palma Brown is here. Where are these votes in Alaska that we have not heard from?

30:21So, well, a lot of them are coming from people who live outside of the state, federal workers, that kind of thing. Anderson, this is going to take a while. Election officials won't be done with their jobs for a while, as Kim just laid out. And let me just help you better understand why. We've been trying to get to the bottom of this. Currently, as you see right here, about 74 percent of the estimated vote is in. as far as the outstanding quarter, about 20 ,000 early in-person votes are still being processed. So they still have that 20 ,000 of those in-person votes. And then if you look at this, an official tells me we'll be waiting until next Tuesday.

30:55And Kyung mentioned this, but this is a lot of time if you think about it in a razor thin race like this. So November 10th, that will be when we get the next big release. We're going to be on the edge of our seats until then. That's going to mostly be comprised of the state's significant number of mail-in ballots. And I'm told to expect two other releases 10 and 15 days post-election day. So bottom line, it may not be until 15 days from yesterday that we have a good idea because every ballot, those mail-in ballots could be crucial here. State law allows those ballots to arrive as many as 15 days after that includes those overseas ballots.

31:30And Alaska, as I mentioned, has a significant federal workforce and a lot of people that are considered snowbirds that live in other parts of the state. So that's all factored in here. And as we've been preparing viewers, if no candidate wins a majority, you have that ranked choice voting, which, again, can delay things depending on how all of that shakes out. So Alaska is one of those states, Anderson, we knew it would take a while before the election and just seeing how close it is. That's definitely going to be the case. All right. Campbell Brown, thanks much. Jake. Thanks so much, Anderson.

31:58David, I know you're very excited to show us something about the battleground states, the battleground congressional districts, rather, to show it. Yeah, well, as you guys know, we were tracking this all night throughout the night last night and still today. This is the board of races that are still uncalled. And the way we have this sorted right now is the green means the contests are within a percentage point of each other right now. The yellow, it's between one and five percent. But what you're looking at is the potential flips that still exist on the board for Democrats. So, Jake, you were just talking about there are 242 and it is a growing majority that Hakeem Jeffries is going to have in the House.

32:35And this is where it's growing from is these potential flips right now in the vote count. I'm going to go. There are 15 districts where Democrats are leading in a Republican held district. The top ones are the closest right now in the vote count. Then we get between one and five percent. The orange is between a five and 10 percent lead for the Democrat. and that one in California, 48, is a greater than 10 % lead. There are only three district guys, the red chips there, where a Republican is leading in a Democratic district. Only three compared to 15. So again, it's not that the Democrats are going to win all those that they're leading in.

33:12Maybe, maybe not. But that's their potential opportunity for flips and to pad this majority right now. At this point, it's news that Republicans are leading in any Democratic seats. Yeah, that's true, Dana. I do think that Maine's second congressional district where Jared Golden had him, you know, I think Trump won it by nine plus points or something. Yeah, no, it's red territory. But just look at all those potential pickups that are left to to go under the Democrats column. I mean, already Hakeem Jeffries has a much bigger majority than Mike Johnson had, that Nancy Pelosi had right before before that.

33:53and it just changes the game completely for how he governs. He's going to have a lot of pressures on him from various parts of this new big caucus, but he has more options in how he governs. Yeah. And what he said earlier today about how their goal is not to get even with the Trump administration, but they want people to be able to afford things. And that is why they're, they have such a big majority. I mean, how that sits with some of these Democrats who are coming in who ran on impeaching President Trump, that was a big part of their platform, is going to be an interesting dance that we see playing out.

34:28But it also, you know, changes things for the White House. They were thinking, Hakeem Jeffries, yes, that they'd likely win back the House. They thought he was going to have a small majority, that he was going to have to fight the same battles that House Speaker Mike Johnson has been fighting. And instead, he's gotten a lot more room to breathe here. Yeah. If the Freedom Caucus was the bane in Speaker Johnson's speakership, But Hakeem Jeffries, a Speaker of Jeffries, is not going to have that if one looks at the DSA left and says that's going to be, you know, like the mirror image of the Freedom Caucus.

35:00There aren't that many members that they could walk every time and Hakeem can say, you know, bye bye, bye. We're going to pass a legislation. Speaker Boehner's speakership, Speaker Ryan's speakership, Speaker McCarthy's speakership, Speaker Johnson's speakership. Hakeem Jeffries is going to have something a lot larger potentially. Right. And the moderates, I was interviewing Hillary Scolton today. She's just won her third term. She's in the western part of Michigan. And she said, we as moderates are going to make sure that we form a block like you've seen from the left, the sort of hard left in the Democratic Party and the hard right in the Republican Party.

35:39And we're going to try to use the muscle that we have by winning all of these red districts with more moderate Democrats. Which is what's interesting about that also is one of the leaders of the DSA left, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, has been I don't know if moderating is the right term, but but but trying to expand her visibility and her attractiveness and her reach to more moderate Democrats. Democrats, her tour when she went out there and campaigned, because she has a very safe seat in New York, her tour was basically of purple districts, of swing districts. So in a way, you could see the center of gravity shifting to the left a little bit, but also it's really being balanced out by, I think, a more moderating force in the Democratic Party.

36:24We'll see, I guess. That's just what it looks like right now. It's early. What conversations are Democrats having behind the scenes right now about how to use their newfound power, not just in the House, but also the Senate, state levels. New York City's Democratic Mayor Zoran Mamdani is here to share what he thinks Democratic priorities should be next.

36:45Progressive's Accident Response can contact emergency services if you're in a major accident. The only thing worse than someone you love being in an accident is not being able to help them. So Progressive is here to help when you can't. So get peace of mind knowing your loved ones are protected with Progressive's accident response. Learn more at Progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Limited availability in California. Driver is responsible for emergency and towing charges not covered by the policy. Coverage subject to policy terms and conditions. This podcast is supported by Anthropic, the public benefit corporation behind Claude.

37:22Everyone's got a hard question about AI. Anthropic was built to surface those questions and share what it finds along the way, because there's hope in hard questions. Ask yours at claude.ai slash Spotify and keep thinking. That's claude.ai slash Spotify.

37:44Welcome back to CNN's Election Night in America continued. We have a key race alert for you now. We're getting new votes in from the Los Angeles mayoral race. And Nithya Raman, a Democratic socialist in city council, she leads incumbent Democratic Mayor Karen Bass by about 26 ,000 votes right now. That's with 67 percent of the vote in. A number of Democratic socialists are also heading here to Washington, D.C. after last night's House elections. And CNN's David Chalian is at the voter poll desk with a look at this larger trend. David? Yeah, Jake, we've heard a lot about Democratic socialism, especially in the primary season, roiling the Democratic Party and dividing it at times this season.

38:25But take a look in the voter poll in this midterm election. Among the electorate, those that were voting in the U.S. House race yesterday, do you consider yourself a Democratic socialist? Only 18 percent of voters in the House race yesterday said yes. Eighty-one percent say no. But compare that overall population to younger voters. So among 18 to 29-year-olds participating in the midterm elections yesterday, A third of them say yes, they consider themselves a democratic socialist. Two thirds do not. What about how people view socialism? We ask that as well. Overall population among the voters yesterday nationwide, 33 percent of a favorable view, but a majority, 53 percent, have an unfavorable view of socialism.

39:08Again, this changes if you look at the younger folks, 18 to 29 year olds. Look at that. Forty eight percent of young voters in this midterm election have a favorable view of socialism compared to 35 percent who have unfavorable 17 percent say they're not sure jake all right david thanks so much uh democratic socialists there's going to be a much bigger pool of them in the house of representatives uh the congresswoman from colorado uh congressman from pennsylvania from my home city philadelphia uh congresswoman chevalier from new york what impact do you think they might have on House Democrats?

39:47I mean, we've seen the very, I don't know how you would assess, you've interviewed Bernie Sanders a number of times, Caitlin. He is the chairman, or he will be the chairman of a committee. He was chairman of Budget Committee. He has an impact in Congress. Yeah, and I just talked to Chris Rabb earlier today who you're referencing that will be one of those new members coming in. And I asked him about what Hakeem Jeffries was saying, that they're not here to get even with the Trump administration. If he views it that way, And if impeachment is a priority of his, because it was not among those listed by Hakeem Jeffries earlier today.

40:18And he made clear that they believe they can do both. They can address the affordability, cost of living concerns that voters have, which is why Democrats did so well last night, but also hold the Trump administration accountable in their view. And in some of those Democratic socialist view, that's impeaching the president. And so we'll see what that looks like and how he threads that needle. Yeah. You mentioned Bernie Sanders. I believe he's going to be on. later on today. I mean, when we first started covering politics, he was a lone wolf. I mean, he would talk about these issues that he talks about and rail against them when he was in the House.

40:53He would use the, you know, his one minute and just kind of talk to an empty chamber. And he was relentless, but didn't get a lot of traction. Although he was the king of amendments In the mainstream. And now he is leading this movement that has grown so much to the point that that David was showing the the way that voters, particularly young voters, that they gravitate towards some of these things that that Bernie Sanders is talking about. So they're still particularly in the and definitely in the Senate, but even more in the House, given the big numbers that we're seeing, the Democratic Socialist sort of caucus, if you will, is not going to be as as big.

41:39But they're going to be impactful because they they are relentless and they believe that what they are pushing is absolutely right. And they're going to try to force some kind of accommodation, particularly on health care issues. Yeah, I mean, I think the impact of Bernie Sanders, of Senator Sanders, is much bigger than just whether or not there are more DSA members in the House, although there are. And that's certainly partly as a result of him and his activism and his leadership. It's also, as you know, he's kind of opened the Overton window on what is acceptable discourse. Absolutely. Like the idea.

42:12I mean, think about the fact that when Barack Obama, when President Obama passed Obamacare, he wanted to have an option on Obamacare, the public option. You didn't have to do it. But if you wanted to have Medicare as somebody under the age of Medicare, you could. That was so controversial. They could not get Obamacare passed with the public option. It was taken out of the bill. That is now better. Basically, Medicare for all is now a mainstream Democratic position. It's not just the Democratic socialists who support it or even DSA adjacent people like Abdul Al-Sayed, the new senator from Michigan.

42:48And it's a lot of Democrats, just quote unquote corporate Democrats, feel that way. But it ain't just that. Israel as well. I mean, look at what the vice president, J.D. Vance, was tweeting today about reevaluating the U.S. relationship with Israel as one of the things that they need to do and to work on in his four things that he listed in the aftermath as they're dissecting the outcome of last night. This is something that Bernie Sanders has been beating the drum on, that he has been going off on and talking about a lot of the candidates that he endorsed and campaigned on behalf of, namely Abdul El-Sayed, have also echoed that same policy.

43:20And so what does that look like when both Democrats like Bernie Sanders or Independence View Caucus with Democrats and people like J.D. Vance are saying that? What does that look like in Washington in two months from now? Yeah, it's not just Israel also, though. I think you're going to see it'll be interesting to see what Democrats in the Senate and the House do when it comes to the size of the Pentagon budget, which is now one point five trillion dollars a year. I would be amazed if it stays the same On this topic, we're going to be joined live by two Democratic socialists coming up, New York City Mayor Zoran Mamdani and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont in just moments.

43:53Plus, Republican Governor Ron DeSantis will be here fresh off his party's pretty good showing in Florida last night and his criticism of some of the Republican Party's midterm messaging. We're going to squeeze in a quick break. We'll be right back.

44:13Progressive's Accident Response can contact emergency services if you're in a major accident. The only thing worse than someone you love being in an accident is not being able to help them. So Progressive is here to help when you can't. So get peace of mind knowing your loved ones are protected with Progressive's Accident Response. Learn more at Progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. limited availability in California. Driver is responsible for emergency and towing charges not covered by the policy. Coverage subject to policy terms and conditions. The secret society of semi-homemade?

44:45Listen up. Sam's Club has pre-made dishes for a Thanksgiving feast that's ready in two hours, all while tasting suspiciously homemade. Come join us. Sam's Club. Individual oven times may vary.