MN governor's race: What the early results show

All right, so let's go back to Minnesota governor here. We have House Speaker Republican Lisa Damuth facing Senator Amy Klobuchar. We're looking to see where the votes are coming in. It's a small amount of votes, 1% of estimated votes counted. And right now you have Lisa Damuth with that number of 10,000 votes and Amy Klobuchar with about 6,000 of those that have been counted. Not much to glean from this right now, Catherine, with 1% reporting in it. So it's going to come down to where those votes are coming in. Exactly. It really underscores how important Hennepin and Ramsey County are for Democrats statewide. U.S. Senate race here in Minnesota. We've talked about that briefly already. Michelle Tafoya, the Republican, and Peggy Flanagan, the Democrat. This is how it's shaping up again with just 1% of the vote reporting in. But Michelle Tafoya with a sizable lead with that vote tally. And we don't know where those votes are coming from. Again, no. But we know they're not from Hennepin County because we expect them later to come in from Hennepin County. But also, there's nothing to report from Hennepin County attorney. But we have Anders Volk facing. He's a prosecutor who worked in the U.S. Attorney's Office facing Cedric Frazier, who's been a public defender. So no numbers to show in that race yet. In the attorney general race, incumbent Keith Ellison, the Democrat, Ron Schuetz. We just heard from him a few minutes ago. Again, this is a very low vote total, but Ron Schuetz. The Republican beating Keith Ellison 70% to 30%. Keep in mind and keep an eye on that upper right-hand corner as we progress through the evening. This is where it's going to get kind of tricky as these numbers come in. As Tim and Blois pointed out before, some of these counties, Hennepin, Ramsey, are not going to give some very large vote totals until later this week. in this evening and is that how it's really shaping up guys? It really is how it's shaping up. In fact, the vote totals that you've got coming in so far are from far southwestern Minnesota. In fact, if we look at just the U.S. Senate race alone, okay, with we've got Murray County that's reporting with 62 percent of the vote in so far, but we've only got A small number of votes. Okay, Michelle Tafoya is winning there so far with slightly more than 1,000 votes. Peggy Flanagan, 355 votes. And then if we look at Rock County, again, kind of a similar path here. Michelle Tafoya with 74% of the votes. Peggy Flanagan with 22%. But we're seriously talking about... 1,600 votes here total in those two counties, or at least in Rock County and a little bit more in Murray County. We expect in Rock County, for example, there to be about 4,000 votes total. So this is just those precincts coming in from the Secretary of State. On the other numbers that you guys are showing, we are seeing votes from around the state, but there isn't consistency. Some counties are reporting one race and not another race. Let you know as the votes come in and for transparency, we're getting our data directly from the secretary of state's office as it's being reported in from those county election offices. Okay, so that's how we're getting the data here that you're seeing on our colored map. But southwestern Minnesota, the two counties that are reporting in so far in these statewide races. If you go to governor again, Lisa Damouth has a slight lead over. Well, a big lead over Amy Klobuchar. But again, this is known as A very red corner of the state of Minnesota, so perhaps not a surprise there. Just to give you an example on that corner state, it moved 20 points between the last two governor's races in Republicans' favor. There you go. I really like that a lot. It's good for our viewers to be able to see as we just kind of spew out these numbers. It's important that they can see where they're coming from, because that is really the name of the game. Exactly. When an election is over, when the votes are tallied, it's where those votes come from, how big of an area we're talking about that will determine the winner. And throughout the night, we're going to be able to show you where these votes are coming from, county by county, as more vote totals come in. As we're talking, more are popping up. Okay, so here's the governor's race right here. So let's go to the big county here. This is Crow Wing County, 24% of the precincts reporting. Lisa Damouth with a sizable lead so far. Let's go to our next county reporting here, Mille Lacs County. Again, Lisa Damouth, 77%. But only 20% of the precincts reporting. Let's go to far northwestern Minnesota here. Clay County, again, Lisa Damouth reporting very well so far. 60% of the vote, but only 37% of the precincts reported. Clay County is one of those rural counties we're going to watch very closely. That's the home of Moorhead. Highly competitive state senate race there. Right. And Amy Klobuchar has done very well there. To put it in perspective, Clay County is the only county in western Minnesota that Governor Walz won. And he only won it by four points. Okay, so a very tight county for them. But this gives you an idea of some of the vote totals that are coming in so far and where they're coming from. Now, this is the race for governor. How about we look at U.S. Senate here just for the moment to see how this is shaping up as well. Okay, so statewide, Michelle Tafoya so far with almost 70% of the vote totals coming in. But here, keep in mind here, this is only 2% of the precincts from across the state reporting. Let's go to the Clay County, though, because this is one of the things we're going to want to watch. In Clay County, Michelle Tafoya has 62% of the vote. Peggy Flanagan has 35%. In the governor's race, Lisa Damoth has 68%. Amy Klobuchar has 30%. So that's going to be the difference of whether or not... Michelle DeFoya, Keith Ellison can keep up with the votes at the top of the ticket. Right. All right, guys, you've got some more numbers for us to tell you. Yes, we do. Those top races here in Minnesota, some of the ones you're talking about there, let's look at them from the big screen here. Now, with 2% of the votes reporting in, this is statewide now. You guys were really great about sort of individualizing some of those precincts and counties, but this is statewide now, 2%. Lisa Damoth with 58% of the vote and Amy Klobuchar with 40%. Okay. And then U.S. Senate, you have Republican Michelle Tafoya with 59% of the vote so far. Democrat Peggy Flanagan with 38% of the vote. And again, as Boyce and Tim were telling us, you know, we're looking at where the numbers are coming in from and then comparing them race to race, but it's not a big number so far. Hennepin County Attorney Anders Volk and Cedric Frazier. Again, these are races that we probably won't see numbers for quite some time. Again, Hennepin County is going to be slow. All right, let's take a look at that Attorney General's race. You have Republican challenger Ron Schuetz facing incumbent DFL-er Keith Ellison. And right now, 2% of estimated votes counted. Those are the numbers. Secretary of State Steve Simon, the incumbent, versus Tad Jude, the challenger Republican. There are the numbers so far. Tad Jude, 64% of the vote. Steve Simon with 33% again. Very few numbers coming in right now. All right, auditor, the Republican Scott Jensen, a physician, has run for governor before facing Zach Filipovich, the Democrat DFL candidate. And so those are the numbers so far. Again, we're still talking about this really the same total and then how it's divided up from the numbers that are coming in. Let's look at Congressional District 1 here in Minnesota. Brad Finstad, the incumbent Republican. Jake Johnson, his challenger. 3% of the votes have been tallied there. For those two, 65% going to the incumbent, Brad Finstad. Second congressional district, an open seat. This was Angie Craig's seat in a very competitive district. She left to run for a U.S. Senate, lost in the primary. You have Republican Eric Pratt facing Democrat DFL candidate Matt Little. And those are the numbers we had so far. On this constitutional amendment, basically altering the way or adding how much school funding can come out of a trust fund here in Minnesota. The yes votes are winning handily, almost 70% of voters. All right, and then the race for governor in Wisconsin. We have 22% of estimated votes counted so far. We need to take a look at where they're coming in from across the state of Wisconsin because that matters greatly. Tom Tiffany, the Republican facing Democrat David Crowley, and that's what we have so far in that race.