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11/06/2018 10:00 AM EDT

By ZACH MONTELLARO (zmontellaro@politico.com; @ZachMontellaro)


Editor's Note: This edition of Free Morning Score is published weekdays at 10 a.m. POLITICO Pro Campaigns subscribers hold exclusive early access to the newsletter each morning at 6 a.m. To learn more about POLITICO Pro's comprehensive policy intelligence coverage, policy tools and services, click here.
THE TOPLINES
WE FINALLY MADE IT! - Polls are open! Voters are voting! Today is Election Day, the very reason you read Score. I'll keep today's edition short and sweet, because there will plenty of ink spilled tonight and over the next weeks deciphering what exactly happened. But from me and the entire Campaign Pro team: Thank you for reading. We've logged a lot of miles on the road and hours late at night to bring you a comprehensive look at these midterms, and we truly appreciate you coming along for the ride.

Let's get down to tonight. The first polls close at 6 p.m. Eastern in parts of Kentucky and Indiana, and from there things start rolling in at just about every hour. We have a handy guide with all the poll closing times, but here are some states I want to spotlight (all times Eastern): Florida, Georgia and Virginia close at 7 p.m.; Ohio closes at 7:30 p.m.; Illinois, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and parts of Texas close at 8 p.m.; New York, Colorado and Wisconsin close at 9 p.m.; Montana and Nevada close at 10 p.m.; California and Washington close at 11 p.m.; and Alaska (the last state) starts shutting down at midnight.

POLITICO's got all your election night needs covered. We'll have a live chat spinning up at around 5:30 p.m. featuring analysis from our cycling cast of reporters and editors. We'll be chatting well past midnight, so make sure you pop by (and tweet your questions with the hashtag #AskPOLITICO). If you're looking for the highlights of our chat, I'll be updating our "five things to know" story throughout the night with the datapoints you need at the moment. We have a slick page for the results, with breakout pages for the battles over the House and Senate that will update in real time (and here's our Twitter bot that'll tweet out every election call as it happens). We'll also swarm your
social media feeds for various livechats (head to the POLITICO Twitter account at 11 a.m. to hear from me). And of course, we'll bring you in-depth stories all night on what the heck is going on - and don't forget about Score 24 hours from now.

Happy Tuesday. Let's do this. Make sure you check out Charlie Mahtesian's breakdown of where the midterms will be won and lost. As always, email me at zmontellaro@politico.com or DM me at @ZachMontellaro.

Email the great Campaign Pro team at sbland@politico.com, eschneider@politico.com, jarkin@politico.com and dstrauss@politico.com. Follow them on Twitter: @PoliticoScott @ec_schneider, @JamesArkin and @DanielStrauss4.

Days until the 2020 election: 728

POLITICO Pro announces dedicated California coverage: On Nov. 7, there will be a new authority on California politics and policy. Just in time to help policy professionals and business leaders in the Golden State navigate the twists and turns of a new administration, POLITICO California Pro is the only tool that will arm you with a team of state-level experts. Learn more.
IN THE TRENCHES
THE EARLY VOTE - At least 36 million voters have already cast a ballot in early and absentee voting, a staggering number for a midterm. But don't use the early vote numbers to jump to conclusions. More from me: "Early voters in three states - Texas, Nevada and Arizona - have already surpassed total turnout in the last midterm election, [Michael] McDonald's data shows. ... McDonald predicted that by the time all of the early votes are compiled, every state could surpass its 2014 totals. Tom Bonier, CEO of the Democratic data firm TargetSmart, projected that early voting could surpass 40 million when all the ballots are received.

"Analysts cautioned against drawing broad conclusions about which party could gain an advantage from the high early vote totals. But they did note that pre-election polls make built-in assumptions about how many people will vote, and pollsters who leaned too heavily on past midterm turnout may have misfired."

THUNDERBOLTS AND LIGHTNING - Very, very frightening! Here's a look at the extreme weather that could land today, potentially detering voters from heading to the polls. AccuWeather's Kristina Pydynowski (click through for a breakdown of battleground states): "Voter turnout for Tuesday's midterm elections may be affected as a potent storm unleashes rain, strong winds and severe thunderstorms across the eastern United States and snow drops into the northern Plains."

RENT-FREE - The DCCC launched a new program this year leveraging a 2014 addition to campaign finance law to pay rent for offices used by candidates around the country. Campaign Pro's Scott Bland: "In their place, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee picked up the tab - paying over $1 million in office rent to property managers and limited liability companies in 22 states over the past two years, the committee's FEC reports show. The spending on 52 offices around the country, known internally as DCCC 'Battlestations,' comes from a special fund established under a 2014 law that the DCCC can use only to maintain party headquarters buildings - not for other conventional campaign
activities. ... House Republicans do not have a similar program, and their lawyers have been more conservative in their interpretation of the 2014 law so far, according to two Republican officials.

"The Battlestations have to hew to certain rules, according to internal DCCC legal guidelines described to POLITICO. The offices must be available for use by Democratic candidates up and down the ballot, not just House campaigns, and they have to be open for long stretches of the campaign, not just as temporary staging areas for volunteers or late get-out-the-vote efforts. They have to be identified on signs as DCCC buildings and have committee employees working there."

FIRST IN SCORE - THE GUN CONTROL MESSAGE - Giffords PAC, the pro-gun control group founded by former Rep. Gabby Giffords, is out with a memo recapping its midterm efforts. The group dropped nearly $7 million in independent expenditures and endorsed 300 candidates. The memo says Giffords PAC ads "leaned heavily on the fear of gun violence within suburban communities-especially the fears of mass shootings at schools and other public venues."

BRING 'EM OUT - The Senate Leadership Fund poured $3.5 million to turn out voters in eight close races. Campaign Pro's James Arkin: "SLF invested nearly $2 million in GOTV-focused digital ads. The heaviest spending came in four races totaling more than $300,000: Indiana and Missouri, where Republicans are aiming to topple Democratic incumbents, and Tennessee and Arizona, where they are hoping to hold open seats after retirements by GOP senators. The Arizona investment came through Defend Arizona, an affiliated super PAC."

YEAR OF THE WOMAN - EMILY's List had a record-breaking year and expects more of the same in 2020. BuzzFeed News' Ema O'Connor: "EMILY's List, a major PAC that helps 'pro-choice, Democratic women' run for office, has raised and spent a record-breaking $110 million on the midterm elections according to a memo obtained by BuzzFeed News. That's more than the organization has spent in any election cycle before, including presidential elections."

BIG MONEY - House Majority PAC and Patriot Majority USA raised a combined $113 million this cycle. Campaign Pro's Scott Bland: "The fundraising includes $94 million raised by HMP and another $19 million that went to Patriot Majority USA, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit that can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money but does not have to disclose its donors. The combined haul is nearly double the $58 million the Democratic groups brought in for the 2016 elections."

SECURITY FLAWS - Georgia's voter registration system was filled with holes that officials quietly tried to patch, all while Republican Brian Kemp, the state's secretary of state and a gubernatorial candidate, said the system was secure. ProPublica's Jack Gillum, Jessica Huseman, Mike Tigas and Jeff Kao, and Stephen Fowler from Georgia Public Broadcasting: "A representative for Kemp, the state's Republican candidate for governor, denied vulnerabilities existed in the state's voter-lookup site and said the problems alleged could not be reproduced. But in the evening hours of Sunday, as the political storm raged, ProPublica found state officials quietly rewriting the website's computer code.
ProPublica's review of the state's voter system followed a detailed recipe created by the tipster, who was described as having IT experience and alerted Democrats to the possible security problems."

- Kemp's campaign is also running a robocall with false claims that Democrat Stacey Abrams wants to "steal" the election, via CNN's Andrew Kaczynski.

RUNOFF ALERT - Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) isn't waiting until results are in tonight to start preparing for a runoff. She's booked at least $79,000 in airtime from Nov. 7-10, according to data from Advertising Analytics. She is facing Democrat Mike Espy and Republican Chris McDaniel in a special election.

KING'S CLOSING MESSAGE - Fresh off of a new round of criticism for elevating white supremacy, GOP Rep. Steve King was recorded making homophobic remarks. "[The NRCC] sent money over to support a candidate in a primary in California who had a same-sex partner that they put all over glossy mailers," King said, according to a video posted by the Democratic research group American Bridge. "That's hard to write a check to those guys when they do that."

A HARD DAY'S NIGHT - If the battle for the House is a squeaker, expect to wait long into the night (and potentially much longer), for results from California to come in. POLITICO California's Kevin Yamamura: "Forget staying up all night to find out who won congressional seats here: Strategists and campaign experts say it could take days - if not weeks - to determine victors in a series of tight and closely watched midterm races in Southern California. The potential long wait is the product of generous provisions for California voters backed by the state's governing Democratic majority, and the continued abandonment of polling places in favor of mail-in ballots, which require more time to
count and verify."

CODA - ANXIETY-INDUCING HEADLINE OF THE DAY: "Two Vastly Different Election Outcomes That Hinge on a Few Dozen Close Contests," from NYT Upshot's Nate Cohn.

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