FiveThirtyEight: “The 2018 election has become a tale of divided government: the House broke for Democrats, but the Senate held for Republicans — and what’s more, Republicans were even able to expand their majority in the Senate. The election has also become a tale of blue waves. But don’t those tales contradict one another? Not really. What the ‘split decision’ narrative sometimes misses is just how well Democrats performed in the Senate despite having to defend more seats than Republicans — and in territory that was largely more favorable to the GOP.”

“Much of this is overshadowed because Democrats did lose Senate seats… But if we look at a state’s partisan lean and the vote share margin in each Senate race, we see Democrats managed to outperform how their states leaned politically in almost every single race — including in the 10 states with a Democratic incumbent that President Trump won in 2016.”

However, First Read notes that Democratic performance in red states might have been their ceiling.

NBC News: “Even in a year where Democrats picked up more than 35 seats in the House, Republicans still won white voters by a solid 10 percentage points.”

“But Democrats won college-educated voters by an even more substantial 20 points (continuing a trend that’s been underway for some years). And Hispanic/Latino voters went to Democrats by a massive 40 points, an even bigger edge than the party usually has with that group of voters.”

These trends — combined with the demographics of several traditional battlegrounds and the results of the midterm elections — suggest Ohio and Colorado may no longer be swing states, but Arizona and Georgia may have taken their place.

“California Democrats completed their sweep of the congressional delegation in Orange County on Saturday as Gil Cisneros defeated Young Kim, a Republican, to capture a fourth seat in what had once been one of the most conservative Republican bastions in the nation,” the New York Times reports.

“The victory by Mr. Cisneros, a philanthropist, was declared by The Associated Press. It completes what has amounted to a Democratic rout in California this year. Democrats set out to capture seven Republican-held seats where Hillary Clinton defeated President Trump in 2016, including four in Orange County. They won six of them.”

Washington Post: “Just 13 GOP women have won election so far to serve in the next Congress, down from 23 this year. With a half dozen races yet to be resolved, the House GOP — the minority party next year — is all but certain to have the lowest number of women in its ranks since 1994.”

“That drop off came amid a national political climate that saw female voters sharply break from Republicans. Women favored Democrats over Republicans for Congress, 59 percent to 40 percent, according to exit polls.”

“It’s set off an internal debate within the Republican Party about how to address this crisis, both in terms of appealing to female voters and then recruiting and retaining women in Congress.”

“More than 2,000 women will serve in state legislatures when those chambers convene for their upcoming sessions, representing roughly a quarter of all state lawmakers across the country. That mark will eclipse the record of 1,875 who served this year,” the AP reports.

“The number could rise as ballot-counting concludes in close contests across the country. The Associated Press has not yet called 216 state legislative elections, races that include about 185 female candidates.”

“In another first, women could end up holding the majority in two state legislative chambers at the same time — the Colorado House and Nevada Assembly… The only previous time women comprised the majority in a state legislative chamber was in 2009 and 2010 in New Hampshire’s state Senate.”

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) “has run out of time, run out of favorable court rulings and is about to officially run out of votes,” Politico reports.

“After losing to Gov. Rick Scott (R) on Election Day, losing after an automatic recount and appearing to not make up the gap following a manual recount Friday, Nelson’s campaign was dealt a mortal blow later that evening by U.S. District Judge Mark E. Walker, who crushed the Democrat’s last major hope by upholding a Florida law that forbids county election offices from counting vote-by-mail ballots received after 7 p.m. Election Day.”

CNN: “There are seven races in the House left uncalled — all are Republican-held seats; Democrats lead in five of the seven. If they win all the races where their candidates are winning at the moment, Democrats will net 38 seats. If they lose them all — which is very unlikely — they will hold at a 33-seat gain.”