Blue Wall Democratic Senate seats seem to be on the knife's edge. Here's why they are so key: Senate seats are held for six years, and there are only 100 of them, versus 435 House seats held for two years. So that makes each Senate seat worth roughly 13 House seats. And the Senate looks very different with, say, 55 Republican Senators than with 52 Republican Senators. With 52 Republican Senators, moderates like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski are key. But with 55 Republican Senators, more expansive GOP policy goals are well within reach.

ABC News has projected Trump will carry the state of North Carolina and its 16 Electoral College votes. Although Harris was not likely to carry that state anyway, the projections still hurts her; as you can see using our handy-dandy election simulator, when we restrict the set of possible Electoral College outcomes to ones that include a Trump win in North Carolina and Florida, Harris loses ground probabilistically because those outcomes are likelier to occur in simulations with more Republican victories than not.

Internally here at 538, we have also been running a version of this model that updates itself with a likely win in Georgia, based on how few votes are left there, as well as a tight race in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, based on the lagging Democratic turnout there. That model assigns a 6-in-100 chance of Harris winning the majority of Electoral College votes after everything is said and done.

To be clear: That 6 percent chance is not nothing. It's possible that our models are extrapolating incorrectly about outstanding urban votes in Wisconsin, for example, where about 24% of the vote is left to be counted, or inferring incorrectly the result in Nevada, where no votes have been counted yet. But those states don't have enough votes to put Harris over the top if she loses Pennsylvania, anyway. There, 84% of the vote has been counted, and Harris trails Trump by 3 percentage points.

Most of the congressional races we're watching in Michigan are still too close to call. But in the 3rd Congressional District, with 54% of the expected vote reporting, Rep. Hillary Scholten is maintaining a lead of 57% to her Republican challenger, Paul Hudson's, 41%. In the other competitive districts, the 7th and 8th, the votes are closer. Tom Barrett is running ahead of Democrat Curtis Hertel in the 7th, 54% to 43% with 57% of the expected vote reporting, while the 8th is much closer, Republican Paul Junge and Democrat Kristen McDonald Rivet are nearly tied at about 48% each with 29% of the expected vote reporting.

When we see the same trend across a broad range of places — with a shift toward the GOP presidential candidate in all kinds of places, and a small incumbency advantage in competitive Senate races —that's evidence of the nationalization Julia mentioned much earlier.

As we watch results come in and slice and dice the political geography of the most competitive states, I'm cautiously watching a few bellwether areas. Semafor's David Weigel identifies Hamilton County, Indiana, as such a place to watch, where Trump's victory there was more narrow than Republican victories in the past. It's a suburban area that illustrates the general shift toward the Democrats in the suburbs. Right now, with 94% of the expected vote reported, Trump is on track with the same vote share he won there in 2020 -- 52%. Another county that Weigel called attention to is DeKalb County in Georgia, which he considers an indicator of whether Trump is really improving his performance with Black voters. With 87% of the expected vote counted, Trump is at 17% compared with 16% in 2020.

Some observers also look at congressional districts rather than counties. One district that's drawn some attention, especially given all the focus on Pennsylvania, is Pennsylvania’s 7th District, where Democrat Susan Wild is running for reelection. It's probably too early to learn much from this race, with about 52% of votes in -- but Wild’s Republican opponent, Ryan Mackenzie, has a narrow lead.

So there's not much that's new here, and it's worth thinking a bit more deeply about the whole idea of bellwethers, which suggest the power of national trends -- across demographic groups or geographic categories (e.g., suburban voters). But we don't really know exactly what it all means until we have more data.