Polls closed across Minnesota at 8 p.m. Tuesday, and election officials immediately began counting ballots in the midterm elections. Anyone who was in line by that hour can still vote, but the state has now moved from casting ballots to tallying them.
That is why readers are watching the Minnesota Midterms now. The state’s gubernatorial race is one of the biggest storylines, and the winner will almost certainly become Minnesota’s first woman governor. The U.S. Senate race is also on the line, with the seat held by retiring Sen. Tina Smith up for grabs.
The first numbers are expected to come in batches, and Hennepin County is still processing unofficial results as those totals are assembled. The county’s first batch will likely cover the vast majority of precincts, but it may not settle the picture right away, especially in the closely watched governor’s race and Senate race.
Those early returns will matter because they are the first hard evidence of where the night is headed. A polling station in Minneapolis' Cedar-Riverside neighborhood saw major turnout Tuesday evening, a reminder that the closing minutes of voting still mattered even as the counting began.
Elsewhere in the broader election picture, Democrats won control of the Senate in the 2026 elections and were projected to flip seats in Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Ohio, Kansas and Iowa, while holding on in Georgia and New Hampshire. Republicans currently control a six-seat majority of 53 Senate seats, compared with 47 for Democrats, and CBS News also projected that Democrats would take control of the House.
In Wisconsin, CBS News projected that David Crowley won the governor's race after defeating Republican Rep. Tom Tiffany. Crowley, who won the August 11 primary by just 4,000 votes over Francesca Hong, will take office after two-term incumbent Democratic Gov. Tony Evers was prevented from running again because of term limits. The count in Minnesota is only just beginning, and the next batch of results should start to show who has the edge.
