Election 2026 live results: Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms projected to be 1st Black woman governor

With Democrat Roy Cooper projected to flip the critical battleground Senate seat in North Carolina, here's how he pulled it off, according to preliminary ABC News Voter Poll findings:

Race: Black voters made up roughly 1 in 6 Senate voters and about 9 in 10 voted for Cooper. The three-quarters of the state's electorate that are white were roughly divided between Cooper and Republican challenger Michael Whatley.

Education: Early ABC News Voter Polls find non-college-educated voters were evenly divided between Cooper and Whatley and suggest Cooper improved among college-educated voters, winning this group by over 30 percentage points.

Party: Cooper fared particularly well among independent voters, with about 6 in 10 of these voters backing him and roughly one-third voting for Whatley, according to early ABC News Voter Polls.

Age: Early ABC News Voter Polls find that Cooper won young voters ages 18 to 29 by about 58 percentage points.

-ABC News' Alauna Safarpour

U.S. Rep. Kevin Hern is projected to win the Oklahoma Senate seat and keep the seat in GOP control after defeating Democrat N'Kiyla Thomas.

The seat was made open after Markwayne Mullin resigned to be Trump's Department of Homeland Security secretary.

Republican U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds is projected to defeat his Democratic opponent David Jolly to win the Florida gubernatorial election.

He will become the state's first Black governor.

At 9 p.m. ET, polls in 15 states have closed: Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, South Dakota, Texas, Wisconsin and Wyoming.