Axios' Hans Nichols has your insider's guide to Tuesday night's midterm results:

You won't need to stay up all night to spot a big Democratic wave. But it could take days, or even weeks, to know whether Republicans held the Senate.

🏛️ What we're watching for the House: Florida, Florida, Florida.

• Most polls close at 7 p.m. ET, and the state counts quickly.

🐊 At 8:01 p.m. ET, refresh your browser and watch FL-14. The great mid-cycle redistricting wars transformed this Tampa-based district from Harris +8 to Trump +11.

• If Democratic Rep. Kathy Castor survives, Republicans can all but kiss their majority goodbye.
• Next up is FL-25. The country's most expensive general election race is playing out in a district that went from Harris +4 to Trump +9. If Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz's race is close — or too close to call early in the night — House Republicans can keep hope alive.

This is also a good time to check on South Carolina's Senate race, where polls close at 7 p.m. ET and the count comes relatively fast.

• If Sen. Darline Graham loses to Annie Andrews in the Trump +18 state, Senate Republicans can wave goodbye to their majority. (And they'll be sweating if it's close.)
• "Underperformance is rarely isolated," said Jason Thielman, executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee in 2024. "If you see the GOP underperforming early in the East, it is likely going to continue as you move farther West."

🐎 At 9 p.m. ET, check in on Virginia: The commonwealth's polls close at 7 p.m. ET, but tight races often aren't called until the 9 p.m. hour.

• If Democrats flip VA-01, a Trump +5 seat, they're in for a very good night.
• If they flip VA-05, a Trump +12 seat, they're in for a great night.

Between the lines: VA-02 — dominated by Virginia Beach, and one of the nation's most competitive House seats — will tell us whether a strong Republican candidate can survive a Democratic wave.

• GOP strategists believe Republican Rep. Jen Kiggans (in a rematch against Democrat Elaine Luria, who lost the seat in 2022) has run a nearly flawless campaign. If even Kiggans gets swept away in a 50-50 district, other Republicans in a low-single-digit Trump seat should brace for impact.
• Both women are Navy veterans.
• If Kiggans holds on, that could bode well for Sen. Susan Collins in Maine and Rep. Ashley Hinson in the Iowa Senate race.

👢 Moving west: Polls close in Ohio at 7:30 p.m. ET and in Texas at 8 p.m. ET, but Texas counts faster.

• If Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton holds on, Republicans still have a path to keeping their Senate majority.
• Iowa polls close at 9 p.m. ET. If Hinson is looking good, the night might not be as bad as many Republicans feared.

Pro tip: Don't stay up for the Senate results in either Maine or Alaska.

• Even a clear win (or defeat) for Collins may not be obvious until Wednesday. In 2020, when she won by nearly 9 points, the AP didn't call the race until lunchtime Wednesday.
• Alaska, with its ranked-choice voting, could take weeks.

Share this guide.

The latest wave of hyperscaler earnings is spooking Wall Street. But bulls and bears alike have evidence to validate their wildest dreams — or their worst nightmares, Axios' Madison Mills reports.

• Why it matters: The market's AI obsession has entered its Jekyll-and-Hyde era, with the latest earnings from tech giants sending mixed signals about the AI boom.

Google:

• 🧟 The scary: Google's AI Overviews are cannibalizing the company's core business — ad revenue from search.
• 🍬 The good: Google Cloud is closing in on Microsoft's Azure cloud revenue, a stunning development given that Google was an also-ran in the cloud game only a few years ago.

Microsoft and Amazon:

• 🍭 The good: Both companies had explosive cloud growth.
• 👻 The iffy: Amazon's net income fell despite soaring operating profits, as it didn't repeat the pretax gain from its Anthropic investment that boosted earnings a year earlier. Microsoft's OpenAI investment boosted its net income slightly, which lifted its profit growth.

By the numbers: Either way, this week's flood of AI news failed to shore up investor confidence, Axios markets correspondent Matt Phillips writes.

• The large-cap, tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 stumbled to its third straight weekly loss.

The bottom line: The AI boom championed by President Trump is losing momentum just days before the midterms, when voters will be deciding on AI-related issues at the ballot box for the first time.

• Share this story.

The world's biggest crypto heist is the latest feat by North Korean hackers who have spent years perfecting an arsenal of financial theft, social engineering and sophisticated cyberattacks.

• Why it matters: The suspected North Korean hackers behind the $6.3 billion Binance theft appear to have combined familiar hacking tactics with extraordinary speed and automation, Axios' Sam Sabin reports.

🔭 The big picture: North Korean government hackers have spent more than a decade carrying out financial heists and disruptive cyberattacks, turning cryptocurrency theft into an industrial-scale operation.

• The country has intensified its focus on pillaging crypto exchanges, in part because digital assets can be transferred and laundered across borders more easily — although such attacks can leave more of a paper trail.

Keep reading.

Most Halloween trick-or-treaters will have to start early to catch daylight. Our mapping of NOAA's astronomical sunset calculations found the sun will set before 6 p.m. in nearly a quarter of U.S. counties.

• Tonight will still bring the latest sunsets we'll get for months. Clocks will "fall back" overnight, and it'll get darker earlier across America starting tomorrow.

Meta is assembling a bipartisan team of Washington veterans as the tech giant looks to deepen its relationships with Democrats while retaining its standing with Republicans, Axios' Sara Fischer reports.

Why it matters: Mark Zuckerberg — the founder, chairman and CEO — has developed a close relationship with President Trump over the past few years, which has helped Meta navigate regulatory scrutiny of AI.

• In September, Zuckerberg and Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang helped bring a slew of top AI executives to the White House to establish self-regulatory commitments.

🔎 Zuckerberg and Meta president and vice chairman Dina Powell McCormick met in August with the Democratic House Commission on Artificial Intelligence and the Innovation Economy at the invitation of Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), sources tell Axios.

• The executives discussed the company's AI strategy, including its infrastructure build-out and economic investment plans, with Gottheimer and other Democrats who co-chair the commission, including California Rep. Ted Lieu and North Carolina Rep. Valerie Foushee.
• Gottheimer, in a phone call with Axios yesterday, called the meeting "incredibly productive." He wanted to get the executives' perspectives as they try to put together a legislative framework for AI.

🫏 State of play: A new recruitment effort by Powell McCormick, a former bank executive and official in the first Trump administration, is underway, sources tell Axios.

• Michael Hacker, a longtime aide to House Democratic power broker Jim Clyburn, recently joined as a VP of compute initiatives.
• Nick Schmit, a former top aide to Biden Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, has joined the company as director of strategic partnership management.

🐘 Between the lines: Meta has also hired several former Trump administration officials to keep close ties to the White House.

• Josh Raffel, who worked with Powell McCormick during the first Trump administration, has joined as a VP of compute initiatives.
• Pat Trueman, a former senior official on Trump's 2024 presidential campaign, recently joined Meta's U.S. policy operation.

Go deeper.

In 2024, the Trump campaign made inroads with the youth vote by seizing on manosphere cultural stars to connect with young Americans: They voted Republican in higher-than-usual numbers.

• Two years later, President Trump's youth support has dropped, Axios' Avery Lotz and Margaret Talev write.

📊 In a new Generation Lab poll for Axios, 48% of 18-to-29-year-old, college-educated Democrats, 22% of independents and 6% of Republicans called Trump the biggest threat to America today.

• A New York Times/Siena poll of likely midterm voters published last week found that 7 in 10 young voters (ages 18-29) identified as or leaned toward Democrats — a 15-point swing from before the 2024 election.

Keep reading.

More than one-fourth of all the midterm ad spending has gone to just three races — the Senate races in Michigan, Ohio and Texas, the N.Y. Times' Jillian Vordick and Teddy Schleifer report.

• All three states went for President Trump in 2024, and all three races are rated as toss-ups by the Cook Political Report. (The other Senate toss-ups are Alaska, Iowa, Kansas and Maine.)

Republicans are spending $2.1 billion across all races, outspending Democrats, who are spending $1.8 billion.

• Senate races account for 60% of all ad spending up to the final week of midterm campaigning.

👀 NEW RECORD: This midterm cycle has broken the record for ad spending on any election, including presidential years. AdImpact says total ad spending on the 2025-26 cycle crossed $11.6 billion, passing the record set in 2023-24.

• More data (NYT gift link).

From hosting then-President Biden to catering election-night gatherings for House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.), Drago's Seafood Restaurant in New Orleans has found a bivalve secret to bipartisan appeal, Axios New Orleans' Chelsea Brasted writes.

• "Republicans and Democrats all love oysters," owner Tommy Cvitanovich told us.

Read on ... Get Axios New Orleans ... Find your Axios Local city.