This midterm election has rightly focused an immense amount of attention on voting rights and voter suppression. We are most of the way through our big project for 2018, our special editorial series on Voting Rights and Democracy. You can see all eight pieces we’ve published so far on topics ranging from voter purges, gerrymandering, felon disenfranchisement, the history of voting rights, voter fraud hysteria and more. It’s a great body of knowledge and some great journalism.

We have two more pieces to come. The series was made possible by The American Federation of Teachers, which sponsored the series.

I gave some broader read yesterday of where I think we are 5 days out before the midterms. But check this out. The first big electoral fight of the Trump era was the election to replace Rep. Tom Price (R-GA). Democrat Jon Ossoff galvanized Democrats nationwide but came up just short against Karen Handel, a standard issue establishment Republican who in normal times is a good fit for the district. It was widely assumed – with good reason – that if Democrats couldn’t take the seat then they likely wouldn’t have much of a chance in the general elections in 2018. But check this out. The New York Times and Siena are doing live polls using voter list. That’s generally how campaigns do polls as opposed to media organizations. They’re about half way through their poll (267 respondents). But Lucy McBath, the Democratic challenger, is up two points: 46%-44%. Again, this poll is still on-going. They end up going to 500 or 600. Normally I wouldn’t put much into this early number. But we already have good evidence this race is close. This is one of the races that national Republicans have started pouring money into just in the last week or so of the campaign. We’ll get more of this poll tonight.

President Trump laments that mail bomb campaign and synagogue massacre broke alleged Republican election momentum.

Trump on mail bomb campaign and Pittsburgh massacre: "We did have two maniacs stop a momentum that was incredible." pic.twitter.com/ffn4C5jklW

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) November 2, 2018

We’re now five days out from the midterm election. I wanted to share some thoughts as some of the outlines of Tuesday night start to come into view.

Long time readers will know this. But I wanted to make sure everyone knows to join us Tuesday for election day and night coverage right into the depths of the evening. We will be hosting live results for every congressional and gubernatorial races across the country as well as major propositions and referenda across the country. I will be providing play by play in the Editors’ Blog. The whole team will be wrangling all the news in real time. Be sure to join us.

Have questions about the midterms. Tomorrow after at 4 PM eastern we’re holding an Inside Briefing with Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report. No one has a better grasp of the electoral terrain of American politics than Amy. We’ll talk about the late breaking developments in the final days of the campaign and take your questions.

We went back to watch video of Trump’s January 2016 Iowa veterans fundraiser to figure out whether his lawyer has any argument that the Trump Foundation shouldn’t be shut down like a rat-infested bodega like the New York Attorney claims.

Yesterday I discussed this bizarre incident where a “Jews for Jesus” faux rabbi did some kind of invocation or prayer at an event Vice President Mike Pence held for Rep. Mike Bishop and candidate Lena Epstein. Making it particularly offensive is that the ‘rabbi’ Loren Jacobs was asked to say a prayer on behalf of the eleven Jews murdered at the synagogue in Pittsburgh. I tried to explain some of it in this post last night. Suffice it to say that most Jews have a viscerally negative reaction to this group, which they correctly see as a stalking horse for evangelical groups trying to convert Jews to Christianity. Which brings us to the question: who the hell invited this guy?

I’ve been digging into this minor mystery. And boy, it’s a really weird story. And by that I mean not just the ‘rabbi’ but the whole campaign of Lena Epstein which appears to be an unfolding train wreck that I didn’t know about but really needed to.

Are you a big TPM fan? Want to find out about a new way to support TPM at a higher level than Prime and get a bunch of cool stuff in the process? Let us introduce you to TPM Inside.

In the latest episode of the podcast we talk about the biggest campaigns you’re probably barely paying attention to: thousands of state legislative seats across the country. There are over 7,000 legislative seats in 99 chambers (Nebraska is America’s only unicameral legislature). Most of them get little press coverage, certainly very little national press coverage. They can just seem kind of boring. But these contests determine whether your state expands Medicaid, recognizes basic union rights, cares about voting rights or has gerrymandered congressional districts that lock in Republican control even in a 50-50 state. Fascinating important and extremely important.