Rubio1102Check back here throughout the evening for updates on key Senate races. And see WORLD’s interactive national map for up-to-the-minute election returns for all U.S. Senate, U.S. House, governor, and ballot initiative contests.

1:29 a.m.: The first returns are coming in from Alaska and the early leader: “write-ins.” Joe Miller, Alaska’s surprising Republican nominee for Senate, is in second place. Miller, 43, earned respect with his 2,000-vote primary upset over moderate Republican incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski. But Murkowski turned around and mounted a write-in campaign. Who knows if all of the write-ins are for her. She’d be the first person to win a write-in campaign for Senate since Strom Thurmond won a seat by write-in campaign in 1954. But the Tea Party’s Miller has suffered from some campaign flubs of late, including an incident where some of his private security guards arrested a journalist. It could take days to determine a winner here.

1:07 a.m.: There appears to be two more tight Senate races, neither of which are likely to be finalized soon: In Washington, Republican Dino Rossi trails Democratic incumbent Sen. Patty Murray by a mere 17,000 votes. But Rossi is not ready to concede: “Tonight’s about a course correction across America,” Rossi told a crowd at his hotel headquarters. “We’re all going to have to wait a little bit longer to find out what’s going to happen here.”

And in Colorado, incumbent appointed Sen. Michael Bennet, a Democrat, and Ken Buck, a Republican district attorney, have spent most of the night in a dead heat. But Buck now has a 2 percent lead with less than half of the precincts reporting.

12:40 a.m.: Some good news for Democrats: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada will keep his seat. He is projected to defeat Republican challenger Sharron Angle—a Tea Party favorite. With the nation’s highest unemployment rate, Nevada has lots of angry voters, and Reid appeared there for the taking. But Angle was not up to the task. Reid’s camp breathed a huge sigh of relief when Angle won the GOP nomination earlier this year. While Angle kept the race close, Reid survived thanks to the state Dems turnout ability. It is likely that Reid will also get to keep his Senate Majority Leader title, as the GOP will not take the Senate away from the Democrats. It could end up being that two losing Tea Party candidates, Angle and Delaware’s Christine O’Donnell, both of whom upset establishment GOP candidates in the primaries, could cost Republicans control of the Senate.

12:25 a.m.: Looks like Republicans snatched President Obama’s seat in Illinois. Reports are giving Republican Mark Kirk the victory over Democrat Alexi Giannoulias. Huge symbolic victory and a tough one for the White House to explain. Obama will probably get asked about this at his afternoon press conference tomorrow—well, I guess I mean today, since it is now after midnight.

12:13 a.m.: Right now, Republicans have picked up five seats in the Senate: Wisconsin, North Dakota, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Arkansas. That makes the “at this hour” Senate breakdown as follows: 47 Dems, 45 Republicans, and 2 Independents that caucus with Democrats.

But there are still races to decide including Illinois, Colorado, Nevada, and Washington—all of these are too close to call. Democrats have thin leads in three of those states with Republican Mark Kirk holding an 81,000-vote lead in Illinois.

11:06 p.m.: The Pennsylvania Senate race is getting real interesting: Republican Pat Toomey and Democrat Joe Sestak are running neck and neck. But CNN predicts, based on exit polling, that Toomey will win by the thinnest of margins. If true, this is a huge GOP gain.

10:55 p.m.: In another Republican pickup, three-term Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin will not get a fourth term. Republican challenger Ron Johnson, a wealthy businessman, gets the Senate nod from Wisconsin voters. While Feingold was considered a shoe-in for reelection back in January, he had been trailing Johnson since late in the summer. Voter dissatisfaction over the healthcare law seems to have played a large factor in this GOP gain.

10:47 p.m.: Republican Mike Lee is projected to win Utah’ s Senate seat. This is no surprise. The Republican Party establishment did not start taking the Tea Party seriously until it took out one of their own: Bob Bennett, Utah’s three-term senator, finished third last May in his state’s GOP convention. Now attorney Lee, just 39, heads to Washington in his place. Lee promises to take Tea Party priorities straight to the Senate chamber. His goals for his first two years include passing a balanced budget and a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget every year. He also pledges to first defund then repeal Obamacare. While Bennett brought home the federal bacon, Lee opposes earmarks, describing them as the “holy sacrament of big government.” Saying it shouldn’t be considered outlandish to want to get the nation’s fiscal house in order, Lee has suggested an immediate 40 percent cut in federal spending and has argued that a government shutdown may be “absolutely necessary.” Despite being a Tea Party star, Lee is not really new to Washington—his father served as solicitor general under President Reagan. And Lee himself worked for a D.C.-based law firm and once clerked for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.

9:53 p.m.: Key Senate races in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania remain too close to call with Democrats leading in two of the three (Illinois and Pennsylvania). Republicans so far have a net gain of three Senate seats. They need seven more to control the Senate.

9:13 p.m.: Republican John Hoeven wins the U.S. Senate race in North Dakota easily over Democratic candidate Tracy Potter. This is a pickup for Republicans: Hoeven, a popular governor, will replace retiring Democratic Sen. Byron Dorgan.

8:53 p.m.: Democrat Richard Blumenthal will win the Connecticut Senate race, over Republican challenger Linda McMahon, the former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment. Apparently, the report that supporters planned on wearing pro wrestling T-shirts when they voted did not help. Neither did the record-setting $50 million contribution McMahon made to her campaign.

8:50 p.m.: While media outlets continue to call races almost as soon as each state’s polls close, there are several key East Coast Senate races without a declared winner: Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and West Virginia. But Democrats lead in all three states—not a good sign for GOP desires to take over the Senate.

But wait: The West Virginia race looks like it is being called for Democrat Joe Manchin. The state’s current governor, Manchin is going to win largely by distancing himself form President Obama, who is very unpopular in the state. It will be interesting to see if he sticks by this pledge, which he graphically underscored in a campaign ad when he literally took a rifle and shot a hole through a copy of the Democrats’ comprehensive energy bill.

The race to get to 10 Senate seats for the GOP to get to that magic 51 number just became a lot harder.

8:37 p.m.: The second Republican pickup of the evening: Incumbent Democrat Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas is expected to lose her reelection bid to Republican Rep. John Boozman. This is no surprise, Lincoln, a two-term senator, was considered one of the most vulnerable Democrats in the Senate.

8:29 p.m.: New Hampshire’s open Senate seat stays in Republican’s hands: Former Attorney General Kelly Ayotte, a conservative pro-life Republican, defeated Democratic Rep. Paul Hodes. New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg, a Republican, is retiring.

With her victory in New Hampshire, Ayotte proved that a young conservative female could indeed win a statewide election in a moderate state. The Delaware’s Senate race, involving a GOP female candidate who once dabbled in witchcraft, may have grabbed most of the national headlines. But Ayotte, 42, quietly maintained a steady lead in a New England state despite her support of the sanctity of marriage and her persistent criticisms of the new healthcare law. As a senator, she is expected to be a fighter for pro-life issues. While attorney general, Ayotte appealed a lower court ruling that overturned a New Hampshire law requiring parental notification of a minor’s abortion. She personally argued the case before the Supreme Court over the objections of the state’s incoming Democratic governor. Ayotte, a wife of an Iraq War veteran and a mother of two, favors term limits and vows to serve no more than two terms in office. A national Republican Party looking to broaden its appeal among women and independent voters will likely embrace her while she is there.

8:23 p.m.: Republican Rob Portman has defeated Democrat Lee Fisher in the U.S. Senate race in Ohio. This is another GOP pickup from an established- insider: Portman served in the House from 1993 to 2005. He also served in George W. Bush’s White House as both U.S. Trade Representative and Budget Director.

Ohio has become a key state in national elections—so Portman’s win is a big one for the GOP.

8:17 p.m.: In no surprise, Republican Christine O’Donnell has lost her Senate bid in Delaware to Democrat Chris Coons. This seat, once held by Vice President Joe Biden, was a likely GOP pickup earlier this summer. Moderate Republican Rep. Mike Castle, also a former governor of the state, was expected to easily win this race. But Tea Party groups swooped in and pushed O’Donnell into a primary win.

But O’Donnell, who claimed to have once dabbled in witchcraft, did not fly in the general election. So this is a loss for the Tea Party—the first of the night—but O’Donnell does get a nice parting gift: She received the most news coverage of the 2010 candidates.

8:09 p.m.: Rand Paul now has Tea Party company in the Senate: Republican Marco Rubio has won the Senate seat in Florida. Rubio had to beat two candidates: former Republican now Independent Charlie Crist and Democrat Kendrick Meek, who former President Bill Clinton reportedly tried to convince to drop out of the race to throw his votes to Crist.

Rubio, just 39, and the son of Cuban immigrants, is winning comfortably despite it being a three-person race. He hopes to bolster the Republican minority’s conservative wing

He comes armed with applause-generating Washington-attack lines that further enhance his outsider street cred:

“Our federal government isn’t just broke, it’s broken.”

“Washington has not solved a major problem in 30 years.”

He blames Congress for the “most anti-business agenda in the modern history of this country,” with regulations threatening to make the United States “the greenest Third World country on the planet.”

7:48 p.m.: In the midst of an outsider Tea Party rage, a long-time Washington insider ironically provides the Republicans with a Senate pick-up.

Dan Coats is being declared the winner in the race to fill Indiana’s open Senate seat over Democrat Rep. Brad Ellsworth.

Coats, 67, has already served in Congress, including for a decade in the Senate from 1989 to 1999. So his victory goes against this election’s trends that favors newcomers.

But this is another Republican pickup—the seat is currently held by Democrat Evan Bayh, who is retiring. This represents one of the 10 seats Republicans need to gain to take the control of the Senate from the Democrats.

Senate11027:35 p.m.: Securing the first Tea Party seat in the Senate, Paul will likely be the group’s leader. He told me during a recent trip to Kentucky that the Tea Party crowd has to shape the debate in Congress. He said a balanced budget amendment, term limits, and a law requiring new legislation to display its constitutional roots would be his initial priorities.

“Both parties have failed us,” he said during my Kentucky visit, “what is going on in Washington is extreme. What is going on here is the mainstream.”

The Bluegrass state could become the epicenter of the intraparty drama: Beginning next year it will be represented by Tea Party darling Paul and also by Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell, first elected by Kentucky voters in 1985.

You can’t get much more old-guard then being in Congress for 25 years, including nearly four years as Senate GOP leader.

To avoid getting fully sucked into the GOP party apparatus, new Sen. Paul hopes to launch a bipartisan, bicameral Tea Party caucus. He promises not to act like a career politician, biding his time on the chamber’s backbench until party leaders invite him to join the big lawmaker table.

7:32 p.m.: Rob Portman projected the winner in Ohio.

7:03 p.m.: Incumbents Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Jim DeMint, R-S.C., have won reelection.

7:01 p.m.: As polls close in Kentucky and Indiana, The Associated Press and Fox News have projected that Republicans Rand Paul and Dan Coats are big winners tonight.