PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) - In his first TV interview since losing the 2010 governor’s race, former General Treasurer Frank Caprio told WPRI 12 he regrets his infamous comment that President Obama could take his endorsement and “shove it,” attributing the outburst to the frustrations of a losing campaign in its final weeks.

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• Video: Watch the full Newsmakers with Frank Caprio (May 14)

Rhode Island’s last general election was on Nov. 2, 2010, but the electorate that casts ballots today will look more like the one that went to the polls four years ago, on Nov. 4, 2008, because turnout is always higher in presidential years than in midterm/gubernatorial ones.

Here’s the data on Rhode Island turnout, as compiled by WPRI 12 political analyst Joe Fleming:

The first question is, will Rhode Island voter turnout stay at the 67% level reached in 2008, or will it fall back to the 61% level seen in the 2004 and 2000 elections? Those six percentage points might not sound like much, but they’d be the difference between 447,513 and 491,531 votes – about 44,000 ballots, more than enough to swing a close race; Cicilline beat John Loughlin by 9,727 in 2010.

The next question: who exactly will those 447,000 to 491,000 voters be?

As Yogi Berra once remarked, it’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future. But we can take a look at Rhode Island’s last two presidential electorates and get a sense of who’s going to show up tomorrow.

A few things seem highly likely: more women will show up at the polls than men; about one in five voters will be young; Democrats and independents will vastly outnumber Republicans. But will the share of non-white voters jump again? Will Democrats top 40%?

The answers won’t be known until after Tuesday. (Actually, they won’t be known at all – Rhode Island’s exit poll was canceled to save money.) But here’s a look at who voted in 2004 and 2008 so you can see trends:

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – The Federal Election Commission hit Congressman David Cicilline with a $4,530 fine last month because he failed to properly report $37,600 worth of campaign donations made in conjunction with a fundraiser that President Obama headlined in Providence in 2010.

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JWU employs both Fogarty, who ran for governor in 2006, and John Robitaille, who ran as a Republican last year. Both men came very close to taking the office – Fogarty lost by 7,803 votes to Don Carcieri and Robitaille lost by 8,660 votes to Lincoln Chafee. A shift of less than 10,000 votes, and both these men would be governors instead of professors.

Also interesting – for all the talk about Chafee winning only 36% of the vote last November, he actually defeated Robitaille by more votes than the number that separated Carcieri and Fogarty back in November 2006.

Rhode Island’s Hispanic voting-age population grew by 13,000 from November 2008 to November 2010, raising the total number to 84,000, Census estimates show.

By contrast, the population of white voting-age Rhode Islanders dropped by 20,000 over the same period, falling to 649,000. That figure excludes Hispanics.

Hispanic Rhode Islanders are far less likely to be registered to vote than their whites neighbors, however, with only 24% of eligible Hispanics registered compared with 71% of non-Hispanic whites, the Census said.

The report also showed last fall’s midterm election drew relatively few young residents and Hispanic citizens to the polls in Rhode Island.

Just 19% of eligible Rhode Island voters between the ages of 18 and 24 cast a ballot last November, the Census said. That was far below the turnout among those ages 25 to 44 (40% of whom voted), 45 to 64 (56%), 65 to 74 (64%) and 75 or older (59%), the Census said.

By race, turnout was highest among non-Hispanic white Rhode Islanders, 50% of whom cast a ballot, compared with only 20% of Hispanics.

Men in Rhode Island were also slightly more likely than women to vote last November, with 48% of males casting a ballot, compared with 46% of females.

The Census acknowledges it has less confidence in its survey numbers for small groups. The margin of error for estimates of the Hispanic vote in Rhode Island is 13.2 points, versus 3.1 points for non-Hispanic whites.

That’s the lowest midterm election turnout in Rhode Island since comparable Census records begin in 1986, and way down from the 58.8% turnout in 2006, a year that included the hard-fought U.S. Senate race between Lincoln Chafee and Sheldon Whitehouse.

It’s also down from the 67.4% of Rhode Island citizens 18 and older who voted in the 2008 election, which is less surprising since presidential years usually see a big surge in voter turnout.

Voter turnout in November 2010 ranged from over 55% in Maine and Washington to under 40% in Texas, with Massachusetts’ turnout at 52.2%, the Census said.

“The most common reason people did not vote was they were too busy (27%),” the Census said in a news release. “Another 16% felt that their vote would not make a difference.”

Hispanics made up 7% of voters nationwide in 2010, up from 6% in 2006, while black voters’ share rose from 11% to 12%.

Historically, the leadership of both chambers raises and spends the most money, and that proved to be the case again in 2010. House Speaker Gordon Fox (D-Providence) raised $142,000, and spent $117,000 last year. Senate President Teresa Paiva-Weed (D-Newport) raised $111,000, and spent $131,000.

The average winner in either chamber spent significantly less than the leaders, however. In the Senate that number was $25,064, while in the House the figure was $17,308.

But even those figures are high in a surprising number of races. For instance, in the House, 25 members spent less than $10,000 to get elected, including five newcomers. And these weren’t easy races either – 18 of the 25 were against credible opponents who received more than one-third of the vote. In the Senate, ten Senators spent less than $10,000 to get elected, including three first-timers.

As for the lawmaker most in the news this week – Rep. Daniel Gordon, R-Portsmouth – he was among last year’s most frugal candidates, raising and spending $4,050. Only 10 of the 75 other winning candidates for the House spent less. Gordon’s opponent, Democrat George Alzaibak, spent $7,231 – 24th-most among the 70 who lost.

(Fun fact: David Preston, New Harbor Group’s founder and president, remains the last person to run a winning Democratic campaign for governor in Rhode Island – 19 years ago when he managed Bruce Sundlun’s 1992 victory, as RI NPR’s Scott MacKay has pointed out.)

By Ted Nesi

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – State Rep. Daniel Gordon’s criminal record may be extensive, but his political record is not.

Gordon didn’t cast a ballot in a single election in Massachusetts from 2000 though 2008 after originally registering as a Republican in Taunton, according to records reviewed by WPRI.com. He later moved to Fall River, which dropped him from the voter rolls in 2008 when he did not respond to a confirmation card.

Gordon registered to vote in Portsmouth as an independent in May 2009 but did not provide a prior address when he filled out the form, Town Registrar Madeleine Pencak told WPRI.com.

Gordon eventually registered as a Republican in Portsmouth on June 14, 2010, just two weeks before he declared his candidacy to succeed John Loughlin as District 71′s representative on June 28, according to Pencak and records at the Rhode Island Secretary of State’s office.

Other Republicans struggled this week to recall how Gordon wound up being their sole candidate to compete for Loughlin’s open seat, which was one of just 10 districts out of 113 held by the GOP during the General Assembly’s last session. Loughlin stepped aside to mount a losing bid for Congress against Democrat David Cicilline.

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Tim White contributed to this report.

• Related: What happens if state Rep. Daniel Gordon resigns from office? (Sept. 19)

In the end, it was not to be for the GOP. Patrick defeated Baker 48%-42% in the November election, likely helped by the third-party candidacy of independent Tim Cahill, who took 8% of the gubernatorial vote.

Still, Baker ran a competitive race and clearly learned a lot. He shared 10 of observations Tuesday in an article for CommonWealth magazine that’s a good read for would-be politicians and those who cover them alike. These two stood out to me:

Third, the media will challenge you. It’s not exactly a game of “gotcha,” but anyone who runs for office at any level needs to understand that the journalists who cover your race will test you – deliberately. They will want to know what makes you tick. …

Sixth, get used to asking people for money. Many people say this is the hardest part of any campaign. Perhaps. I had over 520 fundraisers, found over 33,000 donors (and signed thank you notes to every single one), and raised more money than any challenger ever who ran for a statewide office. … Money matters, it’s as simple as that. It may not be pretty, but it’s a fundamental part of the process.

That last point about fundraising is something I’ve heard many times. Particularly for first-time candidates, it’s awkward – but essential – to get comfortable shaking down perfect strangers for cash. Locally, it’s one of the questions everybody has about Brendan Doherty’s campaign against David Cicilline, a proven fundraiser in his own right. How successful will Doherty be in raising money? (He’ll make his first big attempt next week.)

You can read Baker’s whole piece here.

Winning Connections, a Washington political consulting firm that advised Chafee’s victorious gubernatorial campaign, said Tuesday it’s been honored for its work on the independent’s behalf.

Winning Connections won 15 awards in 10 categories at the American Association of Political Consultants’ 2010 “Pollie” awards, which it described as “the political equivalent of the Oscars.”

Oddly though, the firm spelled Chafee’s last name wrong not once, not twice, but three separate times in its press release, dubbing him “Lincoln Chaffee.” (Perhaps they also advise the local National Organization for Marriage chapter.)

Chafee paid Winning Connections $75,868 for its services in the two months before the Nov. 2 election, campaign finance records filed with the R.I. Board of Elections show. Chafee spent a total of $2.5 million on his campaign for governor, much of it out of his own pocket.

Winning Connections said it received top honors in two categories for its Chafee campaign work: “Overall Phone and Field Campaign” and “Most Innovative Use of Automated Technology.” Here’s how the group describes what it did for the governor:

Winning Connections provided our cutting-edge predictive dialer, WinDialer, to help the [Chafee] campaign’s volunteers make thousands of calls in a more efficient way than they could have with traditional phonebanking. We worked with the campaign to strategically target voters who were most likely to support Senator Chafee and ran a paid calling program to identify, persuade and turnout tens of thousands of Chafee voters on Election Day.

“Winning Connections did a great job,” Patrick Rogers, who chaired the campaign and is now Chafee’s chief of staff, is quoted as saying on the firm’s website. “We loved using WinDialer! Their calling program helped us reach the right voters with the right message.” The firm did work for state Rep. Maria Cimini and the Progressive Leadership Fund last year, too, campaign records show.

(WinDialer could also be the nickname of Charlie Sheen’s cell phone. Winning!)

Update: “Chaffee” is lucky Winning Connections wasn’t responsible for writing up his direct mail material, one wag points out via e-mail.

Update #2: Elizabeth Roberts’ TV consultant, Joe Slade White & Co., won the top award for “a Statewide – Democrat (Non-Gubernatorial) television spot” for this ad, a tipster informs me.

As of Dec. 31, Costantino still hadn’t paid himself back for $381,000 worth of personal loans he made to his campaign late last summer. His political war chest had a meager $2,179 in cash at the close of last year.

The former House Finance chairman wasn’t alone in dipping into his personal funds during the mayoral race.

As of Dec. 31, Angel Taveras has only gotten back $20,000 of the $70,000 he loaned to his campaign. John Lombardi loaned his campaign even more – $100,000 – but hasn’t filed his Dec. 31 finance report yet.

Costantino, who’s now running the Office of Health and Human Services for Governor Chafee, at least can commiserate about the situation with his new boss. As of Dec. 31, Chafee hadn’t gotten back a dime of the $1.61 million in loans he made to his campaign between April 2009 and last October.

“I believe this election was the exception,” Fleming told me in an e-mail. “In most years, a third candidate would only get about 5% of the vote. I do not see this happening very often. … You very seldom get three candidates that all can draw a large number of votes.”

And, he added, “I do not think the General Assembly would be in favor of such an idea.”

You can catch Tim White’s report with Carcieri’s thoughts on runoffs and a potential Senate bid in 2012 during tonight’s 6 p.m. newscast.

I don’t know how you govern effectively when you’ve got a little more than a third of the voters that supported you. I think the notion of a runoff, or something, that would at least – whoever is sitting in this seat would feel more comfortable -

White: You think there should be a runoff election?

Yeah, I do. I think it’s a healthier thing for the whole process.

There are many, many ways to structure runoff elections, as this massive Wikipedia article shows. But for simplicity’s sake, let’s assume that Rhode Island implemented a system where, if no candidate gets 50% in the first round of voting, the top two vote-getters would compete head-to-head in a second round.

What that would have meant in the most recent gubernatorial election is that instead of Lincoln Chafee winning the governor’s office with 36% of the vote, he and second-place John Robitaille – who got 34%, and was Carcieri’s candidate – would have gone on to the second round. They would have had to do a few weeks of quick campaigning – we probably would have hosted another debate with just the two of them – before voters headed back to the polls to pick one or the other.

In a runoff, the big question is what happens to the voters who supported other candidates in the first round. About 30% of voters supported someone other than Chafee or Robitaille on Nov. 2. Most of them backed Frank Caprio, a Democrat with a center-right bent, so Robitaille would have had a good shot at picking up a lot of them – though we don’t actually know the composition of Caprio’s 78,896 voters.

A second-round runoff also would have a dramatically different dynamic than the rest of the gubernatorial campaign. The Chafee campaign would have had to scramble to define Robitaille, who had been little-known to voters just a few weeks before the vote. But Robitaille would no longer have been battling Caprio – and, to a lesser extent, Ken Block – on the right. Here’s some of how Robitaille analyzed that dynamic in his interview with me earlier this month:

I think the Ken Block factor was significant, absolutely significant. For him to poll six or seven percent in a seven-way race was definitely a factor. And then when you look at – only 36 percent of the people voted for Linc, who was clearly the only progressive running, and the only one really running completely left of center. The three of us, Block, Caprio and myself, were all clearly running right of center. So when you’ve got three people dividing up 64 percent of the vote, it’s tough for any one of us to win.

Tim will have more highlights from his interview with Carcieri on tonight’s evening news. The full interview will air during a special edition of “Newsmakers” this weekend.

Update: Common Cause Rhode Island’s John Marion writes in to point out that there are a number of other ways to structure a runoff apart from the Louisiana/France-inspired scenario I outlined above.

In 2012, California is moving to a system where it holds one big primary, and the top two vote-winners – regardless of party – compete in the general election. So if the Democrat and Green Party candidates come in first and second in the state’s all-party primary, the Republican won’t be on the ballot in the general.

There’s also instant-runoff voting, where voters rank their preferences numerically on the ballot and then the least-preferred candidates keep getting knocked out until somebody makes it over the 50% mark. So if you were a right-leaning voter who prefers Caprio you might mark your ballot “Caprio 1, Robitaille 2, Block 3, Chafee 4.” That way, if Caprio gets knocked out of the running because not enough people prefer him, you wind up supporting Robitaille, your second-choice, rather than inadvertently helping Chafee.

Gov. Donald Carcieri, whose term ends next month, mostly sat out the latest election cycle when it came to campaign contributions. John Robitaille, a former aide to the governor, was the only Republican who got Carcieri’s support, according to campaign finance reports filed with the Rhode Island Board of Elections. Carcieri and his wife, Suzanne, gave Robitaille a total of $4,000.

By contrast, in 2008 Carcieri made donations of between $150 and $500 to more than two dozen General Assembly candidates in the two months prior to the election, including John Loughlin, Francis Maher and Nick Gorham.

The only other candidate to whom Carcieri gave money during this cycle was Kristen J. Catanzaro, who won the Democratic primary for the North Providence Town Council seat vacated by Raymond L. Douglas III after his indictment on corruption charges. Carcieri gave $200 to Catanzaro on June 23. She went on to defeat Republican Kenneth Amoriggi and win the council seat in August.

In 2009, Carcieri gave $1,625 to the Rhode Island Republican Party and $750 to the Rhode Island Young Republicans. He did not donate to either organization this year. Nor did he donate to John Loughlin’s 1st Congressional District campaign against Providence Mayor David Cicilline.

Carcieri’s spokeswoman, Amy Kempe, said as a state employee she was not allowed to answer questions about the governor’s political contributions when asked about them earlier this fall. She also said the governor was not available for an interview.

G.O.P. Chairman Gio Cicione told me in October that party officials had asked the governor to focus on helping Robitaille and other statewide candidates raise money while they emphasized their Clean Slate legislative campaign. “It’s been a pretty good division of effort I think,” Cicione said in an e-mail.

“As for his personal donations, I’m not sure I have anything to offer there,” Cicione added. “I’ve just not followed it.”

We talked for about a half-hour last Thursday; you can read the first half of the interview transcript here. My WPRI.com story about Robitaille’s potential 2012 Senate bid is here.

The second half of the Q&A starts off with politics – including Robitaille’s thoughts on whether Erik Wallin should take over the Rhode Island G.O.P. – and then moves onto policy. He thinks Gov.-elect Lincoln Chafee and the General Assembly will have to pare back social safety-net spending, and also defended Carcieri’s immigration order. The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Republican Party Chairman Gio Cicione was on “Newsmakers” with us a few weeks back and suggested he’d welcome Lincoln Chafee back to the Republican Party. Not all Republicans agree. What do you think?

What makes you a Republican or a Democrat? It’s not just filling out a card – I mean, I suppose you could go and affiliate yourself with the party, but unless you believe in the core values and principles of Republicanism, you’re not truly a Republican. I don’t think Linc Chafee ever was a Republican in terms of his fundamental principles of government and his value system. When he was a senator, I think he certainly acted more like a Democrat than most Democrats did. So no, I don’t know why Gio said that. I think if Linc starts governing more like a Republican – which I know he won’t do – that’s one thing to think about. But just to say, hey, let’s have somebody back, that’s kind of a crazy statement.

Cicione has indicated he probably won’t run for another term as chairman. Do you have anybody in mind to succeed him? Some people have mentioned [attorney general candidate] Erik Wallin.

Erik and I did have a conversation, and I think he’d be a really good party chair. He’s got to make a decision about whether that will help or hinder his next race for AG if he chooses to run in four years.

Being a party chair, regardless of which party it is, it’s a tough job. It’s a thankless job. You’ve got to be the person who either is the dumper or the dumpee, in terms of being there day to day being a critical spokesperson for your party and your party’s beliefs, which puts you in the line of fire all the time. But Erik’s a tough guy. I think he could do it if he wanted to do.

But what we need to do, just like the Democratic Party – I mean, people criticize the Republican Party for being the island of misfit toys – you look at the Democratic Party right now and it’s split pretty much down the middle, as well. There’s still a pretty solid contingent of Blue Dogs, I think, in the Statehouse and in the Democratic Party, and the progressives have moved pretty far to the left. So they’ve got their own identity crisis to deal with.

Republicans, what they’re faced with – and whether it’s Erik or someone else – is to try to bring together these kinds of disparate factions which are right-of-center, everyone from the Tea Party to [the Rhode Island Statement Coalition] to [the Ocean State Policy Research Institute] and to some of these other taxpayer groups that basically stand for lower taxes, smaller government, which is a traditional Republican theme, yet don’t want to be called Republicans or tied to the Republican brand.

There are so few registered Republicans in the state – I believe it’s less than 10 percent of registered voters – so we can’t afford to have all these disparate groups who are like-minded people who believe in smaller government, lower taxes and the protection of individual freedoms. So somebody, whoever provides that leadership, needs to be able to reach out to these groups and recruit people into the fold.

And then the [Rhode Island Republican Assembly] side of the Republican Party really are the much more conservative folks, and they’re not willing to bend on the core Republican values. They are sort of the standard-bearers, the protectors of the Reagan Republican principles and values on both sides, on the social side as well as the fiscal side. In the Republican Party, you have the likes of which are true fiscal conservatives but take a different stand on the social issues. So there’s a lot of different flavors under the Republican banner.

Let’s talk about Lincoln Chafee again. He’s going to be the governor. You two obviously have big differences on policy, but you spent a lot of time together over the last however many months. What do you expect from him?

Well I think that what’s going to have to happen is that he, like a lot of other elected officials and even presidents once they get elected, you can run far left or far right and once you get into the office you have got to pull somewhat to the center in order to get anything done.

What I find kind of interesting if Linc decides to run on this “I’m not going to touch the pensions, I’m going to raise taxes” – on very much a progressive platform – he may end up with a Democrat-controlled General Assembly that is going to end up pulling him to the center, whereas with Gov. Carcieri you had a very conservative governor with a relatively more liberal General Assembly that was pulling him to the center but from the right. I think you may end up with a General Assembly that’s pulling a more progressive governor to the center from the left. That would be my take on it.

A lot’s going to depend upon I think his first 90 days, what he actually does. Is he going to follow through on rescinding the illegal immigration executive order, which I’m not sure if you’ve got 30 percent of the people in Rhode Island really give a hoot about it.

But what’s he going to do with the budget? That, I think, is going to be all-telling. Will he raise taxes? I mean, his tax proposal of a 1 percent broadening of the sales tax isn’t going to generate $300-plus million. And if he’s made a pact with the unions that he’s not going to touch the pensions and he will probably have a difficult time balancing the budget, at least on the operations and the personnel side, without cutting back on benefits and pensions or [state government's] headcount. And we’re at historic lows when it comes to headcount right now. He’s going to have a very, very difficult time with maintaining the workforce levels we have, maintaining the health and human services, the welfare levels, that we have.

So I don’t know where he’s going to come up with the other $200 million without raising taxes higher than the 1 percent on that broadened base. It will be interesting to see what he does, and what the General Assembly will allow him to do in terms of the budget that he submits to them.

You mention the $300 million deficit projected for next year. If Gov.-elect Robitaille were taking office in January, where would you start looking to balance the budget? I know you didn’t want to raise taxes, but somehow you’ve got to plug that hole, even if it’s all spending reductions. Where do you start?

Gov. Carcieri I think moved the needle a little bit, but now we’re even in worse times than we were in the pat eight years, and I think a lot of the low-hanging fruit really has already been addressed. What I had said during the campaign and still believe is we need to address the unfunded pension liability, because taxpayers are putting in close to $200 million every year just to pay for existing retirees, in addition to what the employees themselves are putting in and the investment earnings. It isn’t earning enough to satisfy the demand we already have. So we’ve got to address the pension formula.

And Rhode Island has some very generous social service programs. We have one of the highest unemployment benefits – and I was PolitiFact-checked on that and it was found to be true – in the nation. Rhode Island, I think, is fourth or fifth. In fact, I’m out here in Hawaii and I think the max unemployment compensation is like $304 a week, I believe we’re at $500-something, and the cost of living out here is pretty high.

So there are lots of things that the next governor and the General Assembly are going to have to look at. I don’t think there’s any one area where you’re going to find a couple hundred million dollars, so you’ve got to look at the pensions, you’ve got to look at eligibility and longevity on some of the social service programs, and perhaps even the rates on some of these benefits to be able to hone them back. Forty percent of our total state budget goes to social welfare. So when you look at the federal [Medicaid] matching funds, plus what the state collects in the General Fund, we’re looking at, what, an $8 billion budget, and we spend $3 billion on human services.

There’s got to be savings, and it’s not all fraud and abuse. I know Ken [Block] had argued – there’s some fraud and abuse there, but a lot of it is, I think, the very liberal eligibility that we have under these programs. So it’s tough.

You also mentioned before illegal immigration and Carcieri’s 2008 executive order, which has gotten a lot of attention over the past few weeks. You were not in favor of rescinding the executive order, but how big an issue do you think this really is for Rhode Island? You were working for Carcieri when the order was issued. What do you think Chafee should do?

First of all, I think it’s a mistake for him to rescind it, because the real essence of that executive order – there were four parts of it – was the E-Verify for employees who are seeking employment with the state [and] contractors who bid on jobs need to certify that their employees are here legally – those are no big deals. And then the other two have to do with law enforcement, the Department of Corrections, to ensure that if they have somebody incarcerated who is known to be here illegally, before they parole that person or let them go, they notify ICE [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] so that that can be addressed.

And then the fourth piece, the piece that I think gave the most angst to some in the immigrant community, was the Memorandum of Understanding between ICE and the state police. But that basically only would train the state police to assist in ICE operations that would be led by ICE, and to allow them access to certain databases – FBI databases and ICE databases – once someone is actually apprehended for having committed a crime. So it was all blown out of proportion, and it became the rallying cry, I think, for those in the Hispanic community, the Latino community especially.

What it’s going to do by rescinding it – I don’t know if it’s going to make much of a difference, quite honestly, to the community. I don’t know if you remember this, Ted, but a couple of years ago, shortly after [the order] was put into effect, the governor agreed to put together this community listening group. Six months later, they came back and there was not a single hard piece of evidence that said that racial profiling had gone up, that it had negatively impacted the community. There was anecdotal evidence that was gleaned from some members of the community, who said that they heard or knew someone who knew someone who felt that they had been profiled.

So there wasn’t any hard data that justified this hysteria over what it did to the community and all this unrest. And having been on the governor’s team at that point in time, it was of great concern to me, so I had reached out myself and really wanted to understand what was this negative impact to people who were here legally, law-abiding people, and there was not a single – zero, nada – no evidence that it had a negative impact. It was all anecdotal.

So you really start looking at it, and then you have groups like RIILE [Rhode Islanders for Immigration Law Enforcement], Terry Gorman’s group – they have their own set of numbers that says it’s costing Rhode Island, I think, $40 million a year – I don’t want to get misquoted on that, that’s the number he used – but he’s got some data that supports that, from the kids in schools to the emergency room uncompensated care, et cetera et cetera – that it has a significant economic impact on the state.

Now since you can’t go up to somebody and say, “Are you here legally?” – unless they’ve committed a crime – nobody has real hard data as to how many folks are here illegally, so that’s been part of the issue. Nobody knows for sure; I’ve heard numbers from 20,000 to 40,000 folks here illegally. And not all Hispanics – Irish, Russians, a lot of other folks who work in the hospitality industry, as well. There’s no hard data on that at all whatsoever.

Bottom line, what’s your advice for the next governor?

Boy – [laughs] – you know, there’s one piece of advice, and he should know it: that there’s a big difference between campaigning and governing. Governing is where the rubber meets the road.

In this state, we all know that the power of the governor constitutionally is a lot weaker than in many states – I think Rhode Island is fourth- or fifth-weakest. So he’s going to have to work with the General Assembly to get things done. But working with does not mean caving in.

He’s got to do what’s right for all Rhode Islanders. I know he has said that he’s got to fulfill campaign promises, but when you look at what’s good for all Rhode Islanders, there’s another 64 percent of the people out there that won’t necessarily agree with some of those campaign promises. So you’ve got to look long-term, not short-term.

(image credit: Robitaille campaign via Flickr)

Robitaille, 62, talked with me for about a half-hour about how the governor’s race played out, his future plans, what he expects from Gov.-elect Chafee, and how he would deal with the budget.

The headline from the interview was Robitaille’s interest in a 2012 U.S. Senate bid, which I reported yesterday on WPRI.com. But he also offered a candid recap of how it felt to be at the center of this year’s campaign.

Since the full Q&A is somewhat long, I’m going to post the transcript in two parts, lightly edited for clarity. Today’s installment focuses on the gubernatorial race, including how it felt when his campaign took off and the threat the Moderate Party could pose to Rhode Island’s Republicans. (For those reading on the main Blogs page, click the link to read the rest after the jump.)

It’s been a month since the election now. What have you been up to?

Well actually it took us a week or so to pretty much shut down the campaign and get people on their way. Basically for the last three weeks I’ve just sort of kicked back, caught up on some sleep and began just assessing what I want to do next.

When you put in, what, 11 months of nonstop campaigning and it ends in one evening, you go from being in the fast lane, your brain just churning every moment, to it’s over. It’s an adjustment. I’m taking this period of time between now and probably the end of the year to assess what there is I want to do. There’s plenty of options – I’m really not at a loss for what comes next. It’s what do I want to do?

What did you learn from the the race?

I hate to sound cliché, but you learn about the good, the bad and the ugly of campaigning. You learn about what the essence of politics really is. Some people who you think were your friends turned out not to be friends, and people who you thought perhaps wouldn’t support you even if you were the last candidate on earth end up supporting you. So it was an education as to, maybe, the evolution of a campaign in ways I never really thought about – especially in the last four or five weeks of it.

Once we felt the shift – and my consultants had said, you’ll feel a shift either one way or the other; you’ll feel either people abandoning you, this thing’s going down, or you’ll feel this really, propelling-type movement in the campaign – and we felt that. We felt that about five weeks out, right at the start of when we wound up putting up TV and radio ads.

That’s something that you can describe, but until you feel it in the confines of the campaign – it is amazing. The phones start ringing off the hook. The e-mails start coming in by the hundreds. It all happened on a Tuesday morning. It was amazing –  it just started shifting. We started getting calls from people who were saying they were formerly supporting [Frank] Caprio, now they wanted to support me, and it just was this amazing experience that we went through in the last five weeks. It was nothing like the previous nine and a half months.

You came much closer to winning than most people expected, despite being at a big financial disadvantage and having much lower name recognition than Caprio or Lincoln Chafee. Obviously you’d prefer it to have been a few points closer. But what was your take on the final results?

[Laughs.] Well, there’s no trophy for second-place – it’s all or nothing. There’s so many coulda, shoulda, wouldas that you look at in hindsight. But we ran the campaign we designed from the get-go. We were going to run a positive campaign, we were going to keep it focused on some simple messaging – basically, smaller government, lower taxes, and more personal freedoms. And it was a theme that resonated in the groups that we knew early on we would have to [get] support [from].

This race was just so unprecedented, I think, in Rhode Island gubernatorial history. There were seven people running, but I think having four what I would call major candidates – three of whom were right of center – divided that 64 percent of the vote [that didn't go to Chafee]. That was the issue that got me.

A lot of Republicans are looking askance at Ken Block and the Moderate Party for siphoning off some votes that could have put you over the top. What’s your take?

I don’t want to blame Ken. Everyone has a right to run. But I think the uniqueness of this race, and the evolution of Ken’s campaign, really evolving into a fiscal conservative message, which it was – I mean, he wanted to strip out waste, he wanted to focus pretty much on running a more efficient, effective government. And that resonated even though he is more socially liberal than I am, in fact quite a bit more.

This wasn’t an election about social issues; this was a pocketbook election. And what happened was the 22,000 votes that he got – there’s no one that’s going to tell me that I wouldn’t have gotten at least half of those, which would have taken me over the top.

The other problem, Ted, was that prior to the “shove it” comment, we already knew we were passing Caprio [from] doing our tracking polling. And he knew it too – I think that was the gamble that he made to try to come out as the anti-Obama, because he was out there, he had lost his base, and he wanted to try to pull in some of the people who were more conservative than a Democrat would normally have drawn in.

But having said that, if Frank had not fallen as far as had fallen [in the polls] – in other words, if he had stayed up in the high 20s – well, I think the people who abandoned him at the end who were still holding on, who left him towards the last few days, these were Democrats who would never vote for a Republican if their lives depended on it. I think they went to Chafee. Or to Block.

That’s interesting. There were so many different strands that played into how this race ended up.

Oh, absolutely. We knew five weeks out that people were abandoning Caprio’s campaign and coming to my campaign. But the final grouping of people that when he tanked and people knew he had tanked that last week – they were abandoning him but again, these hard-core Democrats and maybe some progressives who maybe weren’t going to vote for Chafee did vote for Chafee, and some for Block. So while we all benefited from Frank going down, he went down too far.

I bet he’d agree.

Yeah. I mean, he went down to what…

Twenty-three percent.

Twenty-three percent. So those last four or five percent of those – I wasn’t going to get those votes anyway. So had he stayed up a little higher, I probably would have benefited more.

And I think the Ken Block factor was significant, absolutely significant. For him to poll six or seven percent in a seven-way race was definitely a factor. And then when you look at – only 36 percent of the people voted for Linc, who was clearly the only progressive running, and the only one really running completely left of center. The three of us, Block, Caprio and myself, were all clearly running right of center. So when you’ve got three people dividing up 64 percent of the vote, it’s tough for any one of us to win.

I remember [Eyewitness News political analyst] Joe Fleming and I sitting there on election night watching the returns come in and saying to each other, is Robitaille going to pull this off? You were ahead for quite awhile.

We knew that Providence would really be bad for us, and those were the last precincts that came in. But up until about 9:45 p.m., we still thought there was a possibility we could pull this off. But knowing that those last five or six precincts were coming out of Providence, and then looking at the absentees – some people said we should have waited till the absentees were counted, but we knew at that point I would have had to have gotten, I think, 80 percent of the absentee ballots in order to be able to pull this off. And there was no way. We figured I’d get about a third, and that’s what I got.

You look back at this and you say, what could we have done differently? And the only thing I could have done differently is maybe to have talked Ken Block out of staying in the race. [Laughs]

Although someone else tried that.

Yeah, someone else tried it. It is what it is.

What you look at going forward four years [to the 2014 gubernatorial election], if Ken decides he wants to keep this Moderate Party going and he feels he wants either himself or another candidate for governor, we could end up with the same scenario. We could end up with a Moderate, we could end up with Chafee running for re-election, and a Republican. It will be interesting to see who the Democrats would put up, unless they can convince Linc to become a Democrat.

Before we get to 2014, there’s an election in 2012. I’m not going to beat around the bush – people are suggesting you might make a good Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate to take on incumbent Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse. Would you consider running for the Senate in 2012?

Oh, I certainly would consider it. In fact, I’ve asked my consultants to do sort of a preliminary assessment, a feasibility-type recommendation for a Senate run. But I haven’t made up my mind yet, and I’m not going to until after the first of the year as to what I’m going to do. But it definitely is on the table as something I have to say I would consider.

But I’m no fool. I mean, it’s going to be a presidential election year. The Democratic Party is not going to want to give up that seat. Even though I proved you don’t need a lot of money to make a good showing, I think in order to run for a Senate seat you’re looking at probably $4 million or $5 million, somewhere in that neighborhood. So whoever decides to run for that seat against Whitehouse would need to really start planning probably as early as January or February of this coming year, at least to put an exploratory committee together and see if he can raise money.

And a lot’s going to depend, too, Ted, on what happens nationally. I mean, I know President Obama’s approval ratings have continued to slide with the economy, but if the economy starts turning around and if his presidency parallels any of the other first-term presidents that have a real bad first two years and then start coming up he could be on the upswing approaching the 2012 elections, and he could have some coattails, especially in a blue state like Rhode Island. All that has to be factored in.

Plus, I have other options. There’s a couple of books in my head. I’ve already spoken to two firms that deal in public relations and public affairs, one has an office in Washington. I’ve spoken with some higher-ed folks, a couple of private companies. Right now there’s a lot up in the air that when I get back from my little respite here, I will begin meeting with some folks and try to come up with a definitive plan.

But wherever I end up in January, I need to find myself a position where it still leaves me that option of running in either 2012 or running for governor again in 2014. I’m very cognizant of that.

On Monday, Robitaille talks about why he thinks social services will have to be cut to close the $300 million deficit and Chafee shouldn’t rescind Carcieri’s immigration order. (image credit: Robitaille campaign via Flickr)

John Robitaille, the Republican who nearly defeated Lincoln Chafee in last month’s gubernatorial election, is seriously weighing a run against U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse in 2012.

In an exclusive interview, Robitaille told WPRI.com he has asked his political advisers to conduct a feasibility study to assess what it would take for him to mount a credible challenge against the first-term Democrat.

“I haven’t made up my mind yet, and I’m not going to until after the first of the year,” Robitaille said by phone from Hawaii, where he is visiting his daughters and grandchildren. “But it definitely is on the table.” Another possibility would be a second bid for the governor’s office in 2014, he said.

During a half-hour conversation, Robitaille also discussed how the Moderate Party likely cost him the governor’s office and what he expects from Chafee. The full interview will be published Friday and Monday on WPRI.com’s Nesi’s Notes blog.

Robitaille suggested a Republican candidate will need to raise between $4 million and $5 million to stand a serious chance of defeating Whitehouse, who won the seat in 2006 from then-Republican Chafee.

Read the rest on WPRI.com, including reaction from our political analyst Joe Fleming. Here’s the full transcript of what Robitaille said when I asked him about the next election:

Oh, I certainly would consider it. In fact, I’ve asked my consultants to do sort of a preliminary assessment, a feasibility-type recommendation for a Senate run. But I haven’t made up my mind yet, and I’m not going to until after the first of the year as to what I’m going to do. But it definitely is on the table as something I have to say I would consider.

But I’m no fool. I mean, it’s going to be a presidential election year, and the Democratic Party is not going to want to give up that seat. Even though I proved you don’t need a lot of money to make a good showing, I think in order to run for a Senate seat you’re looking at probably $4 million or $5 million, somewhere in that neighborhood. So whoever decides to run for that seat against Whitehouse would need to really start planning probably as early as January or February of this coming year, at least to put an exploratory committee together and see if he can raise money.

And a lot’s going to depend, too, Ted, on what happens nationally. I mean, I know President Obama’s approval ratings have continued to slide with the economy, but if the economy starts turning around and if his presidency parallels any of the other first-term presidents that have a real bad first two years and then start coming up he could be on the upswing approaching the 2012 elections, and he could have some coattails, especially in a blue state like Rhode Island. All that has to be factored in.

Plus, I have other options. There’s a couple of books in my head. I’ve already spoken to two firms that deal in public relations and public affairs, one has an office in Washington. I’ve spoken with some higher-ed folks, a couple of private companies. Right now there’s a lot up in the air that when I get back from my little respite here, I will begin meeting with some folks and try to come up with a definitive plan.

But wherever I end up in January, I need to find myself a position where it still leaves me that option of running in either 2012 or running for governor again in 2014. I’m very cognizant of that.

I’ll post the full Robitaille Q&A right here on Nesi’s Notes in two parts tomorrow and Friday – transcribing takes time. He was quite candid, and offered an interesting behind-the-scenes take on how the governor’s race played out.

That’s a lot of money – so much that it can be hard to wrap our brains around it. So let’s look at the numbers another way – spending per vote. (A little crass, perhaps, but interesting just the same.) To get that number, I took the amount of money each candidate spent on his campaign and divided it by the number of votes he received.

By that metric, John Robitaille ran by far the savviest race. The Republican’s campaign invested $603,833 in the race and received 114,911 votes – so he spent only $5.25 for every vote he received.

At the other extreme, Frank Caprio’s campaign invested $2.7 million in the race but only managed to get 78,896 votes, so he spent $33.66 for each vote he received, more than six times as much as Robitaille. Here are the spending-per-vote numbers for all four:

• Caprio: $33.66
• Block: $23.79
• Chafee: $20.42
• Robitaille: $5.25

More than half that money came straight out of the Chafee family’s bank account. The independent former senator loaned his campaign a total of $1.61 million over the course of the campaign, according to his final campaign finance report, which was filed Tuesday with the Board of Elections.

Chafee spent four times as much as the man who came in second, John Robitaille. The Republican nominee spent a comparatively paltry $603,833 but managed to come within 8,660 votes of defeating Chafee.

Moderate Ken Block spent $500,709, almost as much as Robitaille, but came in a distant fourth, though he did crack the 5% mark to keep his nascent party on the ballot.

And then, of course, there’s Frank Caprio.

The Democrat’s candidacy suffered an epic collapse in the final weeks of the campaign. He’d already spent well over $2 million as of Oct. 25, and almost certainly added to that in the final week of the race.

Caprio hasn’t filed his final report yet – he has until 11:59 tonight to send it in. I’ll have a new post, more analysis and charts (of course!) once all the numbers are in.

Update: Lincoln Chafee spent $2.5 million to win the election. Frank Caprio spent even more to lose. Read my full story on WPRI.com.

The whispers about Roberts started last spring, when it emerged that she would face a primary challenge from Jeremy Kapstein, a wealthy Red Sox executive and Tiverton native whose father was a state lawmaker. (Roberts had already bowed out of the Democratic gubernatorial race the previous summer.) Pundits saw the makings of a tough race, and Frank Caprio wouldn’t even endorse Roberts.

But Kapstein’s campaign never took off – he raised little money and put minimal effort into the contest – and Roberts walloped him in the Sept. 14 primary, winning 64% of the vote to his 36%.

Then Roberts’ Republican opponent, Heidi Rogers, abruptly dropped out just days after winning the party’s nomination. The Republicans threw their support behind perennial candidate Bob Healey Jr., whose campaign platform called for eliminating the lieutenant governor’s office altogether.

As the election drew closer, plenty of people (myself included) thought Roberts was in trouble. Healey’s anti-establishment message offered an opportunity for a grumpy electorate to stick it to an incumbent, and our WPRI 12 poll just before the vote showed him within seven points of Roberts.

Those predictions were dead wrong. Roberts defeated Healey by a 16-point margin last Tuesday, taking 55% of the vote to his 39%.

In fact, Roberts’ share of the vote rose slightly compared with her first victory in 2006, when she won 53% against Republican Reginald Centracchio and Healey. The total number of votes Roberts received last week – 175,396 – was second only to Democratic treasurer-elect Gina Raimondo, who got 201,335.

Roberts’ campaign manager, Dan Meuse, told me her staff knew she would face a real challenge when Republican Rogers dropped out of the race. “Internal polling showed a very tight race, and that was in late September,” Meuse said in an e-mail. “At that point we huddled our team and hashed out what the message strategy should be – and it turned out to be an effective message.”

Their message was three-pronged: Healey would be unacceptable as a potential governor; Roberts’ work on health insurance has saved Rhode Islanders money; and the lieutenant governor is someone who understands times are tough.

If anything, the tight polls and gloomy predictions from pundits turned out to be an asset to the Roberts campaign, Meuse said:

The campaign was super busy – and unlike a congressional or gubernatorial race, getting volunteers for a down-ballot race is tougher. Prior to the public polls, convincing folks that we needed help in the race was a challenge. But in the last couple of weeks (which is when the undecideds really start to pay attention) we got a bunch of help. We had heavy phone banks for the last two weeks. We activated the groups that endorsed Elizabeth. We really pushed every vote out we could, and I feel that’s what pushed the outcome over the projections (including my own).

That’s not to say Roberts and her team had no missteps. The fact that so many Rhode Islanders were willing to at least considering voting for a guy who wanted to get rid of her office doesn’t say much for its reputation. Even her allies seemed to have trouble making a compelling case for the office’s continued existence.

But at the end of the day, Roberts won – and with Caprio’s loss, she’ll still be the highest-ranking Democrat in the state come January. She has the opportunity to build a better relationship with incoming Gov. Lincoln Chafee than she had with outgoing Gov. Donald Carcieri – perhaps he’ll task her with overseeing the implementation of health reform here.

Eyewitness News political analyst Joe Fleming has already anointed Roberts the front-runner for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in 2014, though if Chafee’s first term goes well it may be tough for anyone to challenge him from the left. And it’s Raimondo who has the buzz as the rising star among Rhode Island Democrats.

As a postscript, Meuse’s work managing Roberts’ campaign is quite impressive when you consider that his wife, Kristen, gave birth to the couple’s second child on Aug. 21 – three and a half weeks before the primary.

“I was working 12 to 14 hours a day, and then not sleeping at night,” Meuse recalled. “I can say that it would not be a recommended family planning strategy for campaign workers.” With the election behind him, Meuse is now taking some well-deserved family time to get to know newborn Jack.

(image credit: Roberts campaign, via Flickr)

RI.gov’s election results page lets you break out absentee ballot results from regular votes cast at a polling place. And among those who cast a mail ballot, Frank Caprio – who won just 23% of the total vote – came out on top, ahead of both Chafee and Robitaille. Here’s the breakdown for absentee voters:

• Caprio: 3,912 (34%)
• Chafee: 3,749 (32%)
• Robitaille: 3,365 (29%)

The deadline to apply for a mail ballot was Oct. 12, three weeks before the election. Thus mail-ballot voters can be quite different from those who turn out at the polls on Election Day, since they’re not necessarily representative of the broader electorate and – importantly – may make their choices before events late in a campaign.

That, of course, brings up the question of how much impact Shoveitgate had in the end. Matt McDermott, a Rhode Island Democrat studying at the London School of Economics, estimates that Caprio won mail ballot voters in Providence by 11 points – then went on to lose the city by 20 points. Judging by the figures above, McDermott thinks Shoveitgate cost Caprio 11 points in the end.

The only note of caution I’d add there is that – as I’ve mentioned repeatedly – our last WPRI 12 poll showed Caprio was already sinking fast in the days before Shoveitgate, so it appears his candidacy was already being damaged by Robitaille’s surge even before the controversial remark. But I have no doubt “shove it” is what helped push the Democrat’s final total all the way down to the low 20s.

Yet in both Republican landslides, Rhode Island’s 1st Congressional District marched to the beat of a different drummer. As one observer joked yesterday, the Republican wave stopped at the Hurricane Barrier.

This week, Democrat David Cicilline beat Republican John Loughlin by a comfortable margin of 51%-45%. And back in 1994, Democrat Patrick Kennedy defeated Republican Kevin Vigilante by an even wider margin of 54%-46%. In fact, Kennedy was one of only four Democrats who picked up a previously Republican House seat in 1994, a year that was otherwise disastrous for his party. (He succeeded retiring Congressman Ron Machtley, now Bryant University’s president.)

Sure, you could simply chalk up the 1st District’s resistance to both G.O.P. waves to Rhode Island being the nation’s most liberal state (at least nowadays) – and it’s true that Republicans failed to win any House seats on Tuesday in Massachusetts, too. But I think the picture may be a little more interesting than that.

For one thing, at least in 1994 there was no reason to think the 1st District was enemy territory for Republicans – the G.O.P. had managed to hold the 1st District seat in 1992 despite Bill Clinton’s strong performance here that year. And not one but two Republicans managed to win House seats in Massachusetts in ’94: Peter Blute and Peter Torkildsen. (Both men lost two years later, and the Bay State has never elected a Republican congressman since.)

In addition, political observers considered both Loughlin and Vigilante to be strong contenders – though Loughlin was at a financial disadvantage throughout his race. Both Kennedy and Cicilline were somewhat polarizing candidates, too – Kennedy because of his youth and famous last name, Cicilline as a sitting mayor of Providence.

One factor that may have helped Democrats win the 1st in both 1994 and 2010 was that the party’s candidate wasn’t an incumbent either time. Thus neither Kennedy nor Cicilline had voted for controversial laws like Clinton’s deficit-reduction package or Obama’s health reform, and therefore were able to distance themselves a bit from the Washington status quo despite being members of the party in power. Indeed, there’s a strong possibility that Kennedy would have lost if he’d run for reelection this year, judging by the poll we conducted last winter, before he announced his retirement.

Whatever the answer is, Loughlin’s loss has to be disappointing to Republicans, just as Vigilante’s was in 1994. It’s much harder – and more expensive – to pick off a sitting congressman than it is to defeat a first-time candidate, particularly in years that aren’t marked by the kind of voter discontent we saw this week.

Then again, this was the nation’s third wave election in a row – who knows what could happen in 2012 or 2014?

Yet Caprio finished the night in a distant third place, winning just 23% of the vote in a three-man race. National pundits will blame his loss on Shoveitgate, but our final WPRI 12 poll of the campaign showed Caprio was already fading fast even before his controversial comments about President Obama.

Just before midnight, DGA Chair and Delaware Gov. Jack Markell issued a statement about Caprio’s loss. “In a state hard-hit by the national recession, Frank Caprio ran as a strong Democrat committed to the principles of our party, but even a strong campaign couldn’t overcome the national wave,” Markell said. “We appreciate his dedication to the people of Rhode Island and wish him the best in his next endeavor.”

It seems like a stretch to attribute Caprio’s loss to a “national wave.” I don’t think many people are going to describe the midterm elections of 2010 as a high-water mark for Chafee-style Rockefeller Republicanism.

More importantly, at this writing Democrats have already lost the governorships of Ohio, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, New Mexico, Kansas, Wyoming, Michigan, Wisconsin and Oklahoma. Plenty of people will be able to imagine more productive ways the DGA could have spent the seven-figure sum blown on Caprio’s double-digit defeat.

WPRI.com’s Ted Nesi live blogged Tuesday’s general election.
Here’s a recap.

• Governor: Lincoln Chafee (Ind.)
• US House 1: David Cicilline (D)
• Lt. Governor: Elizabeth Roberts (D)
• Attorney General: Peter Kilmartin (D)
  
• Treasurer: Gina Raimondo (D)
• Secretary of State: Ralph Mollis (D)
• Complete election results

11:34 p.m. | Here’s a postscript – a photo of David Cicilline talking with Jim Langevin at the Providence Biltmore, courtesy Tim White, who just finished up there:

11:27 p.m. | Well, with the big races called I’m going to shut down the live blog to focus on my preview of the Chafee administration. I’ll have much more coverage of the election and its outcome here on Nesi’s Notes in the days, weeks and months to come. Stay with WPRI for live TV coverage of tonight’s election, which continues as I write this with a live interview with Chafee himself.

11:21 p.m. | Chafee only carried Warwick by about 2,000 votes, but in the City of Providence – a Democratic stronghold – he beat Robitaille by 13,000 votes. “That is where Lincoln Chafee won the election tonight,” Joe Fleming says. “The Democrats came to Lincoln Chafee tonight. They abandoned Frank Caprio.”

11:19 p.m. | I know a lot of you will be turning in now that the big races are called, but I hope you’ll check back later tonight or tomorrow morning to read my preview of the challenges that will face Gov.-elect Chafee. And keep stopping by Nesi’s Notes now that the election is over for more coverage of politics and the economy in Rhode Island. I’ll have some more updates tonight for those of you who are sticking around – and our live coverage is continuing on TV as I write this.

11:14 p.m. | Former Rhode Island Gov. Bruce Sundlun, the Democrat who served from 1991 to 1995, is at the Warwick Crowne Plaza to celebrate Lincoln Chafee’s win, WRNI’s Ian Donnis reports on Twitter. Chafee has begun delivering his victory speech there.

11:12 p.m. | Lincoln Chafee’s big win in Providence – 51% to Caprio’s 30% and Robitaille’s 13% – was the ballgame tonight, Joe Fleming says, although Chafee didn’t do as well in Warwick as we expected, only winning 39% of the vote there.

11:11 p.m. | Here’s a photo of John Loughlin delivering his concession speech a few minutes ago, courtesy my WPRI colleague Christine Peabody:

11:07 p.m. | In the General Assembly, it looks like the Democrats have lost four House seats – with one race still too close to call – and also lost four Senate seats. “That’s not bad for them, because the thing to remember is two years ago they won a lot of Republican seats” amid the Obama-driven Democratic landslide, Joe Fleming points out. “So it’s probably going back to what it was now.”

That would only bring Republicans to 18 seats in the 113-seat General Assembly – exactly the same number as they had in the 2007-2008 session. These are still preliminary. (Anchor Rising’s Justin Katz adds independent Ed O’Neill and Democrat Michael Pinga to the Republican column.)

11:01 p.m. | Democrat Ralph Mollis has defeated Republican Catherine Taylor to win reelection as Rhode Island’s secretary of state, WPRI projects.

11:00 p.m. | Republican John Robitaille is now getting on stage with his wife. For a political novice, he ran a very good race and closed well. If he’d had even another week, the outcome might have been different.

10:57 p.m. | Support from unions and liberal Democrats put Lincoln Chafee over the top in the governor’s race, Joe Fleming says. With 99% of precincts reporting, Chafee has 36% to Robitaille’s 34% and Caprio’s 23%. Chafee’s lead over Robitaille in total votes is just 8,001 out of 333,552 cast.

10:56 p.m. | It looks like Democratic Secretary of State Ralph Mollis is going to hold on against a very strong challenge by Republican Catherine Taylor. With 99% of precincts reporting – all but 8 out of 537 – it’s Mollis 51%, Taylor 49%. Just 4,446 votes separate the two out of 320,076 cast.

10:54 p.m. | Not a happy political season for the Caprio family. State Rep. David Caprio lost in the September primary, and now Frank Caprio goes down to a stunning defeat after his campaign imploded in full view of the entire nation.

10:53 p.m. | Joe Fleming thinks Chafee was helped by his late TV ad referencing his father’s advocacy of a state income tax – which lost him the election, only to have his successor call for the same tax in office. “He was very honest with the voters,” Fleming says.

10:50 p.m. | A funny moment as Chafee campaign manager Mike Trainor finds out on stage that WPRI has called the race – on a screen behind him. The Board of Elections also tells us all mail ballots are in and counted.

10:47 p.m. | Lincoln Chafee has won election as Rhode Island’s next governor, WPRI projects.

10:43 p.m. | “The Democrats are still doing very well in the General Assembly,” Joe Fleming points out again. Republicans, who had just 10 of the legislature’s 113 seats in the last session, had been hoping to make some significant gains.

And it’s not too early to think about 2014 – Fleming says Elizabeth Roberts will be the Democratic front-runner for the governor’s nomination.

10:42 p.m. | The Chafee crowd at the Warwick Crowne Plaza is upbeat, WRNI’s Ian Donnis reports on his Twitter feed. They’re blasting Katy Perry. So many jokes, so little time. Chafee campaign manager Mike Trainor says counting the roughly 11,000 mail ballots could take another hour, according to Ian.

10:41 p.m. | I didn’t mention it because it wasn’t a surprise, but Democrat Angel Taveras has been elected the next mayor of Providence.

10:39 p.m. | Chafee’s lead grows to 7,062 votes in the governor’s race with 97% of precincts reporting. The Board of Elections has about 11,000 mail-in ballots, which supposedly are being counted – or have just finished being counted. Problematically for him, Robitaille hasn’t gotten over 50% of the vote in any city or town.

10:37 p.m. | No surprise, but Democrat Frank Caprio has conceded the governor’s race, my colleague Walt Buteau reports. He has just 23% of the vote to Chafee’s 36% and Robitaille’s 34% with 97% of precincts reporting. An epic collapse. The Democratic Governors Association must be beside itself.

10:33 p.m. | Chafee is holding onto his lead as we get the last precincts in. With 96% reporting, it’s Chafee 36%, Robitaille 34% – only 6,273 votes separate them.

10:32 p.m. | With 96% of precincts reporting, Mollis has a 2,611-vote lead over Taylor. That one could come down to mail ballots, too.

10:29 p.m. | Right now, Chafee’s lead of roughly 6,000 votes means we will have to turn to the 11,000 or so mail ballots to figure out who won. Joe Fleming points out that many of those mail ballots were sent in more than two weeks ago, when Caprio was doing better. “Chafee is sitting in a very good position – we’re not ready to call this yet, but he is looking very good at this time,” Fleming says.

10:27 p.m. | Just 38 of the state’s 537 precincts haven’t reported yet, and Chafee has a lead of 5,856 votes over Robitaille. It’s Chafee 36%, Robitaille 34%, Caprio 23%. Also, Ken Block is doing pretty well – he’s at 7% right now, above the 5% threshold that will keep his new Moderate Party on the ballot.

10:26 p.m. | We don’t have all the numbers in, but so far Democrats are “doing very well” in General Assembly races, Joe Fleming says.

10:25 p.m. | Chafee is up by 5,279 votes over Robitaille in the governor’s race, with 87% of precincts reporting. Chafee 36%, Robitaille 34%. Caprio still way down at 23%. A month ago, whodathunkit? Still too close to call though. Soon, perhaps…

10:23 p.m. | Although 11% of CD1 precincts haven’t reported yet, David Cicilline is leading John Loughlin 51%-44%. Cicilline held his own on Aquidneck Island – he carried Newport and did OK in Middletown and Portsmouth. Loughlin needed bigger numbers there and in the East Bay to defeat Cicilline, and he didn’t get them. A hard-fought but ultimately winning battle for the Democrats.

10:21 p.m. | Democrat David Cicilline has defeated Republican John Loughlin in Rhode Island’s 1st Congressional District, WPRI projects.

10:19 p.m. | Mass. Gov. Deval Patrick has defeated Republican Charlie Baker to win reelection, the AP projects.

10:18 p.m. | For secretary of state, Mollis is up over Taylor by just 1,830 votes out of 273,052 counted – 86% of precincts reporting. Even tighter than the governor’s race.

10:17 p.m. | Rhode Island ballot question #2 has been approved, WPRI projects.

10:17 p.m. | Chafee is starting to open up a bigger lead over Robitaille. Chafee is up by 3,286 votes over the Republican with 85% of precincts reporting. And it’s looking to me like tonight’s Republican wave isn’t going to be strong enough to carry John Loughlin to victory over David Cicilline, though still 15% of precincts left to report.

10:15 p.m. | Democrat Peter Kilmartin has won election as Rhode Island’s attorney general, WPRI projects.

10:14 p.m. | Frank Caprio’s collapse is extraordinary to behold. With 84% of precincts reporting, he has only 23% of the vote to Chafee’s 35% and Robitaille’s 34%. Chafee is now opening up a lead of about 2,000 votes. Almost half of Providence precincts have reported.

10:12 p.m. | The R.I. Board of Elections will count approximately 11,000 mail ballots in the governor’s race by 10:30 tonight, Projo reports. Considering how close it is right now, those could matter.

10:11 p.m. | Rhode Island ballot questions #3 and #4 approved, WPRI projects.

10:09 p.m. | Chafee now ahead of Robitaille by 1,754 votes with 81% of precincts reporting. Still very tight.

10:08 p.m. | Chafee is running way ahead of Robitaille in Providence. That could give him the margin of victory necessary to stave off a very strong challenge from the late-surging Republican. Still too close to call.

10:06 p.m. | Democrat Gina Raimondo has defeated Republican Kerry King to win election as Rhode Island’s general treasurer, WPRI projects.

10:05 p.m. | The governor’s race remains unbelievable tight. With 75% of precincts reporting, Robitaille is ahead of Chafee by just 53 votes.

10:04 p.m. | Cicilline still holding onto the lead in CD1 with 73% of precincts reporting – Cicilline 50%, Loughlin 45%. Still waiting to hear from Barrington, Jamestown, Little Compton, Warren, parts of Bristol, Middletown, one-third of Providence.

10:02 p.m. | Democratic Lt. Gov. Elizabeth Roberts has defeated independent Bob Healey Jr. to win reelection, WPRI projects.

10:01 p.m. | The secretary of state’s race has tightened to a tie, with 70% of precincts in – Mollis ahead of Taylor by just 431 votes.

9:59 p.m. | Warwick Mayor Scott Avedisian has won reelection.

9:59 p.m. | Republicans have picked up 12 Democratic U.S. House seats and three Democratic U.S. Senate seats, the AP says.

9:57 p.m. | Rhode Island voters have rejected a ballot question that would have deleted “and Providence Planations” from the state’s name, WPRI projects.

9:57 p.m. | Cicilline’s lead down to four points in CD1 with 65% reporting. Cicilline 49%, Loughlin 45%.

9:56 p.m. | John Robitaille still on top for governor with 61% of precincts reporting. Just 1,567 votes separate him from Chafee. A really strong showing by a Republican who was barely known a few weeks ago.

9:55 p.m. | Lt. Gov. Elizabeth Roberts not breaking a sweat yet – with 60% of precincts reporting, it’s Roberts 55%, Healey 39%.

9:54 p.m. | U.S. Rep. Jim Langevin has won reelection in Rhode Island’s 2nd Congressional District, WPRI projects. Cranston Mayor Allan Fung wins reelection, too.

9:52 p.m. | Rhode Island Tea Party organizer Doreen Costa has knocked off longtime state Rep. Kenneth Carter of North Kingstown in the General Assembly. Another lawmaker losing is state Sen. Charles Lesvesque of Portsmouth.

9:50 p.m. | Cicilline is doing better than I expected so far. He’s up by seven points with 46% reporting, and that’s without most of Providence.

9:49 p.m. | Apologies if I’ve been unclear – anytime I say “with X % reporting” – I mean X % of precincts.

9:48 p.m. | Ballot question #2 – to borrow about $78 million for higher education buildings – is very close, somewhat to my surprise. It’s 53% approve right now with 42% reporting. Maybe voters were feeling frugal today amid all the talk of “the budget mess” on Smith Hill.

9:47 p.m. | Secretary of state is tight but Mollis is up by four points with 41% reporting – Mollis 52%, Taylor 48%.

9:46 p.m. | “What we’re finding now is what we thought – as Frank Caprio faded, John Robitaille moved up,” Joe Fleming says. With 40% reporting, it’s Robitaille 34%, Chafee 33%, Caprio way behind at 25%.

9:45 p.m. | No worries for Lt. Gov. Elizabeth Roberts so far. With 35% reporting, it’s Roberts 57%, Healey 37%. Cicilline’s got a 7-point lead in CD1 with 39% in. Raimondo and Kilmartin costing for treasurer and AG so far.

9:44 p.m. | Just 15 votes separate Chafee and Robitaille with 34% of precincts reporting.

9:43 p.m. | The effort to remove “and Providence Plantations” from the state’s official name is going down in flames right now. With 33% reporting, it’s 78% rejecting the idea.

9:42 p.m. | We’re up to a third of precincts reporting in CD1, and it’s Cicilline 50%, Loughlin 44%.

9:41 p.m. | Robitaille on top for governor, with 28% of precincts reporting. Robitaille 34%, Chafee 33%, Caprio 26%. Robitaille is definitely doing better than expected right now. Can he pull it off?

9:40 p.m. | Interesting results from different communities: Robitaille is winning Woonsocket at 38%, with 7 of 16 precincts reporting, and he’s in second-place ahead of Chafee in Johnston. Chafee only four points behind Caprio in Central Falls.

9:37 p.m. | Let’s look at ballot questions. Q1 – name change – 20% reporting – reject 78%.

9:36 p.m. | 1st District – Cicilline up by five points with 21% reporting. Cicilline 50%, Loughlin 45%.

9:35 p.m. | Up to 15% reporting in RI governor’s race – Robitaille 34%, Chafee 31%, Caprio 28%.

9:35 p.m. | Mass. Gov. Deval Patrick still holding onto a solid lead with 37% reporting – Patrick 49%, Baker 42%, Cahill 8%.

9:34 p.m. | Double-digits! With 13% of precincts reporting, it’s Roberts 57%, Healey 36%, Venturini 7%. For SoS, it’s Mollis 53%, Taylor 47%. Still early, of course.

9:30 p.m. | U.S. Rep. Barney Frank has defeated Republican Sean Bielat in Massachusetts’ 4th Congressional District, the AP says.

9:29 p.m. | With 5% of precincts reporting in the governor’s race, it’s Robitaille 34%, Caprio 30%, Chafee 29%. It’s still very, very early.

9:28 p.m. | We now have 59% of precincts reporting in Massachusetts’ 4th District, and Barney Frank is leading Sean Bielat 63%-35%.

9:26 p.m. | Cool Moose Party candidate for lieutenant governor Bob Healey is here in the studio, preparing to go on the air with my colleague Erin Kennedy, who’s also tracking national races with me. Democratic incumbent Elizabeth Roberts has to be nervous about this race – I spoke to a few people today who made a spur-of-the-moment decision to back Healey once they were in the voting booth. Unhappy voters may use her office to rebel.

9:24 p.m. | Democratic New Hampshire U.S. Rep. Carol Shea-Porter, a surprise victor back in 2006, loses to Republican Frank Guinta.

9:20 p.m. | Republicans have picked up eight Democratic U.S. House seats and three Democratic U.S. Senate seats so far tonight.

9:19 p.m. | Mass. Gov. Deval Patrick has a wide lead with 26% of precincts reporting. Patrick 50%, Baker 41%.

Still only 1% of precincts reporting in Rhode Island.

9:18 p.m. | Republicans have picked up another U.S. Senate seat from Democrats in North Dakota (as expected). But the AP has now called the West Virginia Senate race for Democrat Joe Manchin, which will lead to a lot of sighs of relief on the left.

9:15 p.m. | The R.I. Board of Elections website just went down. Don’t worry, though, that’s not our source for results, so we’ll keep them coming. Here’s our results page.

9:11 p.m. | The first numbers are coming in for Rhode Island. With 1% reporting, the leaders are Chafee, John Loughlin, Gina Raimondo and Catherine Taylor. I may go with last names tonight.

9:10 p.m. | In Massachusetts, Attorney General Martha Coakley and Secretary of State Bill Galvin have won reelection, the AP says.

9:09 p.m. | NBC News is now projecting Republicans will win 236 U.S. House seats tonight, with Democrats winning 199 – more than enough to make John Boehner the next House Speaker.

9:06 p.m. | There’s Tim White at the Providence Biltmore, Democrats’ headquarters. That place is going to be Awkward City tonight, huh? I’m told a number of top Democrats are privately rooting for Chafee after Shoveitgate and other disagreements with Frank Caprio.

9:05 p.m. | Republicans have picked up six seats from the Democrats in U.S. House races nationally, the AP says. 106 races have been called – 76 for Republicans, 30 for Dems. Republicans need 39 seats to win back the majority, so 33 pickups to go for them if they are to succeed.

9:03 p.m. | Alex DiPrato points out that Sean Bielat was only five years old when Barney Frank was first elected to Congress back in 1980. Bielat is 35, Frank is 70.

9:02 p.m. | In Massachusetts, results are still trickling in. With 9% reporting, Deval Patrick is on top for governor 49%-42%. In the 4th District, with 15% reporting, Barney Frank is on top 63%-34%. Take those numbers with a grain of salt, though, because I don’t know which precincts they represent and most districts haven’t reported yet. My colleague Alex DiPrato is reporting on the Frank-Bielat race on air as we speak.

9:01 p.m. | A reader admonishes me that I should have come up with a clever WWE Smackdown reference when former wrestling chief Linda McMahon lost in Connecticut. Mea culpa! I’m quick but not necessarily clever these busy news nights.

9:00 p.m. | Polls are closed in Rhode Island! No results yet.

8:59 p.m. | It’s cold out, huh? My Mac says 41 degrees in Providence. Brrrr. Don’t forget – our live coverage of election night on TV begins at 9 p.m. and will run commercial free from then on. Countdown is on now.

8:59 p.m. | Angel Taveras will address Democrats at the Providence Biltmore around 9:30, with U.S. Rep. Jim. Langevin following him, Tim White reports from there. I assume they’re planning victory speeches. Sixty seconds until polls close in Rhode Island.

8:52 p.m. | Democratic hopes dashed in Virginia and Florida, where full-throated liberal Reps. Tom Perriello and Alan Grayson lost their House seats. Another Virginia Dem, Rep. Rick Boucher, also lost.

8:49 p.m. | I just complained to Joe Fleming that Massachusetts’ results are coming in very, very slowly – still single-digits reporting – but he says the Bay State usually takes awhile to get going, then the results come in a flood. Only 11 minutes to go before polls close in Rhode Island.

8:48 p.m. | The AP has issued a reminder that it has not called the West Virginia U.S. Senate race for Democrat Joe Manchin, despite what some people are reporting. Told you – Nesi’s Notes is fast but accurate on election night!

8:45 p.m. | Lincoln Chafee has arrived at the Sheraton Airport Hotel in Warwick to await the results in the governor’s race, Projo reports.

8:41 p.m. | Democrat Richard Blumenthal wins the U.S. Senate race in Connecticut, the AP says.

8:40 p.m. | Most of the focus in Rhode Island tonight is on the marquee races, naturally – governor and the 1st District. But all of the General Assembly’s 113 seats are also on the ballot today, and Republicans are hoping to pick up a few seats after they got shellacked in 2008.

Joe Fleming thinks the G.O.P. stands a good chance of picking up more seats – not hard to do when you’re down to just 10 seats out of 113. Democrats won a number of state legislative seats in 2008 that are traditionally Republican districts. We’ll see what happens after the polls close at 9.

8:33 p.m. | No surprise – Democratic U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas loses to Republican challenger John Boozman, says AP.

8:26 p.m. | Numbers starting to trickle in for Massachusetts, but still just 1% of precincts reporting.

The Pennsylvania U.S. Senate race – which pits former Rhode Islander Pat Toomey (R) against Joe Sestak (D) – is going to be a squeaker, but a CNN exit poll has Toomey up by two points. More polls close at 8:30, so I expect more national calls from the AP then.

8:25 p.m. | And here’s a view of the setup at the Providence Biltmore, where Rhode Island Democrats will be gathering, courtesy Tim White (see 7:57 for the Republicans’ Warwick headquarters):

8:23 p.m. | No results yet in Massachusetts, but I expect some soon. Polls close in just over a half-hour in Rhode Island.

8:18 p.m. | Democratic New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch has defeated his Republican challenger, the AP says.

8:13 p.m. | Democrat Chris Coons has defeated Republican Christine O’Donnell in the much-watched Delaware U.S. Senate race, the AP says. Other calls are Ayotte, Mikulski, Rubio, Shelby, Lynch – I’ll let you Google who they are.

For U.S. House races, the AP has called 36 races – 30 for Republicans and 6 for Democrats. It’s actually a net gain of one seat for Democrats so far, because they picked up a seat in Delaware – I doubt that trend will last. Dem John Yarmouth also held his seat in Kentucky, a competitive race. And of course there’s 399 House races to go!

8:12 p.m. | Joe Fleming and I are getting nostalgic here in WPRI’s studio, where we’ve set up shop. He was regaling me with the story of how, years ago, WPRI used exit polls to call Ed DiPrete’s gubernatorial victory over Bruce Sundlun – by six-tenths of a percentage point.

“I’ll always remember Walter Cryan turned to me and said, ‘Sixth-tenths of a percent?’ That was way too close to call,” he said, laughing.

8:00 p.m. | Polls are now closed in Massachusetts. No results yet, since they closed seconds ago. One hour to go in Rhode Island.

7:57 p.m. | Here’s a photo of the Rhode Island Republican Party’s stage setup at the Warwick Crowne Plaza, courtesy my colleague Kat Sotnik:

7:55 p.m. | So far, The AP has called 20 U.S. House races for Republicans and two for Democrats – none of them were pickups or losses. So we don’t know much new yet about the House. Lots of big calls are coming up at 8 p.m., according to AP’s Phil Elliott in Washington.

Republicans picked up a U.S. Senate seat in Indiana with Dan Coats’ victory.

A reminder that polls close in Massachusetts at 8 p.m., so may start to get a picture of what’s happening in the Bay State within the next hour. And then polls close at 9 in Rhode Island.

7:45 p.m. | David Cicilline’s campaign manager Eric Hyers was feeling optimistic when Tim White spoke to him earlier (see 6:55) – no surprise. You rarely hear somebody in Eric’s position say, “We’re getting slaughtered!”

But the reports I’m getting from out in the 1st District should certainly be making Cicilline’s team – and national Democrats – a little nervous.

Turnout appears to be pretty weak not only in Providence, but in other cities that are important for Cicilline to win, like Central Falls and Pawtucket. By contrast, turnout in the suburbs and on Aquidneck Island has been moderate to strong – which should boost John Loughlin. We also don’t know whether Loughlin made any inroads with Cicilline’s base of voters on Providence’s East Side.

I’m not predicting a Loughlin win. But I’m not predicting a Cicilline win either. I think this one will be close. An hour and 15 minutes till polls close…

7:39 p.m. | When it comes to Rhode Island politics, our analyst Joe Fleming is my Buddah. And Joe just reminded me that since no exit polls are being conducted here in the Ocean State (nor in Massachusetts, according to Cook Political Report), all the rumors we’re hearing about how turnout is and who it will help are just that – rumors.

“Right now, everything’s speculation,” Joe said. “We have no exit polling. All the turnout numbers are just estimates of what we’re seeing out there.” So take it all with a grain of salt.

7:31 p.m. | If Gov. Deval Patrick manages to win reelection in Massachusetts tonight, he will be the first two-term Democratic governor of Massachusetts since Mike Dukakis, AP reporter Phil Elliott points out. Patrick is facing Republican Charlie Baker and ex-Dem Tim Cahill.

7:29 p.m. | We’re likely to know the outcomes of Rhode Island’s big races – including governor and 1st Congressional District – by around 11 p.m., according to our Eyewitness News political analyst Joe Fleming.

“I’m pretty sure we should have a clear picture by 11:00,” he told me a few minutes ago.

Computerized voting machines have made it much easier to tally up votes than it was years ago, which should spare us a late night even if some of the contests turn out to be close. I’ll be stationed next to Joe on the set (but off-camera!) as the results come in, so I’ll be about as close as I can be when the contests are getting called. Stay with us – only 90 minutes to go before the polls close.

7:07 p.m. | In Massachusetts, where polls close in less than an hour, Republicans have been buoyed by reports of high turnout, although Democrats are claiming that will help them, GateHouse News Service reports. Gov. Deval Patrick is trying to hold on against Republican challenger Charlie Baker in the Bay State.

7:05 p.m. | Republicans Rand Paul of Kentucky and Dan Coats of Indiana have won the U.S. Senate races in those states, The AP reports. Incumbents Jim DeMint, R-S.C., and Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., were also reelected (no surprise).

7:01 p.m. | Question #1 on today’s ballot in Rhode Island asked voters whether they wanted to remove the phrase “and Providence Plantations” from the state’s official name. Our poll last week showed it was likely to lose by a wide margin.

That won’t upset Josh Marshall, founder of the path-breaking liberal blog Talking Points Memo. Marshall, who earned a Ph.D. in history from Brown University right here in Providence, posted a lengthy essay yesterday saying he hoped the state would keep the controversial phrase. Here’s an excerpt:

The folks in ‘Providence Plantations’ were among the first principled opponents of slavery anywhere in the Americas, certainly in New England and by most measures everywhere in North America. Folks like Roger Williams, Samuel Gorton and a bunch of other guys who died more than three centuries ago whose letters and records I spent way too much time reading in my 20s. It’s a fascinating legacy. The roots of slavery in Rhode Island, both as an internal institution and as a key force in the slave trade, came from the other original colony, Rhode Island and settlements in southern Rhode Island that were tied to it.

Because of my own background, I have a certain antiquarian interest in this old name. But it seems unambiguously true to me that purging “Providence Plantations” from the state’s name, in addition to being a strike against the state’s history, would have the perverse effect of silencing the legacy of the people who were anti-slavery long, long before many people in the Western World even recognized it as a moral question.

I get the reasons for trying to change the name. In modern English, ‘plantation’ means a southern estate with black slaves picking cotton. And the state is for the its living residents and citizens, not what someone who’s got some relatively obscure historical knowledge about what these ancient names mean. Still, for all the reasons I’ve stated, if they trim the state’s name down to just “Rhode Island” I think it will be a big mistake.

6:55 p.m. | Cicilline campaign manager Eric Hyers tells Tim White that “East Side precincts are already over 80% of where I would like them to be by 9 p.m.”

6:49 p.m. | Another fascinating data point from the national exit polls – “about 4 in 10 voters said that they supported the Tea Party movement,” according to The New York Times.

6:45 p.m. | Drudge says exit polls show Republicans winning U.S. Senate seats in Illinois, Kentucky, Arkansas, Ohio, North Dakota and Wisconsin. Nevada tied – Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid may stand a chance.

6:41 p.m. | The Associated Press has an early take on what exit polls show. In short, the American electorate is anxious, unhappy with President Obama and Congress, and down on Democrats and Republicans alike. Here’s an excerpt:

The economy eclipsed any other issue.

Almost everyone surveyed — more than 80 percent — expressed worry about the direction the economy will take over the next year. Still, a majority said their own family’s financial situation was the same or better than two years ago, when a recession-plagued nation swept Obama into office and strengthened the Democrats’ congressional majorities.

The four out of 10 voters who said things for their families are worse now favored Republican House candidates.

About a third of voters said their household suffered a job loss in the past two years. Those setbacks didn’t give their votes a clear direction — the group divided over which party to support in House races.

Only about a quarter of voters blamed Obama for the nation’s economic troubles. Voters overall were more likely to point the finger at Wall Street bankers. …

Asked about Obama’s policies overall, about half of voters predicted he would hurt the country.

This view was especially strong among voters who support the tea party — about four out of 10 of those who came to the polls. They overwhelmingly voted Republican. Almost all of them want Congress to repeal the new health care law. They also were focused on reducing the budget deficit, followed by cutting taxes.

In contrast, voters who said they cast ballots for Obama in 2008 mostly stuck by the Democrats and still back the president on health care and the economic stimulus package.

6:38 p.m. | In Massachusetts, Republicans are hoping to follow-up on Scott Brown’s surprise U.S. Senate victory last January by picking up a few more offices, The Associated Press reports:

A nearly two-year Massachusetts gubernatorial race was wrapping up Tuesday as candidates and the public alike voted in a race that could produce the first two-term Democratic governor since Michael S. Dukakis in 1986 — or a return to Republican leadership after a four-year hiatus.

Gov. Deval Patrick was trying to fend off a pro-GOP, anti-incumbent wave that threatened his colleagues in 37 races across the nation, while challenger Charles Baker sought to take advantage of that tide. …

Secretary of State William F. Galvin predicted “near-record” turnout for a nonpresidential year, and midday results in Boston showed a slight uptick from turnout in January’s special Senate election, when Republican Scott Brown upset Democrat Martha Coakley. …

The national party sought several trophy wins: over Patrick because he shares Chicago roots and consultant ties with President Barack Obama; over Rep. Barney Frank with upstart Sean Bielat after the veteran congressman spearheaded financial regulation legislation; and bolstering state Rep. Jeff Perry in his bid to claim the House seat encompassing the Cape Cod district where Kennedy himself used to vote.

State Republicans focused on Baker, but they also set their sights on gains in the overwhelmingly Democratic Legislature, as well by treasurer candidate Karyn Polito, auditor candidate Mary Connaughton and James McKenna, who won a write-in primary campaign for attorney general in a bid to hand Coakley her second electoral loss this year.

6:36 p.m. | My pal Tim White is stationed at the Providence Biltmore, the traditional gathering place for Rhode Island’s Democrats on election night. It’s going to be an interesting night there, to say the least, in the wake of Shoveitgate and the strained relations between a number of the party’s candidates.

Tim caught up with Congressman Patrick Kennedy, who isn’t on the ballot today in the 1st District for the first time since 1994. “Kennedy looks the most relaxed I’ve ever seen him,” Tim reports. “He says he likes campaigning for someone else a whole lot more than doing it himself.”

Tim also asked Kennedy what he thought about Caprio’s “shove it” comment to President Obama, particularly since Kennedy’s Uncle Jack was president himself. Kennedy said it was a mistake for Caprio to say that, and added that Caprio has admitted as much. He also said enough time has passed since the comment was made last Monday that the Democrats’ wounds have healed. (I’ll have to take your word for it, congressman.)

6:13 p.m. | It hasn’t gotten much attention since the Sept. 14 primary, but one of the races on the ballot tonight is mayor of Providence. Democrat Angel Taveras – who beat both Steve Costantino and John Lombardi in the primary – is all but certain to defeat his independent opponent Jonathan Scott.

Although that race ended almost two months ago, WRNI’s Ian Donnis (full disclosure: a Nesi’s Notes mentor) dug up the final campaign finance reports for Costantino, Taveras and Lombardi – and it turns out Costantino spent more than Taveras and Lombardi combined, only to come in a distant third with 20% of the vote. Not the greatest investment by the outgoing House Finance Committee chairman, huh? If you want more, check out my September story about who donated to Taveras.

6:05 p.m. | Famous folks with Rhode Island ties are all over the place this evening.

In Pennsylvania, Republican Pat Toomey – who graduated from LaSalle Academy with my colleague Mike Montecalvo back in 1980 – stands a good chance of winning a Democratic-held U.S. Senate seat. And Cook Political Report expert Jennifer Duffy – an Ocean State native and a favorite here at Nesi’s Notes – will be crunching numbers on behalf of a network-that-shall-not-be-named because it isn’t our own CBS or Fox. Here’s a photo of her at that network’s studio today, sent along by her brother, Duffy & Shanley honcho Jon Duffy:

6:01 p.m. | Tonight promises to be a fascinating evening – and I’m not just saying that so you keep clicking refresh. (Though you should keep clicking refresh.)

Here in Rhode Island, we have a number of very competitive races, including governor (Chafee v. Caprio v. Robitaille), the 1st Congressional District (Cicilline v. Loughlin), lieutenant governor (Roberts v. Healey) and secretary of state (Mollis v. Taylor). Across the border in Massachusetts, we have another gubernatorial race (Patrick v. Baker v. Cahill), Barney Frank’s 4th District battle with Sean Bielat, and the fight for retiring Congressman Bill Delahunt’s seat.

Then, of course, there is the national picture – which is mostly a question of just how great the evening will turn out for the resurgent Republican Party.

Democrats are expected to lose control of the U.S. House of Representatives tonight and see their 59-seat majority in the U.S. Senate sharply reduced (if not lost, too). There are also a record 37 governorships on the ballot from coast to coast. And true political aficionados also know that who wins control of state legislatures will be key, as well, because incoming lawmakers will oversee the congressional redistricting process that will follow the new Census.

The first polls just closed at 6 p.m. in Indiana and Kentucky (all times are Eastern), and I’ll be watching to see whether Republican Tea Party favorite Rand Paul wins – and if so, by how much – in the Kentucky U.S. Senate contest, as well as which way three Democratic congressional districts go.

5:45 p.m. | So let’s talk about how many people are voting. Both Projo and WRNI’s Ian Donnis report that turnout is light in Providence, which is a troubling anecdote for Democrat David Cicilline, who needs a strong turnout in the cities of the 1st Congressional District to defeat Republican John Loughlin. But there’s still more than three hours left for people to go to the polls.

5:43 p.m. | For a reporter, one funny thing about Election Day is that while it’s one of the biggest news days of the year, it’s also one of the dullest – until the polls close. There’s usually not much to say until then. Voters are voting, campaigns are trying to get out the vote, and everybody is trading rumors about turnout.

Luckily for you, dear WPRI.com reader, I’ve collected anecdotes and factoids galore to keep us busy until polls close at 8 in Massachusetts and 9 in Rhode Island – so we won’t lack for things to discuss. Share your own insights with me – whether about politics or what you saw at your polling place – by sending an e-mail to ReportIt@wpri.com.

5:34 p.m. | Welcome to WPRI.com’s live blog for Election Day 2010!

This is the place for breaking news updates, reports from my Eyewitness News colleagues stationed with the candidates throughout Rhode Island, some trivia about the races on the ballot today, and live results starting at 9 p.m. when the polls close. I’ll also keep you posted on the results in Massachusetts, where polls close at 8, and nationwide.

And of course, we’ll have the latest information on TV starting at 8 p.m. with special reports during regular programming and then with extended live coverage beginning at 9 p.m. We’ll also be streaming video from the candidates’ headquarters here on WPRI.com.

Voters protest Washington's lack of representation, 1938

Election Day appears to be off to a solid start in Rhode Island, other than an early car crash in Westerly. The weather – which can be the deciding factor in an election – is clear but cold across the state, with the temperature in Smithfield at 41 degrees as I write this, according to the National Weather Service.

Lincoln Chafee got a boost to start his day when he was one of 10 gubernatorial candidates nationwide to win the endorsement of The New York Times, though I’m not sure how many votes that will swing his way. Meanwhile, the dead-tree edition of today’s Providence Journal reminds us how important newspapers used to be on balloting days by featuring newsroom photographs from days gone by.

On the blogs, Dan McGowan of Rhode Island’s Future reminds voters to flip over their ballots so they don’t miss the four ballot questions, while Justin Katz of Anchor Rising suggests Republicans disgruntled by lieutenant governor candidate Heidi Rogers’ bait-and-switch should write in Kara Russo – Christopher Young’s fiancée – instead.

Greater City: Providence’s Jef Nickerson (who was kind enough to plug my coverage here) wins best one-liner of the morning: “This is it, the day we’ve all been waiting for, the first day of the 2012 campaign season.” I expect to see more than a few would-be 2012 presidential candidates on TV tonight and tomorrow.

My friend who received the three robocalls yesterday afternoon on Frank Caprio’s behalf got a fourth one this morning – this time from Congressman Patrick Kennedy. Caprio “told the Endorser-in-Chief to shove it, but I guess everyone else is welcome,” he quipped in an e-mail. At least he’s still receiving his calls, though – Comcast says its phone lines in New Hampshire and parts of Massachsuetts got so overloaded with robocalls they were jammed for a bit.

I asked Chris Barnett, spokesman for Secretary of State Ralph Mollis, how many Rhode Islanders are eligible to vote in today’s election out of our population of about 1 million. As you can see, independent voters outnumber Democrats by about 22,000. Here are the numbers:

• Democrats: 305,290
• Republicans: 76,780
• Moderates: 358
• Unaffiliated: 327,806
  Total: 710,234

Of course, not all those people are going to show up to vote today. Looking at the last three gubernatorial elections, there were 386,809 ballots cast for governor in 2006 (Carcieri v. Fogarty); 332,056 in 2002 (Carcieri v. York); and 306,445 in 1998 (Almond v. York). The big turnout in 2006 was partly due to the high-profile U.S. Senate race between Chafee and Sheldon Whitehouse, though.

As I mentioned this morning, WPRI will be covering the elections all day and into the night both online and on TV. I’m going to start blogging regularly later this afternoon, and I’ll be bringing you Rhode Island’s results live right here once the clock hits 9 p.m., the same way I did on primary night.

We won’t have to wait that long for the news to start coming in, though – polls close at 6 p.m. in Indiana, which could help us gauge how good a night Republicans are going to have nationally, and then at 8 p.m. in Massachusetts, where I’ll be watching to see how incumbents Deval Patrick and Barney Frank fare.

(photo credit: Library of Congress)

Polling places are now open across much of Rhode Island – a few towns wait until 8 a.m., and Block Island holds off until 9 – and the state’s 710,234 voters are beginning to cast their ballots. There’s no big rush, though, since polls don’t close here until 9 p.m., nearly 14 hours from now. (Click here to find your polling place.)

The Projo’s Peter Lord had a fun story in yesterday’s paper about the historical reasons that Rhode Island is one of three states that keep polls open until 9. (The other two are Iowa and New York.) I always figured lawmakers set the 9 p.m. closing time to punish us reporters who torment them the rest of the year – but according to Lord, that’s not the case:

Rhode Island’s 9 p.m. closing time was established in 1966, as just one measure amid legislation reapportioning all 100 House seats in Rhode Island, according to the Rhode Island State Library, which does legal and historical research at the State House. Gov. John H. Chafee vetoed the reapportionment bill, but the House overrode his veto, so the state was reapportioned and polling hours were extended. …

A few months later, poll workers on Block Island raised objections. They didn’t need 12 hours to handle the 500 or so residents on the island, they said. The 9 p.m. closing required a 12-hour work shift in a building with no running water and wooden benches that provided the only places to rest. Their complaints apparently had no impact on state law.

The 1966 law also set opening hours for each community. For most, the opening time is 7 a.m. Exceptions were made for a number of communities. New Shoreham, for instance, was allowed to open its polling place at 9 a.m.

Spokesmen for the secretaries of state in Iowa and New York said they hadn’t heard of anyone complaining about their 9 p.m. poll closings. But on primary day in New York, much of the state didn’t open its polls until noon.

First, I hope the poll workers on Block Island have gotten running water and more comfortable chairs sometime in the intervening 44 years. Second, not everyone is as skeptical of Rhode Island’s 9 p.m. closing time as Lord’s sources.

John Marion of Common Cause Rhode Island told me that while Rhode Island does have somewhat longer poll hours than other states, it also hasn’t taken the same steps that other states have to make it easier for people to vote when it’s most convenient for them. Marion pointed to a recent study by the National Conference of State Legislatures that showed 32 states now allow some version of early voting, and 30 states have “no-excuse” absentee ballots. Rhode Island isn’t one of them.

“Interestingly, Secretary of State Ralph Mollis has put in a bill to expand early voting (and even did a trial run at Saturday voting on a non-binding referendum in Lincoln), but it hasn’t really become an issue in that campaign,” Marion said in an e-mail, referencing Mollis’ race against Republican Catherine Taylor. It was one of the recommendations of the Voters First Advisory Commission that Mollis convened after he took office back in 2007.

WPRI will be covering the elections all day and into the night both online and on TV. Yours truly will start blogging regularly this afternoon, and I’ll be bringing you the results live right here once the clock hits 9 p.m. My goal tonight is the same as it was on primary night: be fast, but be accurate!

In the meantime, what are you seeing out there at your local polling place? How are the crowds? Any shenanigans? Are you in one of the candidates’ precincts? Drop us a line at ReportIt@wpri.com to share your stories and photos.

Lynch recorded a robocall – an automated phone message – that’s getting distributed this afternoon and was forwarded to me by one of the recipients. As you can see, it’s not easy to critique two other candidates and make the affirmative case for your own man in a 30-second message:

Hello. This is Attorney General Patrick Lynch, and I’m calling to ask you to vote for my friend, Frank Caprio, Democrat for governor, this Tuesday. Frank Caprio has a plan to get our economy moving again, and Rhode Island needs just that. We can’t afford Chafee’s plan to raise taxes on working families and we need to put an end to the failed Republican policies of the last 16 years. We need a Democrat in the governor’s office, and that Democrat is Frank Caprio. Please vote for Frank this Tuesday. Thank you.

Question: Do robocalls actually work?

Update: The same individual has now received a robocall from Frank Caprio himself. Unfortunately, Caprio’s message started playing while my correspondent’s outgoing message was still playing, so part of the message was cut off. But from context clues, it appears Frank Caprio wants people to vote for him tomorrow.

Update #2: My correspondent has now received a third Caprio robocall in the space of a few hours. This time it was Bill Clinton on his behalf. I can say that in this person’s case, the three robocalls has not made him more amenable to voting for the Democrat tomorrow.

That said, I shouldn’t pick on the Caprio campaign too much – they may just have the bad luck of robocalling somebody who emailed a reporter. Is Robitaille robocalling? Chafee? Ken Block? Joe Lusi? Let me know in comments.

• Is Lincoln Chafee the Democrat in the governor’s race? Looking at the coalition he’s put together, you could make the case. Chafee is either winning or nearly tied with Frank Caprio among some of the Democratic Party’s core consistencies.

Chafee is winning 52% of union households to Caprio’s 22%. The pair are tied among women at 29%, and statistically tied among younger voters (ages 18 to 39), with Chafee at 35% and Caprio at 34%. Among registered Democrats, Caprio’s lead over Chafee is just four points, 45%-41%. In the Democratic-leaning 1st District, Chafee leads Caprio 33%-27%.

The problem for Caprio is he hasn’t made up for that with new support elsewhere – Chafee leads him among men, 37%-23%; independents, 34%-13%; and seniors, 31%-28%. Among Republicans, Caprio only leads Chafee by one point, 12%-11%, while John Robitaille has 67%.

• Who’s persuadable at this point in the governor’s race? Only a few groups still have a double-digit number of undecided voters: independents, 17%; women, 14%; people ages 40 to 59, 14%; and 2nd District residents, 12%. They are taking their time, too – the number of undecideds in those groups was not statistically different from our previous poll a month earlier.

• Moderate Party founder Ken Block gets his strongest support from independents, at 7%. He’s also polling at 6% – two points above his overall rating – among men, younger voters, and Republicans.

• Unlike Caprio, David Cicilline is hanging on to traditional Democratic supporters, which is helping him keep a six-point lead over John Loughlin. Cicilline is winning women, seniors, and union members. But independents have deserted him over the past month, giving Loughlin 58% to Cicilline’s 28% – a 24-point gain for Loughlin and a 10-point loss for Cicilline, with 14% still undecided.

• Will Bob Venturini be our own Ralph Nader? Elizabeth Roberts should thank her lucky stars that the Pawtucket cable TV fixture is still in the lieutenant governor’s race – if his 5% support were added to Bob Healey’s 35%, the lieutenant governor’s race would be a statistical tie. It’s also a tad surprising that Healey is only winning 50% of Republicans – did they not get the message when Heidi Rogers dropped out? Or do they dislike the message?

• We also found 16% of likely voters still unsure who to support in the lieutenant governor’s race. With Roberts at 42% and Healey at 35%, which way those undecideds break could decide the outcome. Democrats have rallied to Roberts, but 22% of independents and 18% of Republicans still haven’t made up their minds.

• Ken Block’s fellow Moderate, attorney general candidate Chris Little, is doing far better than his party’s founder, polling at 12% in a five-man field. Little is winning 16% of middle-aged voters, 15% of independents and 13% of men. That may help explain why front-runner Peter Kilmartin, a Democrat, has trained his fire on Little in addition to Republican Erik Wallin.

• Congressman Jim Langevin does best among younger voters – those aged 18 to 39 – at 65%. The older you are, the less you like Langevin – he gets 55% of those ages 40 to 59 and 49% of those ages 60 and older. Langevin also has 23% of Republicans.

• The campaign to change Rhode Island’s formal name by deleting “and Providence Plantations” has gotten very little traction, with just 16% of voters saying they will approve the switch.

• Caprio is winning 14% of voters who say his association with “old-style politics” will prevent them from voting for him. Chafee is winning 8% of voters who say his sales tax proposal will, again, prevent them from voting for him. Yet Robitaille is only winning 1% of voters who say his service in the Carcieri administration will prevent them from voting for him. Weird.

The University of Rhode Island has been buying Facebook ads to drum up support for Question #2 on tomorrow’s ballot, which would give the state permission to borrow $78 million to build a new chemistry building at URI and a new art building at RIC. Here’s the ad I saw, which leads to an Essential2RI fan page with more information:

I asked URI where the money was coming from to pay for the Facebook ads, and an administrator said the school has a separate account that takes donations solely for the purpose of promoting Question #2. URI expects to spend about $125,000 campaigning for the ballot question when all is said in done. The money has come from the URI Alumni Association, the URI Foundation, and some faculty groups, among others.

The URI/RIC question is one of four on tomorrow’s ballot in Rhode Island. The quartet of queries asks if the state should:

1. … remove “and Providence Plantations” from its official name?
2. … borrow $78 million for the aforementioned new buildings at URI and RIC?
3. … borrow $85 million for highway, road and bridge projects and RIPTA buses?
4. … borrow $15 million to buy Rocky Point and Shooters and repair Fort Adams?

Across the border in Massachusetts, voters will decide on three ballot questions tomorrow.

As anyone who’s visited a Bay State liquor store lately knows, Question #1 would exempt alcohol from the state sales tax again, as was the case until last year. (The excise tax would stay.) Question #2 would repeal Chapter 40B, the long-controversial subsidized housing law enacted in 1969. And Question #3 – the one getting the most attention – would drop the Massachusetts sales tax rate from 6.25% to 3%.

P.S. Wondering about all that borrowing Rhode Island is asking to do? I took a look at the state’s debt level back in the late summer – see here and the follow-up here.