In today’s politics news: voting under way in three states, a bitter fight in New York, and a tough race for a Bill Clinton ally

Good evening, I’m Ben Jacobs, and this is the Guardian’s new-look politics minute. In the run-up to the midterm elections, I’ll bring you the latest from Washington and beyond every Monday, Wednesday and Friday evening. If you’re not already receiving this rundown by email, sign up.

It begins

Early voting begins today in three states, Minnesota, South Dakota and Virginia. This means every day until 6 November is election day.

Does this change anything? Yes. It means campaigns have to start turning out voters now and that the impact of “October surprises” is diminished, since many people will have already cast ballots.

Do many people vote early? Forty percent of voters in 2016 cast their ballots before Election Day and that number has grown every year. Don’t think of ballots just being cast on election day; think of it as an election season.

Republican pushes mafia innuendo

Incumbent Republican Claudia Tenney is in a tight race in a swing seat in upstate New York and her campaign is adopting a unique tactic. The bomb-throwing rightwinger is implying that her Democratic opponent Anthony Brindisi has … wait for it … mafia ties.

Wait, what? Tenney’s campaign has put out a memo to staffers warning that Brindisi’s family is “thuggish” and prone to violence and attacks his father who was once a lawyer for figures with ties to organized crime.

Is this effective? It’s been denounced by a number of prominent Republicans in the district as well as in a scathing editorial in one of the biggest newspapers in the district.

Democrats floundering in seat Clinton won by 20

The South Florida congressional seat being vacated by Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen was supposed to be a gimme for Democrats. The metro Miami seat is majority Hispanic and Hillary Clinton won 58% of the vote there. But recent polling shows a close race.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Donna Shalala, right, with Madeleine Allbright, Richard Riley and William Daley in 1998, when she was health and human services secretary. Photograph: Joyce Naltchayan/EPA

So what’s happening? Democrats nominated Donna Shalala, the former secretary of health and human services for Bill Clinton. The 77-year-old Shalala does not speak Spanish and has been running a relatively complacent campaign. The Republican, Maria Elvia Salazar, is a bilingual former television journalist.

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What impact does this have? Even if Shalala pulls out the win, her lackluster campaign might force Democrats to spend money in a district once viewed as a guaranteed pickup. That drains resources from other races, particularly two other competitive Republican held seats in the Miami area.

Poll of the day

In Iowa’s first congressional district, a traditionally Democratic leaning district that broke heavily for Trump in 2016, Democrat Abby Finkenhauer has a 15-point lead over incumbent Republican Rod Blum in a poll conducted by the New York Times and Siena College.

Is this a big deal? It’s another key data point that Trump’s gains in the midwest in 2016 were illusory. Republican gubernatorial candidates in every swing state that Trump won in 2016 are in tough races and Democrats are favored in most. Without Hillary Clinton on the ballot, the blue-collar Democrats who crossed over in 2016 are coming back to the Democratic fold.

So Finkenhauer is going to win? Maybe not. Despite the bad poll for Blum, the two-term congressman has shown a remarkable ability to win elections. His victory in 2014 was an upset and he had been considered a dead man walking for much of 2016 before he pulled off a decisive win that year.

Ad of the day

An ad from the Congressional Leadership Fund, the major Republican Super PAC in House races, hits Kansas Democrat Paul Davis for being at a strip club when a drug bust occurred. The advertisement also attacks Davis for voting against a bill in the state legislature to imposing zoning restrictions on adult businesses.

Is this scandalous? Not particularly. It occurred 20 years ago and Davis was the lawyer for the strip club when it happened. It is very salacious and the attack was used effectively against Davis four years ago when he ran for Governor of Kansas.