9:00 ET- Hall is at 31% and Franklin is at 28% with 15K votes counted, a margin that has remained pretty steady.

Today is the first Presidential debate. It will air at 9p ET on all major news networks. Here is an open thread for discussion. We also have two elections today previewed here:

GA-5 (LRTT) : Today there is a Louisiana Rules Top Two special to fill the seat of the late Rep. John Lewis (D). At stake is GA-5, a Black-majority D+34 seat covering most of the city of Atlanta and its first-ring western, southern, and eastern suburbs. Before this election has begun, the winner is already a lame duck, as the appointed Dem nominee and prohibitive favorite for the full term, State Sen. Nikema Williams (D), is strangely not running in the special, and as a result several mostly “B” and “C list candidates are facing off. Polls close at 8p ET and we will update this thread with results.

Robert Franklin

Former Morehouse College President Robert Franklin (D) is seeking the partial term after being named a finalist for the full term nomination and subsequently passed over. Franklin is a minister and theology professor who led the historically-Black college from 2007 to 2012. He is running as an establishment liberal and probably has the strongest institutional support in this field. Franklin has done well with fundraising given the short time frame and low stakes, with gross hauls of $130K including a modest amount of self-funding. However, Franklin has had little direct political involvement and is facing three other Democrats with more significant electoral resumes.

Kwanza Hall

Ex-Atlanta Councilman Kwanza Hall (D) served twelve years on the city council from 2005 until giving up his seat for an unsuccessful Mayoral run in 2017, taking an unimpressive 7th place and 4% in the crowded field. An executive at an engineering consulting firm, Hall has generally been considered a technocratic establishment liberal with mild moderate tendencies in his career. He has a modest amount of institutional support. Hall is the only other candidate besides Franklin to seriously fundraise for this race, with gross hauls of just over $50K.

State Rep. Mable Thomas (D) has had a long political career, serving twenty-two years in the legislature from an urban central Atlanta seat in three separate stints since the 80s, along with five years on the Atlanta city council. She ran against Lewis for this seat in both 1992 and 2008. Thomas was originally planning to retire entirely from the legislature this year before entering this race as a political coda. In spite of her long career, Thomas is generally regarded as something of a gadfly, in particular for changing her legal name to include her campaign slogan, Able Mable Thomas. She is generally an establishment liberal. Thomas has only a small amount of institutional support.

Ex-State Rep. Keisha Waites (D) is mounting a second congressional bid this year. Waites nearly forced Rep. David Scott (D) into a runoff in GA-13 this summer, despite not seriously fundraising for her campaign. Waites is an openly-lesbian civil servant working on federal disaster response efforts. After beginning her career with 7 unsuccessful campaigns, Waites caught the car and served six years representing a Black-majority suburban seat near Hartsfield Airport from early 2012 to 2017, resigning to mount an unsuccessful bid for Fulton County Executive. She straddles the line between establishment liberal and bold progressive. Waites has only modest institutional support.

2020 candidate Barrington Martin (D) is mounting a second bid after taking 12% against Lewis in the primary this summer. He is running as a far left open Socialist with some out-of-the-mainstream ideas like banning all GMO foods. Martin has a small amount of far-left support, but his run against Lewis has not endeared him to more mainstream Dems and he has little fundraising.

Republicans are not contesting this seat, but there are also an Independent and Libertarian in the race. Overall, Franklin is looking like the front-runner, and there may be a push among the Democratic establishment to get him over the line in a single round to give him two extra months in Congress. However, given the crowded field, a December runoff seems more likely than not. As the only other candidate to be running an adequately funded campaign, Hall is probably the favorite to join Franklin in a second round if one is triggered. RRH Elections currently rates this general election as Safe D.

There is also a major legislative special today. TX-SD-30 is an R+27 seat wrapping around the northern and western exurbs of the DFW metroplex and including some surrounding rural territory out to Sherman-Dennison and Wichita Falls. Six candidates are facing off in a Louisiana Rules Top Two format, five Republicans and a Democrat, and a runoff seems nearly certain. The highest-profile candidate is salon owner Shelley Luther (R), who was jailed this spring for attempting to open her salon in violation of coronavirus restrictions. State Rep. Drew Springer (R), who represents a rural seat around Gainesville, has the endorsement of outgoing State Sen. and presumptive Congressman-elect Pat Fallon (R). Denton (pop. 140K) Mayor Chris Watts (R) is a somewhat more establishment conservative. Also in the race for the GOP are 2018 candidate Craig Carter (R), who took 15% in a three-way primary last cycle as an antiestablishment populist, and engineer Andy Hopper (R), who is running as an antiestablishment conservative. Electrician and union official Jacob Minter (D) could advance to a runoff on Dem votes and render the second round moot. Overall, CW seems to be betting on a runoff between Luther and Springer, but any of the other candidates, particularly Watts, could have a chance to upset that pairing.

Finally, on Thursday, there is an international election, I am throwing it in here for simplicity.

Thursday there is a general election in Bermuda. Bermuda is a British colony in the north Atlantic, 650 miles southeast of the Outer Banks. It has a population of 65K and a land area roughly the size of Manhattan. The population is roughly 50% Black, 30% White, 10% of mixed race, and 5% Asian. Like most modern-day British colonies, the island is generally treated with benign neglect by London, as the local government has effective total control over domestic affairs while the UK handles foreign policy. Bermuda is extremely wealthy, with an economy essentially entirely dependent on offshore finance and tourism. In fact, the island’s biggest issue comes from it being too wealthy, as it is known for truly absurdly high costs of living (the median home price for the entire island is over $1M).

Bermuda’s 36-member Parliament is elected in the standard British first-past-the-post system in single member constituencies, and the island has a simple two-party system. The current government is headed by PM David Burt and the Progressive Labor Party (PLP), which holds 25/36 seats. The PLP is a mainstream center-left party that is relatively fiscally moderate. The opposition One Bermuda Alliance, which holds the remaining 11 seats, is a center-right party fairly similar to the American GOP. Overall, as the PLP called a snap election two years before its mandate is up, the incumbent government would seem to be in a good position to retain its majority.