There are a huge number of really fascinating races and referenda on the ballot across the country this year, and many of the most interesting — and most important — remain too close to call. In this post I’ll be doing a state-by-state rundown of the results I’ll be looking for, and the ones friends have tipped me to on Facebook and Twitter. (If you’ve got others, please share in comments.)

Arizona

• Horrific Phoenix Sheriff Joe Arpaio, now eighty years old, is facing his most serious challenger in a long time. Paul Penzone is struggling with name recognition, but the race has been tightening in recent weeks.
• Richard Carmona is almost certainly going to lose his US Senate race, but if he keeps it close, it’s a good sign for the future of Democratic politics in AZ.
• In the newly-created 9th Congressional District Kyrsten Sinema, a former school social worker and defense lawyer, is slightly favored to become the first openly bisexual Congressperson in American history.

California

• Proposition 30. This is the biggie, as I’ve written before. It would establish a small, temporary sales tax hike (0.25%) and temporary income tax increases for the wealthy in order to close the state’s huge budget deficit in education. If it fails, UC tuition — already ridiculously high — is likely to rise another 20%, while Cal State and community college enrollment will be slashed. With recent polling putting the yes vote on 30 just under fifty percent, it’s likely to be close.
• Proposition 32 is an attempt to limit unions’ political power under the guise of getting corporate money out of politics. It’s polling badly, but not horribly, and has been all the way through.
• Proposition 34 would end the death penalty in the state. With conflicting, close poll data, it’s impossible to call. (There are more than 700 inmates on California’s death row, though there is currently a death-penalty moratorium in the state.) One horribly sad wrinkle — some death row inmates oppose Prop 34 because capital defendants have greater rights to state-funded appellate representation than their non-capital peers. Take away the threat of execution, and you stunt their ability to challenge their convictions.
• Proposition 35 is a ban on human trafficking and sex slavery, and appears likely to pass by a large margin. Some very smart people, though, fear that it could have extremely harmful consequences to sex workers, including those it intends to support.
• Proposition 36, which would curtail California’s “three strikes” law, looks set to pass.
• Proposition 38, an unappealing alternative version of Prop 30, will surely fail … but it could drag 30 down with it.

Colorado

• Amendment 64, which would legalize and regulate marijuana, has been leading throughout the cycle, but the polls have been tightening. Could go either way.

Florida

• 18th Congressional District incumbent Allen West is a stone cold weirdo and all kinds of bad news. The polls say he’ll likely eke out a win, but it’d be fun if he lost.

Illinois

• In the 8th Congressional District, jerkface incumbent Joe Walsh is looking like he’ll lose to Tammy Duckworth. Yay.

Indiana

• It’s a Republican-leaning state, but Richard Mourdock’s October comments about rape pregnancies being part of “God’s plan” seem to have hurt him badly in his Senate race. Democrat Joe Donnelly has led in two recent polls.

Iowa

• David Wiggins, a state supreme court justice who voted with the pro-marriage equality majority in Iowa’s same-sex marriage ruling, is facing a recall campaign.

Maine

• In Question 1, one of four marriage equality referenda nationally, the voters of Maine will consider repeal of a 2009 referendum banning same-sex marriage. Polling is looking good, but SSM referenda have historically tended to underperform polls. There’s reason for optimism, but no more.
• Maine’s US Senate election is a weird one this year, with former governor Angus King running as an independent and refusing to say which party he’ll caucus with if he wins. State Democrats are mostly counting on him to go D, though, and have largely abandoned the Democratic candidate so as not to split liberal votes and give the Republican an opening. (This would be a D pickup, following the retirement of semi-centrist Republican Olympia Snowe.)

Maryland

• Question 4 in Maryland is a mini DREAM Act, ensuring in-state tuition in public higher education for undocumented students who meet state residency requirements. I haven’t seen enough polling to say which way it’ll go, but it seems like a bit of an uphill battle.
• Maryland also has Question 6, another same-sex marriage referendum, with perhaps the best polling data of any of the four. I’ll be out leafleting for this one with my daughters on election day.
• Long-term Republican congressmember (and Tea Partier) Roscoe Bartlett, one of the state’s two GOP House incumbents, is in a tough race because of redistricting.

Massachusetts

• Incumbent senator Scott Brown has been leading strong progressive Elizabeth Warren for most of the race, but she’s starting to open up a lead — she’s currently at +3.5% in the RCP polling average.
• Question 2, the legalization of physician-assisted suicide for terminally ill patients, polling very strong.
• Question 3, medical marijuana legalization, is also looking like a winner.

Michigan

• Proposal 2, which would add collective bargaining rights protections to the state constitution.

Minnesota

• Amendment 1 is the country’s only attempt to place a ban on same-sex marriage in a state constitution this cycle. Polling has shown the amendment narrowly failing, but it’s really too close to call.
• Amendment 2 would write a voter ID requirement into the state constitution. A similar law recently passed the state legislature but was vetoed by the governor. A mid-October poll showed it leading 53-40.
• Michele Bachmann’s probably going to win. But it’ll be single digits, and a guy can dream.

Nebraska

• This is one state where I’d be happy to see a Democrat lose a senate race, and with war criminal and anti-student university president Bob Kerrey trailing by double digits, I’ll likely get my wish.

New Jersey

• Bond referendum for capital improvement at the state’s higher ed facilities.

Oregon

• Measure 80, the most dramatic of the country’s three pot legalization initiatives, is also polling the worst. Likely to fail.

Puerto Rico

• Puerto Rico has a two-part status referendum asking residents whether they want to continue as a territory, become a state, or pursue independence. Statehood led a recent poll with 48% support.

Washington

• Referendum 74, the last of four same-sex marriage referenda this cycle, is an attempt to overturn a marriage equality law passed by the legislature. It’s currently too close to call.
• Initiative 502, which would legalize and regulate the sale of marijuana, is showing the strongest polling data of the country’s three pending pot referenda. Passage would set up a showdown between the state and the federal government, which independently criminalizes pot.
• Washington’s Initiative 1240 is a particularly aggressive charter school proposal.
• Though it’s going to be a blowout in the presidential election, Washington also has a close governor’s race.

Wisconsin

• Tammy Baldwin is a solid progressive and a friend to students, and if she wins this race she’ll be the first and only openly gay senator of any gender in US history. She’s ahead or tied in each of the five most recent polls in her race, but only up by an average of 2.2 points. I think she’ll win, and I’ll be cheering hard when she does.

When Barack Obama ran for president in 2008, same-sex marriage was a loser. Whatever his own views, he knew supporting marriage equality would hurt him in the general election, and wouldn’t help him in the primaries. And so he — like Hillary Clinton, and like every previous serious contender for either party’s presidential nomination — declined to do so.

With Obama’s victory in 2008 the Democratic calculus changed. Presidential hopefuls knew that Obama would be the nominee in 2012, and set their eyes on 2016. And it didn’t take a psychic to see that given long-term polling trends no Democrat could win the party nomination in 2016 without supporting marriage equality.

And so the party’s most ambitious politicians, particularly those outside the Obama administration, started getting their ducks in a row. Both New York governor Andrew Cuomo and Maryland governor Martin O’Malley made marriage equality a priority during their current terms of office, with Cuomo presiding over the passage of a same-sex marriage bill last year and O’Malley pushing hard on next week’s statewide referendum.

This week Andrew Cuomo is laying down a similar marker on a very different issue.

At his morning Hurricane Sandy press conference yesterday, Cuomo used blunt language: “We have a new reality when it comes to these weather patterns,” he said, but “old infrastructure and old systems. That’s not a good combination.” We as a country cannot, he said, keep pretending to be shocked when “once in a century” storms come along every couple of years.

At this morning’s press conference, Cuomo was even blunter. “Part of learning from this is the recognition that climate change is a reality, extreme weather is a reality, it’s a reality that we are vulnerable,” he said. “We need to anticipate more of these extreme weather type situations, and we need to take that into consideration in modifying our infrastructure and our built environment.”

The evidence for anthropogenic global warming continues to grow, and there’s every reason to believe that Sandy won’t be the last or the biggest American weather disaster of the coming presidential cycle. With every mammoth storm and record-breaking heat wave the character of the political conversation will shift.

Smart Republicans understand that their party’s position on same-sex marriage is becoming a drag on their electoral prospects, and dread the cycle of soundbites that will dog them on gay rights issues in elections to come. If we keep having weather like we’ve been having, they may wind up in a similar box on climate issues — and sooner than most observers imagine.

But there is, of course, a huge difference between climate and marriage equality: Marriage equality is free. Same-sex marriage is an incredibly straightforward question. You support it or you don’t. You implement it or you don’t. There’s virtually no accompanying policy wrangling, and no budgetary impact. Given this, Cuomo’s approach is particularly noteworthy, and it points to an aspect of the climate change debate that’s received very little political attention so far.

Once you accept the reality of anthropogenic climate change, the policy debate breaks down into two large questions: How do we stop it, and what do we do about what we can’t stop? The former is the one that’s most consumed policymakers and liberal advocacy groups so far, but the latter is where Cuomo put his emphasis, and with good reason.

The political debate over whether climate change is real isn’t going to disappear anytime soon (just like the same-sex marriage will persist long after it becomes a national liability for Republicans). But even while that debate is ongoing, practical questions will come to the forefront.

You don’t need to “believe in climate change” to see that we’re getting weather we didn’t used to get, and with every new datapoint the case that it’s a series of flukes will be harder to make. While policymakers battle over carbon policy and geoengineering, local issues will demand attention, and won’t wait.

And this offers an opportunity for a Democratic presidential candidate, particularly one currently sitting in a governor’s mansion. “Infrastructure” is a word Cuomo used repeatedly yesterday, and it’s a word you’re going to be hearing a lot more from Democrats in the years to come.