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If you've enjoyed the battle for control of the Senate over the past many months, here's some good news: the drama could well spill over into next month – or even next year.

While Republicans are increasingly optimistic — and Democrats, pessimistic — about their prospects Tuesday, there are plausible scenarios that could have America waiting well beyond Nov. 4 to know which party will have a Senate majority.

Alaska is a key state for Republican hopes for a takeover and is also potentially a close race, meaning the result of its election "night" might not be clear until all the ballots in the far-flung state are tallied. "Alaska could take a week or more to get their votes in," said Justin Barasky, spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Even with Alaska settled, there's still the matter of Louisiana and Georgia. Both states require a runoff election if no candidate wins a majority on Election Day, and polling suggests runoffs are more likely in those states than not.

Louisiana's runoff would be Dec. 6, but Georgia's runoff isn't until Jan. 6. That would be three days after the start of the new Congress on Jan. 3.

Apart from the prospect of both parties focusing massive television ad campaigns and voter turnout drives on just two states, the timing raises this unusual prospect: Kentucky GOP Senator Mitch McConnell rising to Senate majority leader – for exactly one day, before losing it back to Democratic Leader Harry Reid.

It's a longshot, but it's not completely far-fetched. For it to happen, Republicans would have to have a disappointing election night, yet wind up on New Year's Day with a 50-49 advantage with the Georgia runoff outstanding. [McConnell also has to win re-election, of course.]

The Constitution says each new Congress is to begin on Jan. 3, but with it falling on a Saturday next year, leaders will more than likely agree to push it to Jan. 5 or 6. The senators would convene, get sworn in to their terms but what happens next wouldn't be known until polls closed in Georgia on the evening of Jan. 6.

At that point, if Republican David Perdue has won, McConnell would have 51 senators and become majority leader. But if Democrat Michelle Nunn were to win, the 50-50 tie would give the deciding vote to Democratic Vice President Joe Biden – and the majority leader title back to Reid.

Republicans are confident that their candidates will prevail in both runoffs, should it come to that, because their supporters are more used to turning out, even in typically low-turnout contests like runoffs.

2014 elections

Battle for the Senate 2014

It's crunch time for campaign workers across the country. With the midterm elections just one day away, Republicans and Democrats are scrambling to turn out every possible vote.

President Obama spent the weekend rallying supporters in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Connecticut.

The last-minute swing was unusual for a president who's kept a relatively low profile on the campaign trail this year. But whether he wants to or not, Obama is playing an outsized role in shaping the political landscape.

The rock-star rallies of years past are a distant memory. But President Obama can still energize die-hard Democrats. He delivered a pre-election pep talk in Bridgeport, Conn., where Democratic Governor Dan Malloy is locked in a tight battle for re-election.

"Make some phone calls," Obama began. "Knock on some doors. Grab everybody you know. Get them out to vote. Don't stay home. Don't let somebody else choose your future for you."

This year many Democratic candidates find their future is in somebody else's hands — namely Barack Obama's.

Handicapper Nathan Gonzales of the Rothenberg Political Report says Obama's sagging popularity is casting a long shadow over his fellow Democrats.

"If the president's job approval rating was 5 or 10 points better, I think we'd be talking about a very different election," Gonzales says.

There was a moment, during the government shutdown last year, when it seemed as if this year's midterms might be a referendum on congressional Republicans. But then came the disasterous rollout of the government's health insurance website.

Gonzales says that was followed by a steady drip, drip, drip of problems for the president at home and abroad, including mismanagement of VA hospitals, Russia's takeover of Crimea and the rise of the Islamic State also known as ISIS.

"I think right now we've reached a point in the president's term where voters are skepitcal," Gonzales says. "I don't think they're giving him the benefit of the doubt any more."

That's created a toxic environment for Obama's fellow Democrats, no matter how much they try to distance themselves from the president.

"I'm not Barack Obama. I disagree with him on guns, coal, and the EPA," says Democratic Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes, who's challenging Mitch McConnell in Kentucky.

Grimes refused to even say whether she voted for Obama. But even as Democrats try to assert their independence from the president, Republicans have tarred them with a broad Obama brush.

Obama himself unwittingly played into Republican hands, with a speech in Illinois last month that gave Democratic stategists fits.

"I'm not on the ballot this fall," Obama said. "Michelle's pretty happy about that. But make no mistake these policies are on the ballot."

Many of the issues Obama was talking about — such as raising the minimum wage, pay equity, and immigration overhaul — are more popular than he is. But by suggesting Democratic Senate candidates would be carrying water for his agenda, Obama made their campaign challenge that much harder.

Democrats have tried to counter the president's low approval numbers by highlighting unpopular positions of their Republican opponents, such as support for personhood amendments that would outlaw some forms of birth control. But unlike years past, when some Republicans made it easy for Democrats to paint them as extremists, political analyst Gonzales says this year, the GOP has largely managed to avoid self-inflicted wounds.

"As a whole, Republicans have managed to stay out of the spotlight and keep the spotlight on President Obama," Gonzales says. "And that's the way they'll have a better midterm election."

To be sure, Republicans always had some built-in advantages this year. Most of the contested Senate races are in deeply red states. And Democratic voters are traditionally less reliable in non-presidential years. The political playing field could be very different two years from now. But Gonzales warns unless Obama is able to win back some skeptical voters, some of the same headwinds Democrats face this fall could still be blowing in 2016.

"If the president leaves office with 40 percent job approval rating, maybe a bit lower, I think that opens the door for any number of Republican candidates to win. If the president leaves office with 45, creeping closer to 50 percent job approval rating, I'm not sure there's a Republican in this country who could win that type of race," Gonzales says.

Both parties will soon be looking ahead to that presidential contest, and deciding whether it's to their advantage to keep highlighting differences or find some areas where they can work together.

The run up to midterm elections has sparked many heated legal and ideological arguments over voting procedures and requirements. To understand the debate, I went to Charlotte, North Carolina for a live community conversation around these voting laws. The U.S. Supreme Court has allowed a North Carolina law to go into effect that eliminates same-day voter registration and reduces the number of early voting days.

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Civil rights activist Charles Jones began the discussion when he shared a few of his personal experiences. Travis Dove/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Travis Dove/NPR

Civil rights activist Charles Jones began the discussion when he shared a few of his personal experiences.

Travis Dove/NPR

We heard from 77-year-old Charles Jones. He was heavily involved in voter registration efforts during the civil rights movement in 1960s. Jones shared a poignant story about a meeting he helped organize in Terrell County, Georgia to help African-Americans get comfortable with voting. The sheriff - also the local Ku Klux Klan leader - interrupted the meeting, but Jones emphasized the importance of standing up for yourself and making your voice heard.

"We have the option to help define our own lives," Jones said. "Involve yourself in learning from a factual base. Don't let anybody tell you what you ought to be doing, ought to be thinking."

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Hans von Spakovsky, manager for Election Reform Initiative and senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and also a former member of the Federal Election Commission. Travis Dove/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Travis Dove/NPR

Hans von Spakovsky, manager for Election Reform Initiative and senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and also a former member of the Federal Election Commission.

Travis Dove/NPR

Hans von Spakovsky is the manager of the Election Reform Initiative at the Heritage Foundation, and the co-author of Who's Counting?: How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk. He says the biggest reasons people fail to vote are not restrictive voter laws, but apathy and dissatisfaction with the candidates.

"The Census Bureau does a survey of non-voters and the biggest reason people don't vote has nothing to do with procedural issues...how you register, it's because they are not interested in politics, and they don't think their vote will make a difference, and they don't think that the candidates will really do anything for them," he said.

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Janai Nelson, associate director-counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. Travis Dove/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Travis Dove/NPR

Janai Nelson, associate director-counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.

Travis Dove/NPR

Janai Nelson is the Deputy Director and Associate Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. She talked about how minority communities and low-income Americans are most affected by more restrictive voting laws.

"I fear that we're at critical stage in our current history where we risk turning back the hands on the clock and going back to a time where we are - for a variety of reasons - restricting the people who can vote in this country," she said.

We wanted the conversation to go beyond the McGlohon Theater in Charlotte. We held our social media chat - in collaboration with member station WFAE and La Noticia, North Carolina's oldest Spanish speaking newspaper - in English and Spanish. You can follow that conversation here:

[View the story "NPR Presents: Michel Martin, Voting Rights or Wrongs?" on Storify]

Texas politics is about to take another big step to the right. While nobody outside Texas would describe Gov. Rick Perry or Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst as moderate Republicans, their likely replacements are considerably more conservative — especially in the powerful lieutenant governor's office.

The eyes watching Texas have mostly focused on the governor's race between Wendy Davis and Greg Abbott. But the contest between former conservative radio talk show host Dan Patrick and state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte from San Antonio likely will be of more political consequence.

Texas has what's known as a "weak governor" system, which Rick Perry overcame only because of his historically long occupation of the chair. But lieutenant governor is president of the Texas Senate and Republican Dan Patrick will lead an unprecedentedly conservative Senate, which is mirrored by an equally conservative Texas House.

As a former conservative shock jock, Patrick's politics fit that vein. He wants to teach creationism in public schools, end popular election of U.S. senators, and outlaw abortion including cases of rape. But what's got establishment Republicans particularly concerned is Patrick's plan to do away with the state's property taxes. Texas already doesn't have income taxes. That means property taxes and sales taxes are high to compensate. If Texas were to stop collecting property taxes too, the state's school system — and indeed many elements of local government — would have to be drastically cut back while sales tax would soar.

The regressive consequence could be similar to what has happened in Kansas under the leadership of Republican Gov. Sam Brownback.

But Texas is not Kansas. If it were a sovereign nation, it would have the 14th largest economy in the world. For decades, the conservative Dallas Morning News editorial board has been the voice of the state's Republican business establishment. It tends to endorse a Democrat only when it feels the GOP candidate is refusing to serve the state's business interests. And in the lieutenant's governor's race, the News endorsed Van de Putte, Patrick's opponent.

In its endorsement editorial the News said of Patrick, "Some of his ideas are singularly disruptive. Taken together they could destabilize state government, the enemy of sound business practices." The News called a vote for Patrick, "reckless" and described Patrick's primary m.o. for governing Texas as "fear and division."

Compared to some of the other more liberal newspapers' descriptions of Patrick's politics, the News' editorial language was toned down. Be that as it may, the latest poll has him leading Van de Putte by 17 percentage points. It's very likely Dan Patrick is Texas's future.

And that is expected to intensify the ongoing power struggle between Tea Party Republicans like Patrick and the state's business elite. But in Texas, after this election the Tea Party wing may well have the votes. Still don't count out the state's millionaires and billionaires, there are many. It is apt to become a test case of conservative politics — big money's self-interest vs. grass roots right wing ideology, Texas style.

2014 elections

Texas