This is Bill.
Bill is on the Internet looking at election results in the early phase of the election.
Bill sees Donald Trump leading in key swing states.
Bill freaks out and panics!
Bill does not know that small rural counties tend to report first and also tend to be more Republican.
Don’t be like Bill.
Instead, use our county benchmarks! This is a tradition for every general election at Daily Kos Elections, which breaks the key states down into what counties actually matter (so that you don’t have to break out the road atlas and stare at the fine print in the back until you find “Geez, the Republican has 80 percent of the vote in McGillicudy County, but there are only 5,000 people there? Who cares!”). “Actually matter,” for our purpose, means counties where the 2012 vote total is 2 or more percent of the state’s 2012 vote total.
Even more importantly, it gives you estimates for what the Democratic candidate should be earning in each of those key counties, in order to be on track statewide. Different counties might come in at different times of the night, but this way you can keep track of whether the early vote in the key counties is on target for a victory.