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In New York City, the lights are coming back on, and the annual marathon has been called off. Robert Siegel talks to Joel Rose.

In New York City on Friday, the lights came on in more of Manhattan and the annual marathon was called off. Margot Adler talks to Robert Siegel.

Mario Veas spent Monday night hunkered down with his family. But he has been running ever since.

Veas runs a tree service in Willow Grove, Pa. He says his phone has been ringing nonstop because people want trees felled by the storm chopped up and cleared.

"Everybody [is] calling and they want [the job] to be done this morning," Veas says.

Earlier this week, Veas was clearing an enormous tree branch from Preethy Edamala's patio in nearby Elkins Park.

The presidential race is expected to be extremely close, and that has a lot of people nervous about what it will mean for election night.

Does it mean that the vote count could drag on for days, or even weeks, as it did in 2000?

Lawyers for the campaigns, the political parties and state election offices are preparing for the possibility.

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted could very well be the man in the middle of any election night storm. By all accounts, the vote in his crucial battleground state will be extremely close.

Most of the attention heading into Election Day may be on the presidential race, but the stakes are also high in the battle for the U.S. Senate, where there are close contests in about a dozen states.

According to an NPR analysis of Kantar Media CMAG data, outside groups are spending more than $100 million blanketing the airwaves. This won't come as a surprise if you live in a state with a competitive Senate race.

New Yorkers were ready to get back to work on Thursday, but the region's transportation system wasn't ready to handle all of them. At bus and subway stops there were long lines and frustration, while drivers had their own long waits for the city's bridges and tunnels.

Residents of Moonachie and Little Ferry, N.J., are beginning to clear the damage after their communities were inundated by floodwaters. The flooding occurred when a system of levees and berms was unable to control the storm surge pushed ashore by Superstorm Sandy.

Geologist Jeffrey Mount of the University of California, Davis, isn't surprised. "There really are only two kinds of levees," he says, "those that have failed, and those that will fail."

Desperation, laziness, overwhelming craving: I say these are three conditions that drive a person to make a tuna noodle casserole.

The desperation? A cupboard bare except for those nonperishable standards: pasta, a can of tuna and a can of cream of mushroom soup. Our friends along the Northeast Seaboard probably know what we're talking about right now.

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ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

And I'm Audie Cornish.

The most populous city in the country is drying out, and beginning a long and complicated recovery. One positive sign: Tomorrow, some New York City subway routes are scheduled to reopen. But today, gridlock ruled as people took to their cars. And that means it's carpool time.

If you're using social media to follow the presidential campaign or even if you're related to someone else who's doing that, there's a good chance your cellphone got spammed Tuesday night with an anti-Obama text message.

The messages went out between 7:30 and 10 p.m. They were anonymous but quickly traced to a Republican consulting firm in Northern Virginia.

Better satellites, smarter computer models and faster computers helped government forecasters correctly predict the devastation from Hurricane Sandy, scientists say.

It's unlikely the forecast would have been nearly as accurate just a couple of decades ago, they say.

"The National Hurricane Center did a fantastic job, particularly with the track forecast and the intensity forecast as it was moving toward the Northeast," says Sharan Majumdar, an associate professor of meteorology and physical oceanography at the University of Miami.

We report from Atlantic City, N.J., on the aftermath of superstorm Sandy and the beginnings of clean up efforts on the barrier island. In the nearby town of Longport, Sandy poured straight through the multi-million dollar oceanfront homes. Casinos in Atlantic City have been closed down since Sunday, with no word yet on when they might reopen. And people who obeyed the order to evacuate the island are still not being allowed back.

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ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

I'm Audie Cornish. And we begin this hour with Sandy by the numbers. At least 39 people on the East Coast have died, as a result of the massive storm.

SIEGEL: Sixty-nine are dead in the Caribbean.

CORNISH: Eight-point two million people, in the U.S., are without power.

SIEGEL: And while it's too early for an accurate tally, insured losses alone are estimated at 5- to $10 billion.

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Two straight days makes this the worst weather-related closure of the New York Stock Exchange since 1888. There was a monstrous snowstorm in March of that year, drifts of over 40 feet. You know what was also happening right about the same time? The American Arithmometer Company started up in St. Louis. It went on to sell the device that its founding Vice President William Seward Burroughs invented - the adding machine, which raises this question for me.

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ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

And I'm Audie Cornish.

Looming over the recovery from Super Storm Sandy is what to do about next Tuesday's election? The prospect that some voters could still be displaced or without power a week from today has election officials trying to come up with alternative plans.

It even has some people talking about the highly unusual step of delaying the vote, as NPR's Pam Fessler reports.

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In lower Manhattan, the New York Stock Exchange was closed yesterday. It's closed again today, slated to reopen tomorrow. More on that coming up. But Wall Street is not the only industry in lower Manhattan facing trouble from the hurricane.

Zoe Chace of NPR's Planet Money team has been getting a look around.

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Homeowners, businesses, and insurance companies are still assessing the damage from the storm in much of the eastern U.S. But some early estimates are in.

And as NPR's Yuki Noguchi reports, Hurricane Sandy inflicted heavy economic damage.

The power was still out in northern New Jersey on Tuesday. Floodwaters from Sandy trapped people in their homes and spread debris over a large area.

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ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

And I'm Audie Cornish.

Sandy has spoken. Over the past 24 hours, the storm has swamped vast sections of the Jersey shore, crippled much of New York City and left more than 8 million Americans in the dark.

As this long election comes to end, Superstorm Sandy is offering a chance for President Obama to showcase his leadership skills one last time.

For Obama, this campaign has truly been a fight against the elements: a painfully slow economic recovery and a political landscape in which the Republicans swept the table just two years ago. The Obama campaign, with its trademark discipline and meticulous organization, set out to overcome these obstacles.

But the long campaign has also put the spotlight on features of Obama's own personality and performance.