5 Counties to Watch in the Battle for the Senate

As the votes start trickling in, the returns in individual counties can provide insight as to which party could ultimately claim victory. While Bloomberg Politics will be monitoring returns in ALL of the counties in key Senate races to determine if the candidates are hitting the targets they need for statewide victory, there are some so-called swing counties that are worth watching and that carry added symbolic significance because of heir history of voting in line with statewide averages. Here's a look at five of them:

New Hampshire has 10 counties, though it reports election results by municipality. Rochester, in southeastern New Hampshire on the state's border with Maine, came within a point of matching the 2012 statewide percentages of Obama and Democrat Maggie Hassan, who was elected governor that year.