Here is the best of what’s left:
Election Run-offs
- Georgia Senate: The run-off for Georgia Senate will take place on December 2nd. The only post-election poll on the campaign comes from Daily Kos / Research 2000, showing Republican Saxby Chambliss ahead 49%-46%. Turnout for the run-off will only be about 50%-60% November 4th levels. Also, it is unlikely that African-Americans, who were about two-thirds of Martin’s voters on November 4th, will turnout at such high levels. So, the odds do not favor us on this one.
However, Jim Martin’s Act Blue pages are hopping, I am still running Personal Paid Media for this campaign:
If you are running a Personal Paid Media campaign, or if you are simply interested in a form of search engine activism that is free, considering sending your ads to Saxby-Chambliss.com or embedding that website in a hyperlink whenever you write Saxby Chambliss. The site was created by a progressive activist who just noticed that Saxby Chambliss had left the URL wide open.
- Louisiana 4th: Louisiana run-off elections will take pace on December 7th, making this the closing event of the 2008 campaign season. The district is R+7, but Democrat Paul Carmouche leads Republican Republican John Fleming by 10% according to an internal poll. Fleming did release a counter-internal poll showing him up 5%, but it has a hilariously small sample size of 140, and a margin of error over 8%. This campaign is somewhere between a toss-up and leaning Democratic.
Election Recounts
- Minnesota Senate: Entering the recount, Republican incumbent Norm Coleman leads Al Franken by 206 votes. The vote will be certified on November 19th, and the recount will begin soon thereafter at 100+ sites across the state. Each campaign will have a lawyer at each site. After the recount, on December 16th, the canvassing board will begin to rule, one by one, on challenged ballots. Further, a fight over 461 disqualified absentee ballots in one county will go to court.
So, this one is going to take a while. Franken will likely gain votes in the recount, but finding 207 will be difficult. The fact is that it is better to be ahead than behind in this situation. WineRev has a complete breakdown of the timeline and key players.
- California 4th: Democrat Charlie Brown currently trails by 815 votes in this district. There are a few votes left to count, and a recount is also likely. However, the campaign is in a holding pattern until the first count is completed. This one looks unlikely.
- Ohio 15th: Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy currently trails by 149 votes, with provisional ballots pending. There are thousands of provisional ballots, which always favor Democrats, and two years ago Kilroy gained more than 150 votes in that phase of the counting. This one still seems like a toss-up.
Balance of Power
There are a few other House seats that some consider undecided, but which I did not list here. While some are still waiting on AK-AL, I’m calling it for the Republican incumbent Don Young. Also, some are waiting on the LA-02 runoff with William Jefferson, but I have no doubt he will win. Finally, others are waiting on VA-05, but Tom Perriello will win there.
Overall, this puts the balance of partisan power in the U.S. House at D 257-175 R, with three campaigns outstanding. Either D 259-176 R or D 258-177 R appears to be the most likely final outcome, given that Republicans are favored in CA-04, Democrats are favored in LA-04, and OH-15 really is a toss-up.
In the Senate, I didn’t list Alaska, but Mark Begich will win. This provides Democrats 56 seats plus Sanders and, as is appearing more likely all the time, plus Lieberman. Republicans right now only have 40 seats in the Senate, which is why I indicated last night that we are close to the point where Republicans don’t matter anymore. Even though such a sentence smacks of hubris, I mostly stand by that assessment. It is accurate to say that if Franken and Martin both win, then Republicans won’t really matter for pretty much all of 2009. So, we are close to the point where Republicans won’t matter for a little while.
In the Presidential election, Obama currently leads the popular vote 52.69% to 46.01%. His margin has been steadily increasing over the last nine days, and will continue to do so until the final numbers are certified later this month. Missouri’s eleven electoral votes are currently undecided, but Obama would need to make up 5,000 votes among provisional ballots. That seems unlikely, and the final electoral count will almost certainly be Obama 365-173 McCain.
That one electoral vote in Nebraska will really narrow down the final contestants for the Mac Book on Daily Kos’s election contest. I won’t be winning that, but I did win National Journal’s contest for bloggers. That’s something, I guess. Also, once final results are certified across all states, I will be interested to see how the various polling forecasting methodologies fared against one another. Specifically, I want to see how my method fared against fivethirtyeight and pollster.com. They both know more about polls and statistics than I do, but I wouldn’t count my method out before the final numbers are in. I’m pretty sure there was virtually no difference in average error.
CQ Politics also has a good rundown of campaigns that are still undecided. |