Congressional Elections Results Thread

[HuskyCaucasian]

In Alaska, Stevens is ahead by about 3300 votes with everything but Absentee/Provisional in. There are between 60K and 75K left to count. 15% of that is from Juneau apparently, where Begich won by a 2-1 margin. If there really are 9000 votes there, he could conceivably close the gap there and we could see a recount in Alaska too.

What In The Hell Happened in Alaska?

Although Ted Stevens holds a small lead in Alaska and is the favorite to retain his seat, the outcome is not as inevitable as it might appear to be. Stevens currently holds a lead of 3,353 votes, or about 1.5 percent of the votes tallied so far. But, there are quite a large number of ballots yet to count. According to Roll Call, these include "at least 40,000 absentee ballot, 9,000 early voting ballots, and an undetermined number of questionable ballots".

 

Indeed, it seems possible that the number of "questionable" ballots could be quite high. So far, about 220 thousand votes have been processed in Alaska. This compares with 313 thousand votes cast in 2004. After adding back in the roughly 50,000 absentee and early ballots that Roll Call accounts for, that would get us to 270 thousand ballots, or about a 14 percent drop from 2004. It seems unlikely that turnout would drop by 14 percent in Alaska given the presence of both a high-profile senate race and Sarah Palin at the top of the ticket.

 

But even if Begich were to make up ground and win a narrow victory, this would seem to represent a catastrophic failure of polling, as three polls conducted following the guilty verdict in Stevens' corruption trial had Begich leading by margins of 7, 8 and 22 points, respectively.

[DukeNukeEm]

I think the Democrats will take at least 1 out of the 3 remaining contested seats. There will be some serious shenanigans that go down in Minnesota and the more I read about it the more I have absolutely no clue how the Martin/Chambliss runoff will go.

 

Alaska is a crapshoot.

[HuskyCaucasian]

I think the Democrats will take at least 1 out of the 3 remaining contested seats. There will be some serious shenanigans that go down in Minnesota and the more I read about it the more I have absolutely no clue how the Martin/Chambliss runoff will go.

 

Alaska is a crapshoot.

I think the GOP will get MN and GA. MN is VERY close, but in the end I dont think a recount will be enough. As for GA, they wont have the Obama machine to get out the vote for Martin. But I might be wrong. Maybe they bring back the GA machine for a final push.

 

As for Alaska, I think Begich wins when all the votes are counted.

 

That will be a break down of:

Dem - 56

Rep - 42

Ind - 2 (Caucus for dems)

 

So, a 58 - 42 majority.

[Balta1701]

I think the GOP will get MN and GA. MN is VERY close, but in the end I dont think a recount will be enough. As for GA, they wont have the Obama machine to get out the vote for Martin. But I might be wrong. Maybe they bring back the GA machine for a final push.

I'm expecting in a couple of days to start receiving fundraising appeals for GA through the Obama list.

[southsider2k5]

I would keep this in mind when talking about the Absentee ballots. Most were probably filed before the Stevens ruling came out. He had a very sizable lead until his conviction. I would guess those ballots favor him.

[Balta1701]

I would keep this in mind when talking about the Absentee ballots. Most were probably filed before the Stevens ruling came out. He had a very sizable lead until his conviction. I would guess those ballots favor him.

Actually, I don' think the polling data shows that at all. It showed Stevens losing somewhere between narrowly and significantly for the last several months. I wonder if Stevens's all alaska ad buy last weekend really did make a difference.

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.pollster.com/flashcharts/scripts/javascript/loess.js">

[Rex Kickass]

Coleman's lead has been slashed in half since yesterday. It is now 337 votes. Apparently as they go through the provisionals and they recheck the numbers, we might see the lead further dwindle or potentially completely evaporate. That's a difference of 0.11%.

[HuskyCaucasian]

Didnt take long for ads to start running in the Georgia run off:

[Rex Kickass]

Merkley's lead is around 50,000 votes now in Oregon. Looks like he'll win that seat after all.

[HuskyCaucasian]

It is now 337 votes....That's a difference of 0.11%.

Every vote counts

[HuskyCaucasian]

Coleman's lead has been slashed in half since yesterday. It is now 337 votes. Apparently as they go through the provisionals and they recheck the numbers, we might see the lead further dwindle or potentially completely evaporate. That's a difference of 0.11%.

now, if Frankin takes the lead when 100% of all ballots are cast, I assume Coleman will tell the state to stop the recount? He said Frankin should. I hold him to the same standard.

 

FYI: down to 336 lead now (down one more vote)

Edited November 6, 2008 by Athomeboy_2000

[mr_genius]

That OR contest was one I had a feeling would go Dem. MN is in almost impossible to call, will come down to recount madness.

 

GA and AK still fairly safe for GOP, I just don't see the Dems taking either.

[BigSqwert]

After suggesting that Barack Obama had anti-American views in an exchange three weeks ago with MSNBC host Chris Matthews, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) told Politico Thursday that she was “extremely grateful that we have an African-American who has won this year.” She called his victory “a tremendous signal we sent.”

 

LINK

 

[Balta1701]

That OR contest was one I had a feeling would go Dem. MN is in almost impossible to call, will come down to recount madness.

 

GA and AK still fairly safe for GOP, I just don't see the Dems taking either.

Don't know if anyone's posted Silvers "What the Hell happened in Alaska"? yet but here it is.

Although Ted Stevens holds a small lead in Alaska and is the favorite to retain his seat, the outcome is not as inevitable as it might appear to be. Stevens currently holds a lead of 3,353 votes, or about 1.5 percent of the votes tallied so far. But, there are quite a large number of ballots yet to count. According to Roll Call, these include "at least 40,000 absentee ballot, 9,000 early voting ballots, and an undetermined number of questionable ballots".

 

Indeed, it seems possible that the number of "questionable" ballots could be quite high. So far, about 220 thousand votes have been processed in Alaska. This compares with 313 thousand votes cast in 2004. After adding back in the roughly 50,000 absentee and early ballots that Roll Call accounts for, that would get us to 270 thousand ballots, or about a 14 percent drop from 2004. It seems unlikely that turnout would drop by 14 percent in Alaska given the presence of both a high-profile senate race and Sarah Palin at the top of the ticket.

 

But even if Begich were to make up ground and win a narrow victory, this would seem to represent a catastrophic failure of polling, as three polls conducted following the guilty verdict in Stevens' corruption trial had Begich leading by margins of 7, 8 and 22 points, respectively.

 

The emerging conventional wisdom is that there was some sort of a Bradley Effect in this contest -- voters told pollsters that they weren't about to vote for that rascal Ted Stevens, when in fact they were perfectly happy to. Convicted felons are the new black, it would seem.

 

The problem with this theory is that the polling failures in Alaska weren't unique to Stevens. They also applied to the presidential race, as well as Alaska's at-large House seat. In each case, the Republican outperformed his pre-election polling by margins ranging from 12 to 14 points:

 

...

Read the rest. That's one confusing slowly melting state.

[lostfan]

LINK

Translation: "I realize I f***ed up sooooooooooooo bad and wish I could undo what I said"

[mr_genius]

Don't know if anyone's posted Silvers "What the Hell happened in Alaska"? yet but here it is.

 

Read the rest. That's one confusing slowly melting state.

 

I think the 'Bradley' effect could be true here, people just didn't want to admit to voting for a felon to pollsters. Palin is popular there, she can bring in votes. I'm not buying the 'voter irregularaties, stolen election, conspiracy'. It's one the Dems don't get, that pretty much the story.

 

I've been reading the comments and people seem to think Palin is about to elect herself to the Senate. Palin can't name a full replacement if Stevens is ousted from the Senate. She names a temporary one, there is a special election after that. Which a Republican will be heavily favored to win

Edited November 6, 2008 by mr_genius

[Balta1701]

I think the 'Bradley' effect could be true here, people just didn't want to admit to voting for a felon to pollsters. Palin is popular there, she can bring in votes. I'm not buying the 'voter irregularaties, stolen election, conspiracy'. It's one the Dems don't get, that pretty much the story.

Well, on the "Voter irregularities" part, it sounds like there's just a lot of counting that still needs to be done, probably including a bunch of provisional ballots, and right now we just don't have the numbers on those. So I wouldn't say stolen, especially since all of them are following the same trend (try to steal 4 elections and only succeed at one of them?).

 

But yeah, the reverse bradley thing might well mean something laso.

[Balta1701]

 

Yummy.

[bmags]

I would take fries over bacon any day

[Rex Kickass]

The gap between Coleman and Franken is now down to 240 votes.

[EvilMonkey]

The gap between Coleman and Franken is now down to 240 votes.

yeah, how many more times are they going tohave to recount those votes to make up the difference there?

[HuskyCaucasian]

yeah, how many more times are they going tohave to recount those votes to make up the difference there?

they havent even started to recount yet. These are still votes coming in.

[Rex Kickass]

yeah, how many more times are they going tohave to recount those votes to make up the difference there?

 

Actually, this is just proofing of vote counts. They actually found one precinct where the number of Senate votes cast to the number assigned to actual candidates was off by exactly 100 votes. Turns out that a poll counter accidentally wrote 24 next to Franken instead of 124.

 

I have a feeling that with a hand recount like Minnesota has that there might actually be a switch in the lead because of the way Minnesota does its vote. Votes are done by optical scan there IIRC and if someone did not properly fill in the circle or placed a checkmark instead of an X, the vote may not have been counted by the scanning machines. Apparently the estimates are that 2 in 1000 ballots may have suffered this problem (sort of the average for elections in MN) which would lead to as many 6000 spoiled ballots which have to be individually examined to represent clear intent of voters.

 

Alaska, however, is where I would look for shenanigans.

 

You've got the governor of the state on a ticket, record early voting in the state and turnout decreased 11% from 2004? According to what I understand, turnout for this election was lower than any other Presidential election in Alaska's history.

[Reddy]

my theory on alaska is simple. they called the race for obama before their polls closed. so i will guarantee you people went home and didn't vote. what's the point? yeah, congressional races, but i can see people just not giving a s*** after hearing mccain lost or, in the case of obama, not feeling like they need to vote anymore and assuming since all the polling had begich up by a lot that it didn't matter.

[Balta1701]

my theory on alaska is simple. they called the race for obama before their polls closed. so i will guarantee you people went home and didn't vote. what's the point? yeah, congressional races, but i can see people just not giving a s*** after hearing mccain lost or, in the case of obama, not feeling like they need to vote anymore and assuming since all the polling had begich up by a lot that it didn't matter.

Then why is that effect so much larger in Alaska than in Hawaii?