I bring good news and more good news on the Senate front, where the dreams of Harry Reid of a filibuster-proof majority got smashed against the rocks of reality:
Item #1 – Saxby Chambliss has won his runoff rather handily. At the point AP finally called the race at approximately 7:58 pm (my time, of course), the Georgia Secretary of State site had Chambliss up 882,385-570,598 (60.7%-39.3%) with 71% of the precincts reporting.
Item #2 – The semi-official Norm Coleman lead in Minnesota, taking the official pre-recount margin of Coleman +215 and the net Coleman +88 in the recounted precincts (taking the difference of Al Franken’s pre-recount 2,623-vote lead and Franken’s post-recount 2,535-vote lead among the recounted ballots), is 303. The Minnesota Secretary of State site states that as of 8 pm, 95.30% of the precincts and 92.69% of the ballots have been recounted. According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, which has Coleman up by the same 303, there are 8% of the precincts in Hennepin County (with 7% of the ballots cast in the county) that have yet to finish recounting, with the counties of Rock, Scott, Winona and Wright beginning their recounts tomorrow.
Before we start popping the corks off the champagne for Coleman, however, those totals do not include 3,093 ballots challenged by the Coleman campaign or 2,910 ballots challenged by the Franken campaign. Those will not be judged by the State Canvassing Board until December 16.
It’s encouraging, though, that Republicans have to resort to spreading the “good news” that their recent defeat isn’t quite as bad.
It was nice meeting you, Steve.
With the exception of Winona, these were all big for Coleman. total Coleman advanatage in the 4 counties was about 26.5K. This explains the “odd” numbers on the SOS site.