As we move further along from Election Day, we still have three outstanding Senate races.
In Alaska, convicted felon Ted Stevens (R) has fallen behind his Democratic opponent Mark Begich. At this point, the margin is about 900 votes with about 25,000 or so left to be counted. Begich seems to have a slight edge but there is considerable net debate over where the remaining votes will come from.
The votes are from absentee, early-voting and military ballots. The general wisdom had been that the ballots counted Wednesday and Thursday would be from pro Stevens areas and that the remaining ballots to be counted would thus be from pro Begich regions. But a list from the Alaska SoS seems to suggest otherwise (you can see a good map of what areas voted for each candidate at www.adn.com).
So while I still give Begich an edge at this point, I would not be shocked if the tide turns again and Stevens ends up ahead in the end. They have until November 19th to accept mail-in ballots so the final numbers probably won’t hit until the end of the month.
Regardless of who wins, the question then becomes whether or not it would be close enough for a recount. The law says a recount can take place if the margin is 0.5% or less, which would be around 1,000 votes or so. If it isn’t close enough, there could very well be court challenges of some kind. Should Stevens win, then we have all the issues of whether or not he would resign (if he did, there would be a special election later in 2009, possibly pitting Begich against Governor Palin).
So don’t count on this one being settled soon but we could have some idea before January 3rd, 2009. Right now, 2-1 edge for a Democratic pickup.
In Minnesota the ballots appear to have all been counted, or we think they have all been counted, as Republican Norm Coleman leads Democrat Al Franken by about 200 votes or so. It looks like this initial count will be certified sometime early next week.
Then of course we will certainly have a recount and probably a number of court battles which could lead to the Senate wrangling over the issue. The big question here is how the recount process will go. Coleman has taken the view that a recount should include those ballots included in the initial counting while Franken seems likely to push for the inclusion of as many new Democratic ballots as possible.
If Coleman’s view prevails, then it is likely he will win as recounts in Minnesota seldom shift more than a handful of votes. If the Franken view prevails, then he could pull ahead if enough new votes are found. I would tend to support the Coleman view that only those ballots included in the original count should be reviewed. These ballots *would* include ballots that there was some question about on Election Day but would not include completely new ballots never included in the original count.
Given the many open questions I’d have to put this at 50/50.
In Georgia we are headed for a December 2nd runoff between Republican Chambliss and Democrat Martin. Given that Chambliss led Martin by 3 points on Election Day, all he really needs to do is get a small portion of the votes that went to the Libertarian nominee, and I’d assume those voters would do no more than split evenly between the two.
Some argue that if President-Elect Obama decides to really make a push in the campaign, he could boost turnout among new and minority voters but I’d say that such an involvement would also boost turnout in the conservative community and thus balance things out.
Since Chambliss missed the 50% mark by just a handful of votes, and since the turnout is likely to favor more conservative voters, I’d make this a 2-1 edge for the Republican.
So in theor,y we could have anything from a 3-0 Democratic sweep (all pickups) to a 3-0 GOP sweep (all retentions). I seriously doubt we will see either though the GOP sweep is slightly more likely than a Dem one. My best guess is for one party to win 2 and the other to win 1 but I can’t say at this point which way it will go.