So What’d We Win? (Updated)

Alright, one more post before I conk out for good.

As far as the House goes, what exactly did we win last night? Well, let’s start by checking in with what we lost:

  • FL-16 (Tim Mahoney)
  • KS-02 (Nancy Boyda)
  • LA-06 (Don Cazayoux)
  • TX-22 (Nick Lampson)

And what did we pick up? Here’s what we know for sure — 21 23 24 seats, by my best count:

  • AL-02 (Bobby Bright)
  • AZ-01 (Ann Kirkpatrick)
  • CO-04 (Betsy Markey)
  • CT-04 (Jim Himes)
  • FL-08 (Alan Grayson)
  • FL-24 (Suzanne Kosmas)
  • ID-01 (Walt Minnick)
  • IL-11 (Debbie Halvorson)
  • MD-01 (Frank Kratovil)
  • MI-07 (Mark Schauer)
  • MI-09 (Gary Peters)
  • NC-08 (Larry Kissell)
  • NJ-03 (John Adler)
  • NM-01 (Martin Heinrich)
  • NM-02 (Harry Teague)
  • NV-03 (Dina Titus)
  • NY-13 (Mike McMahon)
  • NY-25 (Dan Maffei)
  • NY-29 (Eric Massa)
  • OH-01 (Steve Driehaus)
  • OH-16 (John Boccieri)
  • PA-03 (Kathy Dahlkemper)
  • VA-02 (Glenn Nye)
  • VA-11 (Gerry Connolly)

And what’s still up for grabs? We’re currently sitting on leads in the following districts:

  • ID-01 (Walt Minnick): With 90% of precincts reporting at the time of this writing, Minnick leads GOP Rep. Bill “Brain Fade” Sali by 4300 votes. Some of the outstanding precincts should add to Sali’s total (but not all), so this race is still way too close to call. UPDATE: 95% of precincts are now in, and Minnick is up by 4363 votes. The remaining votes are from Bonner County (where Minnick is leading by 54-46) and Canyon County, a more populous area where Sali is leading by 54-46. Bonner has reported 52% of its vote, while Canyon only has 11% more to go. Looks like Minnick may just pull this off. (LATER UPDATE: Walt Minnick, you magnificent bastard, you did it!)
  • MD-01 (Frank Kratovil): With 100% reporting, Kratovil leads Club For Growth stooge Andy Harris by nearly 1000 votes. No one’s making a call here yet, but I’d be surprised if there are enough outstanding votes floating around that would tip the outcome here.
  • VA-05 (Tom Perriello): In what could be the biggest shocker of the night, Democrat Tom Perriello is leading GOP Rep. Virgil Goode by over 1657 votes with only one precinct outstanding according to the VA SBoE. (LATE UPDATE: The VA SBoE now says the Goode is ahead by six votes.)

What else has yet to be called?

  • CA-04 (Charlie Brown): With 100% of precincts in, carpetbagging blockhead Tom McClintock is leading Charlie Brown by 451 votes. It seems pretty cruel, but it looks like Brown might not get a chance to kick that football, after all.
  • CA-50 (Nick Leibham): With 63% of precincts reporting, GOP Rep. Brian Bilbray leads Democrat Nick Leibham by 50-46 here. (Update: Bilbray wins.)
  • LA-02 (Bill Jefferson): Democratic crumb-bum Bill Jefferson will face a December general election against Republican Anh Cao.
  • LA-04 (Paul Carmouche): Democrat Paul Carmouche won the Democratic primary runoff here, and will face Republican physician John Fleming in the December general election. This one could be a chance to avenge Don Cazayoux.
  • NJ-03 (John Adler): This race was actually called for Adler by CNN earlier in the night (after an extremely bleak start) and Adler declared victory, but now CNN has moved it back into the too close to call column. Myers leads by about 1700 votes with 93% of precincts reporting. (LATE UPDATE: Adler wins.)
  • OH-15 (Mary Jo Kilroy): CNN and the AP have moved this race back into the undecided column.
  • SC-01 (Linda Ketner): GOP Rep. Henry Brown is currently leading Democrat Linda Ketner by 53-47 here, and CNN has called this race for Brown. But 26% of precincts are outstanding, and they’re all in Charleston County, where Ketner is leading Brown by a 59-41 margin. The Ketner campaign is not yet conceding, believing that they still have a chance at eeking out a win here, based in part on 35,000 absentee ballots from Charleston that have yet to be counted. (Update: The bad guys win big.)
  • WA-08 (Darcy Burner): With 39% of precincts reporting, Darcy leads Reichert by a mere 60 votes here.

101 thoughts on “So What’d We Win? (Updated)”

  1. The last thing I saw was the Dem trailing by 1500 with 93% reporting. Any other updates out there? It’s interesting that, bar the New York seats, everyone (both Dem and Rep) who had a rematch went down (we’ll see how CA-04 goes though).

    By the way, thanks to you all for all of the had work on this site over the past two years. SSP quickly became indispensable over the election season. Onwards to 2010!!

  2. In OH-15, at this moment, the Ohio Secretary of State’s website is reporting that Stivers has 123,322 votes and Kilroy has 123,001.

    I am trying to get a reliable count on the number of provisional ballots that have yet to be counted.

    What I don’t understand is why the AP (and the Columbus Dogpatch) are reporting this race as a win for Stivers (by a large margin!) I wonder where they got their numbers?

    The count will not be final until the provos are counted and that won’t be for about two weeks.

    For example: registered voters who moved prior to the election without updating their registration, can cast provisional ballots on election day and if they didn’t have any ID with them yesterday, they have ten days to go into the BOE and establish their new residency. Some provos will get rejected, others will be counted without further action by the voter.

    So this doesn’t seem to be over (to me, anyway.)

    Interesting: in 2004, 218,000 Ohio voters but the The Shrub back in the White House. Yesterday (also prior to provos being counted) Barack was ahead by about 203,000 in Ohio…

  3. I’m still rather down (though I’m extremly glad to see Obama won the presidency).

    In a way, the GOP actually pulled it off, and energized their base… however slim that base is, the base is still the base.  They managed to use that to hold off a lot of take over attempts we had on various seats of congress…

    Sigh, I guess I can never get over the fact that AK maintained the status quo, and CA banned gay marriage.

  5. A good night’s sleep makes me feel better.  I was disappointed last night too….

    I figure the outstanding races go 50/50 to each party, so we should reach 20.  

    I’m one of those people who is scared of total Democrat control, so the rationale seems reasonable.  Unfortunately, the Repubs that seem to have gotten saved are ones I could do without.

    And the Senate seats, I’m surprised but still think the Oregon and Alaska races go Dem and Geoorgia is a runoff (prob Repub though) and MN who knows, maybe it will end in a tie.

  6. But a gain of 48 seats in a two cycle period while not losing a single incumbent or incumbent’s seat from what we were clinging onto in the 108th congress really isn’t anything to kill ourselves over.  It looks like that net gain should end up over 50 at least.

    I don’t think this ended up being a wave as much as it was us picking up the leftover bits of the last wave with a little help from the O-man.

    While our performance certainly wasn’t fantastic, the fact of the matter is (and say it with me now) WE DID GOOD!!

  8. That’s how many votes now separate Franken and Coleman. Votes are still coming from somewhere, perhaps absentees or provisionals.

  9. It is far too early to write off Charlie Brown yet … while they are reporting 100% of the precincts in, that is deceptive. In California, mail in ballots continue to get counted and added to the totals for several days…. there are reported to be at least 2,000,000 outstanding mail ballots statewide (no idea what that means for the number of such ballots in this district), as well as provisional ballots … with such a slim margin, it is very conceivable that this race could still flip.

    This is the reason most news sources have held off calling the Prop 8 referendum — there is a history in California of this large number of late counted ballots affecting races (remember the primary, when Obama picked up almost 2% over the original count when all these were counted in the day/weeks after the election).

  11. It would appear at this moment that we have lost the Indiana state house in an all important year and re-districting coming up in 2010. From what I have found the make-up of the house currently is 50D-49R with one too close too call, with an R leading it. There are two other Republican won districts that that will be headed off to a recount but unlikely to switch so it appears we will have a 50-50 split in the state house.

  12. What’s going on with Virgil Goode’s race? The AP numbers that everyone was using showed Perriello ahead, but now the VA elections site has different numbers (Perriello lost votes)?

  13. They were good for the two special elections, but they were nowhere close on a lot of races they polled.  LA-06, are you kidding me?

  14. I have gone over my personal list of House seats and expected district generic partisan splits, and the pattern is painfully clear.  Only a very few Democratic House candidates successfully exceeded the generic split in their district- Markey, Teague, Kratovil, Dahlkemper (maybe), Grayson, Massa, McMahon.

    Candidates like Burner and Kilroy seem to be running under generic partisan split of their districts.  Also Madia probably, perhaps Seals, maybe Stender, and definitely Roggio and Bennett.

    Short analysis from looking at House, Senate, and state office results : no Obama coattails downticket.  Everyone downticket pretty much won or lost on their own.  We should talk to the people who promised us an Obama landslide and big transformation.

  16. but it went in the wrong direction.  it seemed we would have a minimum of 7 senate pickups with the potential of an additional 3 if we rode the wave.

    instead we picked up 5 and it’s very possible that that will be the most we get.

    in MN we are once again heartbroken.  the brutal vise of an active 3rd party that draws disproportionately from democrats and revulsion at negative ads keeps squeezing us and costing us victories that should be ours.  we DID net 2 leg seats last night and obama won big, but we were all a little sad last night.

  17. Which states did good, mediocre, and bad.  The states we did outstanding in, cleaning the slate with races we should have won…

    The “Gave us all they Could” States

    New York – NY-St.Senate, NY-13, NY-25, NY-29.

    Virginia – VA-Sen, VA-02, VA-05, VA-11.

    Michigan – MI-07, MI-09

    New Mexico – NM-Sen, NM-01, NM-02

    Colorado – CO-Sen, CO-04

    North Carolina – NC-Sen, NC-08

    Maryland – MD-01

    Alabama – AL-02

    Wisconsin – WI-St.Assembly

    Nevada – NV-St.Senate, NV-03

    Deleware – DE-St.House

    Connecticut – CT-04

    Any more that fit this category?  I think Obama-Biden performed better than Democrats usually do in these states.  

  20. The Anchorage Daily News website is reporting that there are still a lot of ballots left to count in the Stevens/Begich race

    With Stevens up by about 4,000 they tell us that:

    Still be be counted are roughly 40,000 absentee ballots, with more expected to arrive in the mail, as well as 9,000 uncounted early votes and thousands of questioned ballots. The state Elections Division has up to 15 days after the election to tally all the remaining ballots before finalizing the count.

    That’s a lot of votes out there is a close race… Stevens might still win, but no one should call this yet.

  21. 1. Which candidate are we toasting in the OR senate election this morning?

    2. Can Tyler Oakley spell irrational exuberance?

    The loss in CA-04 really hurt.

  22. Just about all Republican areas are in and huge chunks of votes left in the Dem areas. Merkley has already closed the gap to 12,000 and should take the lead soon.

  25. It seems that the states targeted heavily by Obama did show some signs of downballot benefit. Virginia is the obvious example, Connolly was going to win, but I never thought Nye could pull it off and Perriello had no business even being close. The same seems to go for NC. Hagan won by a much larger margin than I expected as did Kissell.

    Also NM (Heinrich and Teague), FL (Kosmas and Grayson), OH (Driehaus and Boccieri), MI (Schauer and Peters), and PA (Dahlkemper and Kanjo) showed signs of Obama helping out in congressional races.

    Even Dem base states like CT (Himes), MD (Kratovil) and NY (McMahon, Maffei, Massa) played into the trend – though Arcuri needs to not almost give me an election day heart attack. The two glaring exceptions were IL where I can’t for the life of me figure out why Seals lost by a worse margin than 2006, and MN.

    I think in some instances we may have been thinking a bit too ambitiously. – Shadegg, Buchanan, Souder, Scalise, Graves, Heller, Culberson, McCaul, and Captito won handily so really we had few genuine disappointments – (Berkowitz, Seals, Boyda, Cazayoux, Madia, Tinklenberg, Stender, and Kilroy)

    Palin also had obvious limited coattails in Alaska – Berkowitz lost by a margin that I thought he’d win by and Stevens appeared to have squeaked one out felony and all.

    Bottom line, it could have been better, but I think overall we did pretty well.

  26. Is Recruitment, Recruitment, Recruitment, Recruitment.  Our senate pickups came from where we sported the best of the best.  Our house pickups get a little more complicated than that, but we have to realize our opportunities and build on them looking toward 2010.  

  27. Obama’s coattails saved a bunch of Democrats that shouldn’t have been re-elected, and even helped us further extend our majorities, from 21-4 to 23-2 in the state Senate, and from 44-7 to 45-6 in the state House.  Republicans were expecting to at least pick up seats in the state House.

    All in all, the impression I get is that GOP turnout was just too high in a presidential election to let us take the kinds of districts we did in 2006.  A lot of weak targets have been revealed (Lundgren and Bilbray in California, Gerlach, Rogers in Alabama, Mario Diaz-Balart, McCotter, Terry, and Brown and Wilson in South Carolina), and all in all most of the pickups we’ve netted tonight should be safe, it doesn’t look like we’ll be facing a reverse landslide unless things go horribly wrong with Obama’s presidency.

  28. Merkley now within 6,187 with over half of the precincts in his two best counties, Multnomah and Lane, still to be counted.  This one is looking good.

  29. Was anyone aware that one might be close?  I sure wasn’t.

    CA-46

    69% of precincts reporting

    Calvert(Incumbent) 64,599 53%

    Hedrick 56,616 47%

  30. Its looking good for Kratovil. As far as absentee ballots go, 60% of them are from the Eastern Shore. Kratovil won every single county on the Eastern Shore often by more than ten points.

  31. 1. Do NOT underestimate the enemy.

    2. Do NOT underestimate the enemy, especially not the Republican Party.

    3. Do NOT underestimate the enemy, especially not the Republican Party, even if it’s just a bunch of crazed right-wing nuts.

    4. Do NOT underestimate the enemy, especially not the Republican Party, even if it’s just a bunch of crazed right-wing nuts, and even if it is backed into a corner.

    5. Do NOT underestimate the enemy, especially not the Republican Party, even if it’s just a bunch of crazed right-wing nuts, and even if it is backed into a corner and merely wielding a blade with seven felony counts layers of rust on it.

    6. Even the most undeserving candidates win, and even the most deserving candidates lose.

    7. (a good lesson) The Fifty State Strategy is a key to our electoral success.

  32. Basically Central Florida came through big at both the Presidential level and Congressional level (FL 8th and 24th were pickups).  

    South Florida was a success at the Presidential level and huge disappointment at the congressional level with no congressional pickups and the loss of FL-16.

    Some other shocking Presidential results were Duval County (Jacksonville) which was split nearly 50/50 Obama/McCain.  That is one of the more conservative big cities in the nation, so that was unexpected good news.

    The Florida House and Senate were disasters.  No change in the state Senate and 1 seat gain in the state House.  We should have done MUCH better.

  34. We should have picked up another 10-15 seats in the House.  I guess the positive way of looking at it would that the less we take away from Republicans this year, the less Republicans can take back in 2010.    

    1. I was a wave supporter and am extremely disappointed.

      What I think happened was this: The right saw that they were going to go down hard this election. In a shrewd move they forced McCain into a suicidal move that made Palin his VP in order to court the base in the conservative areas of the country and polarize voters. This caused us to win democratic areas by bigger margins but at the same time caused them to hold these conservative districts required to win 30-40 seats.  In essence it was a get out the vote effort.

      I think they accomplished what they set out to do, in this election; survive.  

  35. Okay, here are some possible targets, in my opinion:

    PA-06 (Gerlach): Gerlach only won by 4% against a candidate no one thought would even put up much of a fight.

    VA-01 (Wittman), VA-05 (Goode, if Periello doesn’t pull it off), VA-07 (Cantor): Obama did very well here, getting into the high 40s.

    VA-04 (Forbes), VA-10 (Wolf): Obama won these districts

    That’s not all, but just a couple I’ve noticed.

  36. Does anyone have any idea what is up in the Texas and Montana State Houses of Representatives?  

    The National Conference of State Legislatures reports that Montana was 49D/50R/1U pre-election, and is 50D/50R now.  

    It reports that Texas was 71D/77R and is now 74D/76R.  

    However the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee indicates that both results are in question and Texas may be tied.

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