With 80% of the vote in, Merkley has closed the gap to 1200 votes. Lots of ballots left in Multnomah (Portland).
Our friend Kari is projecting Merk to win by 85,000 55,000 votes.
Update: Merkley has now pulled ahead by 400 votes. Still only 62% of the vote counted in Multnomah.
Later Update: The Oregonian has called it for the Merkster! Congratulations to Media Mezcla for providing the engine that powered this stunning win!
Kari is correct. I previously stated 65,000 victory, but I was using conservative estimates.
Let’s get Oregon won, concentrate on a big legal battle in Alaska, and win the recount in Minnesota. Then we can go to Georgia and push Martin accross the line (OK, this is a uphill battle, but please humor me).
Last I looked he’s opened about a 7,000 vote lead. Given where the votes are coming from I agree that he’ll win pretty decisively.
They must be weighing every ballot 3 times before counting it.
Great victory here, not just an extra Senate seat but a progressive who should have no problems holding the seat until retirement.
One more seat.
I hope we eek out at least one of GA, MN and AK. We need two to get EFCA passed.
we’ve officially taken 12 Senate seats, and get this: 10 of them are in states Obama won. The only ones that aren’t are Jon Tester in Montana, and that’s a state Obama lost by just 3%, and Claire McCaskill, where Obama lost by a fraction of a percent. Gone are the days of depending on deep South Senators to scrape their way to re-election while running away from their presidential candidate. We’re not going to end up in 2004 again (five open seats in the South plus endangered incumbent in South Dakota).
If we can nab Minnesota too then that’s one more.