CO-Sen: Denver Post Calls It For Bennet (And Other Updates)

• CO-Sen: This isn’t an official call from the AP or CNN, but the Denver Post (who you would think would know their state well enough to know the score) has decided that Michael Bennet is the victor in Colorado. No couching, as their article is titled “Bennet Wins in Senate Race;” you can’t lay it on the line any more than that. Their rationale: he leads by 7,000 votes with 30,000 remaining to be counted in dirty hippie stronghold Boulder County.

• WA-Sen: While the Seattle Times doesn’t sound as fully confident as the Denver Post, they also make it sound like Patty Murray is on her way to reelection. Their rationale: more than one-third of the uncounted votes statewide are found in King County, which of course is the state’s Democratic base and where she’s getting 62% currently.

• WI-Sen?: Pundits (or at least William Kristol, known for his wishful thinking) seem to be taking the wrong message from this Russ Feingold line at the end of his concession speech last night: “It’s on to our next adventure. It’s on to 2012! Forward!” To them, that means that Feingold will be mounting a quixotic primary challenge to Barack Obama. Um, we’re likely to see a Herb Kohl retirement in 2012. Maybe Feingold is likely to run for the other Wisconsin Senate seat? (Taking a page from Washington’s Slade Gorton, who lost in 1986 and resurfaced in 1988. Any other Senators anyone out there can think of who did that?)

• MN-Gov: It must seem like Groundhog Day for Minnesotans, who are poised for another recount nightmare as the election lawyers descend like locusts. With only 19 precincts remaining to count, Mark Dayton’s lead over Tom Emmer is 0.43%, which is below the 0.5% bar where an automatic recount is triggered.

• Polltopia: So is the cycle where bullshit finally gets called on Rasmussen? Nate Silver made the case last night, observing that of the 100 polls released in the final 21 days of the campaign, 70-75% overstated Republican support, off by an average 3-4 points. Taegan Goddard also chips in singling out its final HI-Sen poll, which was off by only 38 points on the final margin of victory for Dan Inouye.

• Trivia: Would you believe that the Democratic freshman class is only in the single digits? There are 9 freshmen: Terri Sewell (AL-07), Karen Bass (CA-33), John Carney (DE-AL), Frederica Wilson (FL-17), Colleen Hanabusa (HI-01), Cedric Richmond (LA-02), Bill Keating (MA-10), Hansen Clarke (MI-13), and David Cicilline (RI-01). Remarkably, only two of them are straight white guys!

• CA-11: This race has had some ups and downs today: The Stockton Record (the local, well, paper of record) was initially running a story stating that Jerry McNerney had won his race, after having trailed all of last night to David Harmer. They’ve pulled back on that, merely saying it’s “too close to call,” but the hard data is that McNerney now has a 121-vote lead over Harmer, with 100% of precincts reporting. I’d imagine this one will be heading for a recount!

250 thoughts on “CO-Sen: Denver Post Calls It For Bennet (And Other Updates)”

  7. Ben Chandler

    Ed Perlmutter, who allegedly did a cartwheel (video please!?)

    HARRY REID, who won with 50.2% of the vote

    Shumlin, for smoking Dubie

    Sanford Bishop, who won at the last minute

    Michael Bennet

    Linda Greenstein, for winning a NJ-St. Sen. special election and increasing our majority there by 1.

  8. Won as a write-in candidate then resigned and ran in the election triggered by his resignation and won. But I don’t think that’s the same thing.

  9. If current results hold, the House will be tied 30-30 and the Senate will be deadlocked 15-15.  This may be the first time in history that this has happened in any state.

    Before the election, Democrats had 3 seats to spare in the Senate and 6 in the House.

    In the Senate, Democrats have already lost two seats, and could lose one more in Clackamas County. In Senate District 3, Sen. Alan Bates, D-Ashland, has lost to Republican challenger Dave Dotterrer. And in Senate District 26, Chuck Thomsen beat Democrat Brent Barton for the seat being vacated by Rick Metsger, D-Welches.

    In Senate District 20, Sen. Martha Schrader was trailing Alan Olsen by 300 votes.  

    In the House, Democrats look to have lost six seats. The race to watch here is House District 37 in Clackamas County, where Republican Julie Parrish leads Democrat Will Rasmussen by 500 votes. Outgoing Rep. Scott Bruun holds the seat, and Republicans need to keep it in order to tie the chamber.  

    http://www.oregonlive.com/poli…

    Link to results:

    http://gov.oregonlive.com/elec…

    When the Oregon State Senate was tied previously, they entered into a power-sharing agreement:

    The three major decisions resolved last were:

    * Which party would claim the presidency? Democrats won, since one of their own hadn’t been president since they lost their majority in 1995. And they had the votes to block any Republican nominee nominee n. 1) a person or entity who is requested or named to act for another, such as an agent or trustee. 2) a potential successor to another’s rights under a contract. .

    * Which party would claim the co-chairmanship of the legislature’s budget committee? Under the draft agreement, it would have gone to a Republican because the presidency went to a Democrat. But Clarno says Republicans concluded they wanted the three subcommittee chairmanships more-if the right Democrat became co-chairman.

    * Which party would head each of 10 policy committees with equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans as members? Republicans chose first and picked the judiciary committeeJudiciary Committee may refer to:

    U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary

    U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary

    Democrats chose the committee assigned to overhaul Oregon’s public pension system and reduce its unfunded liabilities. And so on, until the list was done.

    http://www.thefreelibrary.com/…

    I don’t see anything about how they break ties.  It is interesting how many legislatures have an even number of members.  Just going to an odd number would avoid all of this.

  11. Does anyone have an opinion if anybody who retired would have held the seat the vacated. I was thinking about Arkansas and Tennessee along with Elsworth and Melacnon to try and figure if they would have won reelection had they campaigned. Any ideas?

    Dem-TX13-22-male

  12. Minnesota’s Hubert Humphrey served in the senate until LBJ picked for vice president. After losing the presidential race in 1968, he bounced back to win two more senate races in 1970 and 1976, before passing away in 1978.

  13. do any of you know where i can look up just the raw numbers from last nights election(no analysis needed, just names, district numbers, and vote totals)? thank you all

  14. per Wikipedia, if accurate

    If all the states (and in the case of the Presidency, the District of Columbia) voted exactly along the partisan lines prescribed by the PVIs below, and using the present districts and their respective PVIs, as of May 2010:

    # the Senate would have a Republican majority, 54-46

    # the House would have a Republican majority, 234-201 with 9 toss-ups (i.e., even PVI, but 234 seats is enough for a majority without the toss-ups)

  15. Looks like Richard Pan (D) has picked up this traditionally Republican seat in his open seat race against Andy Pugno (R), known to us as the guy who basically wrote Prop. 8 to hate on gay people.

    So some good news there, looks like even in the red areas of Sacramento, they didn’t appreciate Pugno’s gay-bashing ways.

  17. With all but 1 very small precinct (33 reg voters) Dayton leads by 8853 votes (.42%). Automatic recount territory but the margin is big enough that the final result won’t change. There are no provisional ballots or outstanding absentees so this will be the final number.

    One other small bit of good news, all the other statewide offices had their Democratic incumbents re-elected.  

  19. Now Maine is going to learn why the shouldn’t election Republicans to statewide office.

    Surely the Tea Party will still have this type of influence in primary elections within the republican party.  If this is the case, Goodbye Snowe and Collins, hello next democratic senators from Maine.

  20. Most polls overestimated the GOP vote in Senate races, and the national popular vote more clearly reflected the findings of those who call landlines and cellphones and not just landlines.

    Rasmussen was particularly bad – I think this election is going to hurt his outfits reputation a bit.

    He missed NV, CO, PA, CA by quite a bit. To say nothing of that ridiculous Hawaii poll.

    PPP also had some problems, which again I think can be explained by cell phones.

  22. was seeing Bennet win.  As I turned on CNN about 5:30 ET, one of their reporters was talking about conversations with both candidates.  Bennet’s sum and substance was that he was going to bust his ass campaigning until the very last second.  Buck’s was that he was going to work on his victory speech.  Real silver lining in a bad night.

    I was once part of the chorus that criticized the Bennet selection.  Boy was I wrong.

  25. There are thousands of absentee and provisional ballots to be counted, and nobody knows how many because the district has little pieces of several counties and the ballots within the counties are not sorted by district.  I expect counting not to finish until at least Friday.  Then we will enter re-count land.  

    Holding my breath for Jerry.    

  27. Of the three tossups, the Dem leads narrowly in SD-60 and the Rep leads narrowly in SD-07. The tiebreaker is SD-37 but a tiny Dem lead has turned into a 52-48 GOP lead with 19% of the vote remaining. That tiny seat could hold the future of upstate NY Democrats in its hands…

  29. so happy my ballot is turning out wrong. Turns out an “optimists” is going to be the winner of babka. I’m happy. I was so wrong with Nevada. Adleft, you are the BEST as is Ralston. The polls are wrong theory sounded lame to us out of staters but it was VERY right and I am SOOOO happy about it.  

  30. Heading into Election Day 2010, Rasmussen Reports polling showed a huge lead for Republicans on the Generic Congressional Ballot that accurately projected the historic gains of more than 60 seats in the House of Representatives.

    Doesn’t mention that his 12 point final generic was 5 points off.  

    Speaking of which, has anyone heard from Frank Newport?

Comments are closed.