Election, part 521

In case anyone is still wondering:

1. Coleman and Franken are separated by less than 500 votes. Must.have.recount. Coleman is bleating some complete nonsense that the result is "too important" for a recount. And I thought Franken was the comedian in that race!
2. As the tabulation approaches the final few votes, Merkley pulled ahead of Smith by about 6000 votes, but the difference is now approaching 0.5% (it's 0.42% right now). The reason why this is significant is that only a few thousand votes ago, Smith was ahead by nearly 2%. As the remaining districts kept coming in, Merkley gradually pulled ahead. If the few remaining votes to be counted break the same way as the last couple of thousands, the margin may well pass the mandatory recount limit. I suppose a recount is likely nonetheless. Besides, both candidates pulled in just over 47%, so there is good reason to wonder about Smith's survival. Meanwhile, the count is stuck at 99%. The Oregonian has called the race for Merkley. I am not sure that this is definitive--since Oregon is mail-only election, the count won't be finalized at least for another couple of days. On the other hand, the separation is nearly double that of the Alaska Senate race and that one still quite a few votes to count.
3. With Merkley likely pulling this off, the count of Republican moderates in the Senate is shrinking to 4. Should Coleman lose, it will be down to 3, with two of them in Maine. Big Tent?
4. Last night several outlets--but not NYT--declared both Georgia presidential count and Senate race as Republican victories. But, not so fast... Both races had Republicans over 56% with supposedly over 99% of precincts counted. Not so fast! TPM followed AP in reporting that early voting results from the Atlanta area were not included in the totals. Oops! The count went from 99% yesterday to 96% tonight. As further numbers came in, the Republican totals dropped precipitously toward 50%. The presidential race has now been called--the actual split is not important, only the plurality is needed to carry the state. Not so for the Senate--Chambliss is sitting (and has been all day) at 49.83%. Since it's below 50%, that points to a mandatory run-off (Georgia is a funny state). The question I have--and it was my guess last night, even before the story broke--is there a mandatory recount if someone is close to 50% in order to avoid a run-off, or does state law prefer a run-off to a recount? I doubt this is a trivial question.
5. Both Alaskan races appear to have tilted Republican, although the latest numbers I am looking at on the NYT tracker sit at 76% of precincts. Doesn't make much sense--others have it at 99%. I wonder why Alaska would be so slow--and I also wonder what Alaskans are thinking, voting for these two creeps. It does, however, explain Sarah Palin's "popularity" in the state. Apparently, corruption is a required event in this pageant. I wonder if it will be necessary to have Palin run for president in order to keep her from running for reelection in Alaska. Set phasers on stun.
6. Washington gubernatorial race was not close this time around. (Say good-bye to Rossi!) But one of the House races seems to be headed for a recount. Or maybe not.
7. Jean Schmidt won in Ohio. Sad. But, on the comedic note, we'll still have Mean Jean and Michelle Bachmann to kick around. With a relative paucity of Republican congressmen these days, do their chances for appearing on cable news shows increase?
8. The total presidential vote showed a higher percent turnout of registered voters (although some states also allow same-day registration) than the Nixon-Kennedy race. So much for the mandate argument from four years ago when Republicans kept claiming that Bush got the most votes of any presidential candidate in history. The talking heads are already whining that 52% is not a landslide and not a mandate. It's a slim margin. Yeah, and I am just as slim.
9. I've already heard two radio talk-show hosts claiming that "we're going to impeach [Obama]!" I kid you not! "Sore losers" does not begin to describe these idiots. Actually, Jay Severin's exact words appeared to be more scatological (not the "impeach" part).
10. Remember the debate kerfuffle on strategy vs. tactics?
    
11. Obama has a bigger lead in the still-unfinished North Carolina than McCain does in still-unfinished Missouri. It looks like the final electoral count will not stay at 349.
12. Indiana went against the polling trend and turned out for Obama. Florida and Ohio also beat the poll projections in his favor. NC and MO lived up to "too close to call" expectations. Interestingly, most of the final tallies across all states appeared to match closely the poll numbers for the trailing candidate. The winner in most states got more than projected. So much for the Rovian observation that Republicans always beat the projected poll numbers.
13. In case you missed it--Obama beat the Gore and Kerry numbers for the Jewish vote. Exit polls suggest 78%. It might actually be higher. This is after many right-of-center observers predicted the opposite and the McCain campaign and its satellites broke the bank on sending out fear-smears even in the last few days of the campaign. So there are several possibilities. Here are a couple: Obama's debate performance was sufficient to overcome some fears (at least, among Jewish voters); McCain lost all credibility on foreign policy by the end of the campaign; the projected right-shift never happened to begin with. Obama failed, however, to impress the French Jews. On a related note, Russian treasury bailed out a "Jewish banker" to the tune of $2 billion and "Germany’s parliament agreed on a resolution that calls anti-Semitism a 'problem in German society that still demands serious attention.'"I am still waiting for a Bill O'Reilly apology for anything and for the latest odds on a snowball in hell.