Club for Growth

You are viewing the 2008 Election Results category

January 5, 2009

Minnesota Certifies Franken Victory in Senate Race

David Keating

Today the Minnesota Canvassing Board, which conducted the recount, certified Al Franken's victory over incumbent GOP Sen. Norm Coleman by 225 votes.

The Star Tribune reported this afternoon that "attorneys for Coleman said they would file a lawsuit within 24 hours.

"Minnesota law prohibits the state from issuing a certificate of election until such a court case is resolved, which, as of today, leaves Minnesota with a single senator as Congress prepares to convene Tuesday."

Despite today's well written though criticized Wall Street Journal editorial on the recount, I don't see the lawsuit changing the result.

The news account says Coleman seeks in part to include 654 more absentee ballots in the count. I grant that there was some funny business in the recount, but the most questionable call was a decision that netted Franken 37 votes. If Coleman were to win on that, and the 654 question, I don't see how he nets nearly 200 votes from the 654 he wants included in the count. Yes, it is possible, but it seems to me it's a real long shot.

The obvious issue, to me if not anyone else, is why absentee ballots were only checked so as to include more ballots. There is nothing wrong with that. If a ballot was validly cast, it should be counted. But this is selection bias in a process that is supposed to check the accuracy of the whole count.

To ensure that no bias creeps in, they should also check the validity of the absentee ballots that were counted too. The Franken campaign checked on those ballots that were rejected and got 933 included during the recount.

However it would seem likely that if election workers made mistakes so as to reject 933 improperly, then they also included some, perhaps a lot more, ballots improperly in the original count that were not cast properly. I'm not sure if this is even possible to do, even if everyone agreed it should be done. For all I know, the ballots may have been opened and counted long ago and there is no way to check it again.

This is a tough argument to make politically. But if the goal is to get a precise count under the rule of law, you can't just look at part of the picture. That introduces a bias in the results.

I grant that the whole process has taken a long time and that a check on all the absentee ballots would take even longer. However, there should not be any pretense that we have the right answer to the question of how many valid votes were case for each candidate?

The reality is that the election was effectively a tie. We will never know who really won, though I expect Franken will be the next senator.

Perhaps the two candidates should have just asked for a do over in the first place.

Posted at 6:22 PM, January 5, 2009 | Trackback | Print | #

December 18, 2008

Coleman Lead Dwindles to 43

David Keating

The Canvassing Board today heard Coleman's challenges to ballots and as the day wore on his lead shrunk to 43 votes, according to the Star Tribune.

No one knows where this will come out in the end because, in part, no one knows when it will end. The Coleman campaign says some ballots are being double counted and the Franken campaign says some absentee ballots were improperly rejected and should be included.

FiveThirtyEight.com made a very rough calculation of just the challenged ballot part of the process, and wrote that at the rate things were going, Coleman would win by one vote.

Posted at 5:06 PM, December 18, 2008 | Trackback | Print | #

December 16, 2008

Two Newspaper Surveys Show Franken Gains in Minnesota Recount

David Keating

The Star-Tribune reported today that it "performed its own analysis of the challenged ballots by relying on a virtual 'canvassing board' of more than 26,000 readers who examined at least some of them. There appeared to be widespread consensus that Franken won slightly more disputes than Coleman, enough to theoretically erase the incumbent's narrow lead by late Monday."

The newspaper published copies of the challenged ballots online and asked readers to analyze and decide how each ballot should be counted. It's unclear whether the process was infected by partisans in Franken's camp, but the report does appear to corroborate an Associated Press count of challenged ballots.

AP said it "found that among challenged ballots that easily could be assigned, Franken netted 200 more votes than Coleman."

The campaigns have withdrawn thousands of challenges, and now there appears to be under 1,500 ballots for the state Canvassing Board to review to determine voter intent. Coleman currently leads by 188 votes.

There is no official word yet on how the withdrawn challenged ballots break for either candidate.

The Canvassing Board began meeting at 12 noon CT to begin reviewing the remaining challenged ballots, and will start by reviewing the roughly 500 ballots challenged by the Franken campaign. When those are completed, the Board will review Coleman's challenges.

The Star Tribune also reports that [Coleman attorney Fritz Knaak] "said campaign officials believe 'a couple of hundred' votes from locations he didn't specify were mistakenly counted twice on Election Night. Local elected officials created those duplicates after originals were misfed or jammed into voting machines, he said."

Also, still to be resolved is the question on counting absentee ballots that were improperly rejected. The Minnesota Supreme Court will hear arguments on this issue Wednesday.

Posted at 1:06 PM, December 16, 2008 | Trackback | Print | #

December 12, 2008

Minnesota Recount Moves to Court

David Keating

What a wild day in Minnesota. It started off with the state Canvassing Board, which is in charge of the recount, asking counties to count absentee ballots that were improperly rejected. The Board didn't think it had authority to order the counties to do this, so they just voted to "ask" them to do it and file amended vote counts with the results from these ballots.

Then the Canvassing Board decided that the 133 missing ballots in a Franken-friendly precinct would be counted as if they never went missing.

All in all, not a good day for the Coleman camp.

The Star-Tribune reported this afternoon that "The [Coleman] campaign said that it feared what it called a chaotic 'Florida situation' and that it is likely to go to the [state Supreme C]ourt today."

The article also reports, "At issue is how county-level canvassing boards sort rejected absentee ballots. The Coleman campaign has contended there has been an inconsistent application.

"'We want to make very sure that what happens in Thief River is the same thing that happens in Eagan and everywhere else,' said Coleman attorney Fritz Knaak at a news conference this afternoon."

A state official estimated that about 1,600 absentee ballots were improperly rejected, but that is just a rough estimate.

No one knows how these ballots would break between the two candidates, but a poll cited by FiveThirtyEight.com indicated an 8 point margin for Franken among absentees, which if true for this group would translate into a gain of 128 votes, according to Nate Silver. I wouldn't read much into that poll and Nate Silver I think misleads readers about its significance. First of all the number of absentee voters sampled was less than 100, so the margin of error there is huge, an error of about plus or minus 10 percentage points. So that could mean a margin of between 2 points for Coleman or 18 for Franken 95 times out of 100.

Second, the poll had Franken up by a five point margin, and we know the final result came out to a virtual tie. So IF the poll had no margin of error other than the error in discerning the actual difference in the candidates, then Franken nets perhaps 50 votes from the absentees. I wouldn't bet anything on that.

Both campaigns withdrew more challenges, but 4,472 still remain to be reviewed by the Board, which is hoping the campaigns will cut the number to 1,000 or less.

The Star-Tribune currently pegs Coleman's lead at 192 votes, including the so-called 133 missing ballots.

Posted at 5:31 PM, December 12, 2008 | Trackback | Print | #

December 8, 2008

Democrats Hold 40 Seat House Majority

David Keating

Louisiana voters cast ballots Saturday for Republicans in the last two House races of 2008 and Friday Ohio finally finished counting votes in congressional district 15, awarding that seat to the Democrats.

Looking at the next Congress, it appears that Democrats will have 257 House seats compared to 178 for the Republicans. This means that if all representatives voted on a bill and all Republicans voted the same way, 40 Democrats would have to vote with the Republicans to pass a bill or defeat one. That is a very high hurdle, especially with a Democratic president.

Likewise, for Republicans to take control of the House, they would have to win a net of 40 seats or build a coalition majority with some Democrats, which is for now extremely unlikely.

This count is not yet official, as it awaits the final count in Louisiana 4, where Republican John Fleming appears to have won Saturday's contest by 356 votes.

In the Senate of course, Democrats are up to 58 seats with the Minnesota race still unresolved.

Posted at 11:23 AM, December 8, 2008 | Trackback | Print | #

Minnesota Senate Recount: Clear as Mud

David Keating

Minnesota finished recounting its ballots Friday, save for the 133 that most people thought went missing from a pro-Franken precinct earlier in the week.

In yet another twist to the recount, the Star-Tribune reported that "In the process of searching Friday for the Minneapolis ballots thought to be missing, officials rummaging through a supplies box spotted a plastic bag containing 12 uncounted absentee ballots. Those ballots, which weren't included in the recount figures, will be forwarded to the Canvassing Board for resolution."

The count now shows Coleman up by 192 votes.

But no one has any idea how this will turn out. The 192 figure assumes all challenges by each campaign will be upheld, which is absurd since nearly all of them will be dismissed.

If you ignore all the challenges, then Coleman would be up by 97 votes.

Franken's campaign claims they are now up by four votes, based on nonpublic information compiled by their campaign. They claim to have compiled how the local election judge initially ruled on a ballot before it was challenged. The theory is that the local judge almost always got it right. The problem with this data is pretty obvious, and we have no idea if it is a PR stunt or not.

Then there is the matter of whether another 500 to 1,000 ballots that were allegedly improperly rejected should be included, opened and counted.

Or what issues might be litigated.

And of course, the US Senate has the constitutional authority to decide who won.

Political (and baseball) statistics wiz Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com looked at all the scenarios about the recount and concluded "Minnesota's recount is a long way from over. If you put a gun to my head and asked me to predict the winner, I would tell you to shoot me."

Posted at 10:34 AM, December 8, 2008 | Trackback | Print | #

December 4, 2008

McClintock's Opponent Concedes in CA-4 Race

David Keating

Yesterday Democrat Charlie Brown conceded defeat in the California 4 race, which means no recount and Club for Growth PAC-endorsed candidate Tom McClintock will be sworn in next month.

We appreciate that Mr. Brown saved California taxpayers the expense of the recount and the graceful nature of his concession statement.

Posted at 11:18 AM, December 4, 2008 | Trackback | Print | #

133 Ballots Go Missing in Minnesota, or Not

David Keating

The latest twist in the Minnesota recount is that 133 ballots in a heavily Democratic precinct disappeared yesterday. Or maybe not. In any event, when they counted the votes the first time they got 133 more than they did on the recount. So either the recount is right or the original count is right.

It does look like 133 went missing. If they can't find them this raises an interesting question, which is which count do they take? No one knows of course, but the Franken campaign filed a protest.

It appears to cost Franken 46 votes, with the lower recount number.

An interesting aside, which is that of the 2,029 voters in the original count, an incredible 932 voters registered in person on Election Day.

You can read more at the Star-Tribune or Five Thirty Eight.com

Posted at 11:02 AM, December 4, 2008 | Trackback | Print | #

December 3, 2008

Franken Gains in Minnesota Senate Race

David Keating

Just when things seemed to be tilting in Sen. Norm Coleman's direction, things snapped back toward challenger Al Franken yesterday.

As reported by the Star-Tribune:

Franken unexpectedly picked up 37 votes due to a combined machine malfunction and human error on Election Day that left 171 Maplewood ballots safe, secure but uncounted until Tuesday's final day of recounting in Ramsey County. Secretary of State Mark Ritchie's office immediately asked county officials to explain what had happened, and U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman's campaign said it sent its own experts to Ramsey County to review the situation and said it was "skeptical about [the ballots'] sudden appearance."

The day's other news -- which Franken's campaign quickly described as a "breakthrough" -- came when Ritchie's office asked local election officials to examine an estimated 12,000 rejected absentee ballots and determine whether their rejection fell under one of four reasons for rejection defined in state law. The Secretary of State's office asked that ballots that were rejected for something other than the four legal reasons be placed into a so-called "fifth category." The fifth category, Ritchie's office said, could also include absentee ballots rejected for reasons that were "not based on factual information."

Franken's campaign has for quite some time been trying to drag rejected absentee ballots into the recount, so far without success.

In a press conference today, the Franken campaign claimed it now has a lead of 22 votes. The Star-Tribune newspaper reports a 295 vote lead for Coleman. I believe the difference is that the Franken campaign assumes all challenges to votes will be rejected, while the newspaper count does not count challenged ballots in either candidate's total. My guess is that the truth lies somewhere in between.

So what does all this mean?

The race is back in pure toss up status. If additional absentee ballots are counted, then perhaps Franken is a slight favorite.

Posted at 6:18 PM, December 3, 2008 | Trackback | Print | #

December 2, 2008

Chambliss Wins Georgia Senate Runoff

David Keating

Sen. Saxby Chambliss won his runoff election tonight by a 57% to 43% margin, which ensures that Democrats can not reach 60 Senate seats for the next Congress.

Thank you to all the Club for Growth members who donated to Saxby's runoff campaign through the Club for Growth PAC. Club members donated over $274,000 in under three weeks!

Posted at 10:14 PM, December 2, 2008 | Trackback | Print | #

More Evidence of a Coleman Win in Minnesota Senate Race

David Keating

Despite favoring Al Franken, stat geek Nate Silver of Five Thirty Eight.com crunched the numbers on the recount and finds only one scenario out of 8 where Franken might win, using various assumptions.

Now before you get too excited, this does NOT mean Coleman has a 7 in 8 chance of prevailing. Far from it.

First, all the models necessarily use assumptions, reasonable ones, but still the data still is subject to large errors compared to the Coleman lead.

As Silver notes, "Given the high degrees of uncertainty and ambiguity implied by the models, they would suggest that Franken has roughly speaking somewhere between a 25% chance and a 50% chance of overtaking Coleman depending on which model is selected."

Second, the model makes no assumption about the eventual outcome of the fight over absentee ballots. Silver writes that "If Franken is able to get such ballots counted -- and there is a strong chance that he will -- they will likely be worth a net of somewhere between 25 and 100 votes to him. In this eventuality, the race should probably be considered a toss-up."

Finally, this model does not project what the US Senate might do, as the final judge of elections. On this front, the news is not good as Franken's lawyer has been making a lot of noises about eventually going to the Senate. The Hill newspaper today reported that "Franken attorney Marc Elias made the case to reporters Monday that as many as 1,000 absentee ballots were improperly disqualified and that the Senate or the courts may need to step in to resolve the issue."

Personally, I don't think the Senate would reverse a final decision in Minnesota, though I admit it could attempt to do so. I think a more likely result, should Franken attempt such a maneuver, is that Barack Obama would say he thinks the Senate should respect the final decision of the State of Minnesota. It would avoid a bitter partisan dispute that would detract from his efforts to govern.

A footnote: As Sam Wang points out in his post "Ties, damned ties and statistics," the election was effectively tied. He takes two scenarios where a tie is assumed in his statistical model of running an election with about the same number of voters as the Minnesota Senate race, and crunches the numbers. In both cases, the model with a tie "assumed" would produce a larger margin of victory than any recounted number we've yet seen from Minnesota.

Posted at 4:07 PM, December 2, 2008 | Trackback | Print | #

December 1, 2008

Minnesota Senate Recount Now Tilts to GOP's Coleman

David Keating

The Star-Tribune reported late yesterday that "While a tiny margin [last count at 282] separates the candidates in the Minnesota U.S. Senate race, it is wide enough that Democrat Al Franken faces a daunting task in challenging votes to erase Sen. Norm Coleman's lead. . .

"To win his case before the state Canvassing Board, Franken must prevail on more than 6 percent of his challenges of Coleman votes even if Coleman fails to succeed on any of his challenges, a Star Tribune analysis shows."

The newspaper published a nice graphic showing in more detail the math behind the story.

Even Five Thirty Eight.com says "For now, however, the various iterations if the statistical process that we applied before now show Norm Coleman as the slight favorite, although his edge is small and might reverse itself if Franken is able to get discarded absentee ballots reconsidered."

However the election is hardly in the bag for Coleman, as not everything has been counted and there is a great deal of uncertainty about the quality of the challenges each campaign has made to various disputed ballots other than a lot of frivolous challenges have been made.

There are two other wild cards -- a possible court challenge of discarded absentee ballots and the possible intervention of the US Senate, which has ultimate jurisdiction in declaring what members to seat.

On that front, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) issued a statement that seems to indicate he is not afraid to decide the election. After Wednesday's decision on absentee ballots, Reid issued a statement that said "Today's decision by the Minnesota Canvassing Board not to count certain absentee ballots is cause for great concern." So it is possible that even if Minnesota decides certain ballots must not be counted under state law, that Harry Reid would apply his own standard.

Posted at 1:38 PM, December 1, 2008 | Trackback | Print | #

November 29, 2008

McClintock Wins in California 4

David Keating

California is very slow to count ballots and while it's not yet official, it appears that Club for Growth PAC-endorsed candidate Tom McClintock won his race for an open seat over Charlie Brown.

Every ballot has finally been counted and McClintock has a 1,576 vote lead. I very much doubt Brown can win a recount even though there are reportedly 15,000 undervotes in the district. Usually such ballots just indicate the voter skipped voting in that race and in cases where voter intent can be discerned I doubt there are enough ballots in that pool to change the result.

Posted at 4:58 PM, November 29, 2008 | Trackback | Print | #

November 26, 2008

Franken Rebuffed on Absentee Ballots

David Keating

The Star-Tribune reports that "The State Canvassing Board, a panel of five arbiters charged with determining the winner in the overtime election tussle between Republican incumbent Norm Coleman and Democratic rival Al Franken, unanimously voted this morning to deny the Franken campaign's request that rejected absentee ballots be included in the recount."

However, this is likely to end up in Court, which many members of the board encouraged.

If you are following the Minnesota Senate race recount, be sure to read John Fund's article in today's Wall Street Journal. As he writes, "If the strategy of adding previously rejected ballots to the Minnesota Senate recount is successful, a final outcome could be months away. In 1975, the U.S. Senate refused to accept New Hampshire's certification that Republican Louis Wyman had won by two votes. The seat was vacant for seven months, with the Senate debate spanning 100 hours and six unsuccessful attempts to break a filibuster and vote on who should be seated. The impasse ended only when a special election was agreed to, which was won by Democrat John Durkin.

"Given how critical Minnesota's election is for the outcome of filibusters, don't be surprised if this recount becomes 'Washington mean' when the Senate convenes in January."

Posted at 12:11 PM, November 26, 2008 | Trackback | Print | #

November 24, 2008

Coleman Lead Grows Slightly in Minnesota Recount

David Keating

The Minnesota recount continued over the weekend, with Coleman's lead increasing to 180 votes, according to the Star-Tribune tally. His lead had shrunk to about 120 votes a few days ago.

However, this is not a good indication of where the recount stands right now though it is obviously better to have a bigger lead rather than a smaller one.

There are 1982 challenged ballots, and no one has a good idea of how those votes might split, and there is no reason to assume that they will split more or less evenly between the candidates.

In many if not most cases, these 1982 votes were counted one way or another by local officials. If challenged, they are not counted at all until the state board can rule on them. We'd know a lot more if we knew how the local officials looked at them before they were challenged. I suspect in most cases, it will be an easy call on whether or how to count the ballot.

FiveThirtyEight.com analyzed the recount so far, and now predicts Franken will win the recount by 27 to 39 votes. While the math is impressive, the reality is that no one knows where this will wind up.

The Star-Tribune also notes that an added complicating factor is the dispute about "whether to reexamine thousands of rejected absentee ballots."

The only thing somewhat certain is that the Minnesota plans to finish by December 5.

Posted at 11:26 AM, November 24, 2008 | Trackback | Print | #

McClintock Surges in CA-4 Count

David Keating

California's glacial count of ballots picked up a bit on Friday, causing a surge in Club for Growth PAC-endorsed candidate Tom McClintock's lead to nearly 1,800 votes, "perhaps sealing victory," reported the Sacramento Bee newspaper Saturday.

McClintock's campaign blog posted this on Saturday:

More than 4/5 of the uncounted ballots in this race were announced today, boosting our lead to 1,793 votes, or 0.49 percent. There are less than 4,100 ballots yet to be counted – all from counties that we carried with between 51 and 53 percent – and Charlie Brown would need to receive 71.9 percent of the remaining ballots to overtake our current lead.

They are expecting the remaining ballots will be counted early this week.

McClintock hasn't claimed victory just yet, and Brown refuses to concede. In races as close as this one, California law requires that 10 percent of the ballots must be hand counted to verify the machine count. Still, 1,800 votes is a good lead, so we can all breathe pretty easily on this race.

Posted at 11:01 AM, November 24, 2008 | Trackback | Print | #

November 20, 2008

Minnesota Senate Ballots

Andrew Roth

Check out these contested ballots from the Minnesota Senate race between Senator Norm Coleman and Al Franken. I just have two words to say: "Lizard People".

Posted at 2:17 PM, November 20, 2008 | Trackback | Print | #

Coleman Lead Shrinks to 174

David Keating

The recount started yesterday in Minnesota and GOP Sen. Norm Coleman's 215 vote lead is down to 174, according to a Star-Tribune article this morning. 18% of the vote was recounted.

At this rate, Coleman would have a lead of about 5 votes when it's over. Of course, it's doubtful the recount would continue at this rate, but it is an amusing coincidence.

However, both candidate's camps challenged 269 ballots, so it's not clear what the count would be after those are resolved.

Posted at 10:06 AM, November 20, 2008 | Trackback | Print | #

November 19, 2008

Minnesota Recount Could Become Ugly

David Keating

The Star-Tribune reports that Al Franken's campaign went to court and won an order today that "Ramsey County officials must release to the campaign of Democratic Senate candidate Al Franken all written information it has on absentee ballots that were rejected or not counted."

You know where this is leading.

They are going to try to find people to say "I voted for Franken and it's unfair that my vote hasn't been counted."

It will be just a game to find 215 (the current Coleman lead) or more votes. Or as a back up, just generate an unbelievable amount of doubt on the validity of the recount so someone else can decide.

And who might that be?

Harry Reid, that's who.

Article I Section 5 of the Constitution says "Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections [and] Returns of its own Members."

So it is quite possible the real Franken campaign strategy is to kick the whole thing to the Senate, where he can be confident that the ballots will be counted the way he wants them counted.

That would be really ugly.

Posted at 6:24 PM, November 19, 2008 | Trackback | Print | #

Ted Stevens Loses Senate Seat

Andrew Roth

Here's the AP report.

That means the Democrats now have at least 58 Senate seats in the next Congress.

Posted at 10:09 AM, November 19, 2008 | Trackback | Print | #

November 13, 2008

McClintock Expands Lead in CA-4

David Keating

At least some good election news on this bad news day. Tom McClintock's lead expanded to 1,283 votes yesterday despite new counts in one of his worst areas.

According to a campaign blog post, "We estimate that there are still 8,600 ballots from counties where Brown has the lead and 33,900 ballots from counties where I have the lead yet to be counted."

Posted at 12:41 PM, November 13, 2008 | Trackback | Print | #

More Details on Alaska Senate Race

David Keating

By now you know that Stevens is behind by 814 votes.

The question is, can he come back?

Probably not, but I wouldn't rule it out completely. If I had to put odds on it, I'd want at least 20 to 1 odds to even think of making a bet on his win. InTrade has it at about 25 to 1.

What Stevens has to hope for is a stunning surge among late absentee ballots. According to the Alaska Division of Elections, the ballots counted yesterday were those that arrived by Election Day.

Stevens clearly surged late in the campaign, and Alaska counts absentees if postmarked on or before Election Day. So it is possible that later voters, including questioned ballots, went for Stevens.

The Anchorage Daily News reports that "The state still needs to count at least 15,000 questioned ballots and an estimated 25,000 absentees."

But there are other problems for Stevens. The rural ballots it seems have not been counted as quickly, and Stevens did not do well there.

And absentee voters probably did not get the late messaging from the Stevens campaign that turned things around.

Anchorage pollster Ivan Moore is quoted in the story as saying "I think it's all over at this point."

I have to say I agree. It's a real disappointment, not because I wanted Stevens back. I think the Senate would expel him and then a real star would represent Alaska, someone like Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell.

If Stevens regains the lead, it won't be until Monday or Wednesday, when the more pro-Stevens Anchorage area counts its last ballots.

Posted at 10:40 AM, November 13, 2008 | Trackback | Print | #

Stevens Losing More Ground in Alaska

Andrew Roth

Ted Stevens is now down 814 votes to Democrat Mark Begich. There are ~30,000 votes left to be counted this week and next week.

Posted at 8:21 AM, November 13, 2008 | Trackback | Print | #

November 12, 2008

Stevens Loses Ground in Alaska

David Keating

Alaska finally started counting the absentee ballots, and got through about half of them this afternoon. Stevens lost more than two-thirds of his lead, which is now down to 971 votes. If it keeps up at this rate, he'll lose.

It is hard to say for sure, but it appears the ballots are distributed pretty randomly from around the state. No word on whether they are random in terms of time the ballot was cast, which could affect the distribution of votes.

More here in the Anchorage Daily News Report out a few minutes ago.

Posted at 7:12 PM, November 12, 2008 | Trackback | Print | #

CA-4 Race Update

David Keating

PolitickerCA reported late yesterday that "With more than 40,000 ballots still to be counted in the district's largest three counties, [Club for Growth PAC endorsed candidate Tom] McClintock had 159,738 votes to 158,646 for Brown, from Roseville. The percentage breakdown was 50.2 percent for McClintock to 49.8 percent for Brown."

However, Tom McClintock's campaign website says "We expect the bulk of Nevada County’s votes to be reported [Wednesday], where we could lose as many as 1,500 votes. Nevertheless, we are seeing better performance with the late absentees than we saw on election night in every county – including Nevada – and if that keeps up, our numbers should bounce back fairly rapidly. Based on the precincts yet to be counted, chances are very good that our lead should start widening from our low point when Nevada comes in. If we stay out of negative territory with that vote, victory should be within sight."

So all in all, things still look pretty promising for a win there.

Posted at 11:59 AM, November 12, 2008 | Trackback | Print | #

November 11, 2008

Minnesota Senate Race Headed for a Tie?

David Keating

Some times when I think about Sen. Norm Coleman's reelection race in Minnesota, I think it may wind up in the Senate, which of course would be a disaster with a lot of very upset people no matter what happens.

Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com applies what was learned in the Florida 2000 recount about machine and voter errors that may apply in the Minnesota recount. Incredibly, using one set of projections the data produces a tie:

From our Florida data set, we believe that machine error represents approximately one-third of the total number of correctable errors. That would imply that about 0.169% of ballots -- roughly 1 ballot out of every 600 cast -- will be reclassified in Minnesota. Given the total number of ballots cast in Minnesota's senate race, this translates to 4,835 ballots that will in fact be reclassified during the hand recount.

Would this number be sufficient to provide Al Franken with a victory? It is very, very close. Using the Daily Kos estimate that 52.5% of recounted ballots will go to Franken (after dropping votes for third parties), we estimate a net gain of 206 votes for him, which is almost exactly the margin by which he presently trails Norm Coleman. (The margin is in fact exactly 206 votes as of this writing).

In the end he concludes, "The more that I examine this data, the more I'm beginning to believe that the number of reclassifiable ballots may be relatively low, but that the proportion of such ballots that are resolved in Franken's favor may be relatively high. How these two factors will ultimately reconcile themselves, I don't know."

Posted at 5:11 PM, November 11, 2008 | Trackback | Print | #

Alaska Senate Race May Be Decided Today

David Keating

An article in today's Anchorage Daily News reports there are 90,000 (!) votes still to be counted, which would as many as 40% more votes cast, and sharply higher than earlier reports. Most of these will be counted today, so there is a good chance we will know if there is a trend in these ballots for one candidate or the other.

Ballots to be counted include "61,000 absentee votes. More than 20,000 questioned ballots. 9,500 early votes."

Keep in mind that Sen. Ted Stevens has a lead of 3,257 votes.

Posted at 1:25 PM, November 11, 2008 | Trackback | Print | #

The MN-Sen Recount

Andrew Roth

There's a new blog that is covering the news surrounding the recount between Sen. Norm Coleman and Al Franken.

Posted at 11:17 AM, November 11, 2008 | Trackback | Print | #

November 10, 2008

Undecided Senate Races Update

David Keating

Georgia

It's still not official, but at this point I can't see any way that the Georgia Senate race avoids a Dec. 2 runoff. An official announcement by the State is expected later this week after all ballots are tallied. John McCain will campaign for Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss on Thursday.

According to The Atlanta Journal Constitution, The Libertarian Candidate who got about 3% of the vote "said that by early next week he will have a campaign 'commitment' form that he will ask the two top vote-getters to sign. No signature, no endorsement, said the Smyrna lawyer and CPA.

'It’s going to be mainly financial commitments that are reasonable,' Buckley told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution."

Of course, reasonable to a Libertarian may not be seen as reasonable by the Democrat or Republican.

Minnesota

Republican Sen. Norm Coleman's lead is now down to just 206 votes on the Secretary of State's website. The final counts by Minnesota could be done later tonight. His lead was as high as 725 votes the day after the election and dropped 15 votes over the weekend.

To give you an idea of how close this is, consider that every time Coleman racked up 5881 votes, his leading opponent Al Franken, the Democrat, got 5880.

The website FiveThirtyEight.com has done more statistical analysis of the Minnesota count here and here than you could imagine, but in the end Nate Silver says "I hesitate to say this, but I think the evidence points on balance toward Franken being a slight favorite to win the recount."

Meanwhile, some weird things are happening. Weirdest is this one reported in the Star-Tribune

An election night worksheet from St. Louis County showed Franken with 406 votes from Precinct 1 in Mountain Iron. The revised totals Thursday night showed him with 506. Similarly, the vote total for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama increased from 469 to 569 when the final tallies were completed. Both Democrats won the precinct by a ratio of more than 2-to-1.

"Obviously, this is highly suspicious. They found 100 votes, and it's statistically impossible that all 100 votes went to the two Democrats, even in St. Louis County," said Cullen Sheehan, Coleman's campaign manager.

Alaska

The Anchorage Daily News reports that "The final count of absentee and questioned ballots is scheduled for Nov. 19, with certification of the election on Nov. 25." Until then, we will just have to wait and see if Sen. Ted Stevens's vote margin of 3,257 votes holds up or not.

The wild card is whether the absentee ballots are significantly different from the votes cast on Election Day. Early votes went in large numbers for the Democratic challenger. Election Day votes went for Stevens. So what did absentee voters do? No one knows yet.

FiveThirtyEight.com says:

Combining the already-counted votes with our allocation of early, absentee and questioned ballots produces a projected total of 142,174 votes for Mark Begich and 139,258 for Ted Stevens -- a win for the Democrat by approximately 3,000 ballots.

Obviously, there is a lot of uncertainty in this estimate, particularly regarding the nature of absentee ballots. If absentee ballots behave like in-person early ballots, which gave a substantial advantage to Mark Begich, then Begich will defeat Stevens, perhaps by some decent margin. If they behave more like regular, election-day ballots, then Stevens will hold on to a narrow victory. If they are somewhere in between, as we have assumed, then Begich is the favorite to win, although the outcome will be close.

With so few early and absentee ballots counted to date, Ted Stevens' lead is not nearly so robust as it appears. Until we get better information about the nature of the absentee vote in Alaska, the race should probably be regarded as a toss-up.

Keep in mind that FiveThirtyEight is rooting for the Democrats, so some bias in the studies may creep in from wishful thinking.

As I write this the InTrade prices on Franken are at 57 cents on the dollar and the Alaska prices are not internally consistent, but are similar. They could be influenced by the FiveThirtyEight posts today.

Posted at 5:42 PM, November 10, 2008 | Trackback | Print | #

AP Declares Winner in Maryland Congressional Race

David Keating

Late Friday the Associated Press called the Maryland 1 congressional race for Democrat Frank Kratovil whose margin over Andy Harris is now over 2,000 votes.

Nov. 11 Update.

The Baltimore Sun reports that Andy Harris conceded the race this morning.

Posted at 4:22 PM, November 10, 2008 | Trackback | Print | #

November 6, 2008

Oregon and Minnesota Senate Updates

David Keating

Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Oregon) today conceded defeat in his race.

The current vote count in Minnesota now shows a 342 vote lead for Republican Sen. Norm Coleman. This is less than half the number initially reported and is down about 80 votes during the day.

Posted at 3:40 PM, November 6, 2008 | Trackback | Print | #

Maryland 1 Absentee Ballot Update

David Keating

An article in this morning’s Baltimore Sun gives these details on who sent in an absentee ballot:

According to the state board, 32,535 absentee ballots had been requested and 25,539 returned to the county boards through Tuesday. They include ballots requested by members of the military and other Marylanders living overseas.

Of the returned ballots, 11,371 came from Democrats, 10,924 from Republicans and 3,244 from independents and others. Three out of five, meanwhile, came from the Eastern Shore - a ratio that could favor Kratovil, a Stevensville resident who currently leads in all nine counties on that side of the Chesapeake. Harris, who represents Baltimore County in the state Senate, leads in Baltimore, Anne Arundel and Harford counties.

There are a few more days for the ballots to arrive, and it is possible that GOP absentee ballots will arrive later. That has been the case in other states. If the current ratio in the make up of the absentee ballots holds, I don’t see how Harris can close his 915 vote gap. I hope I'm wrong.

Posted at 11:08 AM, November 6, 2008 | Trackback | Print | #

The Club's Nationwide Election Poll

Andrew Roth

Club President Pat Toomey wrote an op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal detailing the key findings from a nationwide election poll that the Club conducted on Sunday. Here's an excerpt from the op-ed and below the fold are the poll results.

Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco district will always support universal health care, and Jeff Flake's Arizona district will always support less government. But the 12 districts we surveyed represent the political middle of the country, and in this cycle their partisan allegiances changed. The question is, have their opinions on the issues changed as well? The answer is emphatically no.

Consider the most salient aspects of Mr. Obama's economic agenda: the redistribution of wealth through higher taxes on America's top earners; the revival of the death tax; raising the tax on capital gains and dividend income; increased government spending; increased government involvement in the housing crisis; a restriction on offshore drilling and oil exploration in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR); and "card check" legislation stripping workers of their right to a secret ballot in union elections.

On each of these issues, swing voters stand starkly against Mr. Obama. According to the Club's poll, 73% of voters prefer the federal government to focus on "creating economic conditions that give all people opportunities to create wealth through their own efforts" over "spreading wealth from higher income people to middle and lower income people." Two-thirds of respondents prefer to see the permanent elimination of the death tax, and 65% prefer to keep capital gains and dividend tax rates at their current lows.

Posted at 10:55 AM, November 6, 2008 | Trackback | Print | #

November 5, 2008

Oregon Update -- Dems Take 57th Seat

David Keating

At 5:33 PM the Oregon election results webpage was updated, and it shows GOP Sen. Gordon Smith with nearly a 5,000 vote lead out of 1,394,948 votes cast.

Update:
At about 9 PM ET, the Oregonian newspaper projected that Democrat Jeff Merkley would win the race. Currently the election results webpage shows a 4,700 vote lead for Merkley.

Posted at 6:57 PM, November 5, 2008 | Trackback | Print | #

Maryland 1 Race Update

David Keating

The Associated Press reports that 25,000 absentee ballots are to be counted in this race.

Club PAC-endorsed candidate Andy Harris is running about 1,000 votes behind in Maryland’s first congressional district. Earlier reports indicated that 32,298 ballots were requested.

Posted at 6:48 PM, November 5, 2008 | Trackback | Print | #

Undecided Senate Races Update

David Keating

Alaska: Republican Sen. Ted Stevens was convicted of seven felonies last week, but Alaska voters gave him a narrow lead of about 3400 votes. The race is far from settled, though we guess Stevens will emerge victorious. The Alaska Daily News reports, “Still to 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.”

It gets more interesting because the Republican Senate leadership supports expelling Stevens from the Senate, and the Democrats are chomping at the bit to get rid of him. It’s unclear if they will wait for Stevens to finish the appeal of his conviction.

If Stevens is expelled, Alaska law provides for a special election between 60 and 90 days of the vacancy. Sean Parnell, who the Club’s PAC supported in his narrow Republican primary challenge loss to Rep. Don Young, would have a good shot of winning that race. We also can’t rule out the possibility that Sarah Palin may run too.

So in the end, this race could provide a great opportunity for a far better Senator from Alaska.

Georgia: Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss has 49.9% of the vote, good for a three point lead. At this point we are expecting this race to go to a December runoff and late Wednesday the Associated Press called the race a runoff. (Georgia law requires a runoff if no candidate gets 50% plus one vote.)

Both candidates are in full runoff mode, but a runoff election would not be declared until next week when the results are certified.

Minnesota: Republican Senator Norm Coleman was ahead of his Democratic challenger by 725 votes (as of noon today) out of about 2.9 million cast and has claimed a victory. Just before 5 PM ET today, the Secretary of State's election result webpage office adjusted the margin down to 475 votes. Associated Press called the race for Coleman last night, and then uncalled it later. Democratic opponent Al Franken plans to demand a recount. We expect Coleman will win, but concede nothing is guaranteed here.

Oregon: Republican Senator Gordon Smith has an 8,000 vote lead, but there are still many votes to be counted in a large Democratic-vote rich county. A well-known pollster in the state says he thinks Democratic challenger Jeff Merkley will win, but the Oregonian newspaper quotes him as saying “it's going to be tight, and a lot tighter than I thought it was going to be.” Results are expected later today.

Update:
At about 9 PM ET, the Oregonian newspaper projected that Democrat Jeff Merkley would win the race. Currently the election results webpage shows a 4,700 vote lead for Merkley.

Posted at 5:03 PM, November 5, 2008 | Trackback | Print | #

Election Results for Club for Growth PAC Candidates

David Keating

Last night brought both good and bad news in congressional races where the Club for Growth PAC got involved. Looking at Congress as a whole, the damage is significant, but not as bad as some feared.

Among general election races where the Club's PAC made an endorsement, we won or are winning in 8 races, lost in 8 races, and one race is still undecided.

A lot of Club members have asked about the situation in the Senate. The short version is the Democrats picked up 5 seats and four are still undecided. In three of those four remaining seats, we give the Republican slightly better than an even chance of winning. In the fourth race, it is too early to tell, and even though the Republican is ahead there, he is likely to lose. So Republicans may retain as many as 44 Senate seats if everything goes their way. But we think 43 is more likely.

Challenger Races: The Club's PAC took on four challenger races against Democratic incumbents and we're pleased to report a victory in Texas, where Pete Olson defeated Rep. Nick Lampson in District 22. Republicans won only four challenger races nationally. Here are the results of our challenger races:

Incumbent Races: The Club's PAC normally would strive to try to win more open seat races and challenger races, but this year we concluded the political environment made that too difficult. We decided to work to defend some Republican incumbents who had excellent voting records and were in competitive races, either in primary or general election races. We won five and lost two in the House. In the Senate, we backed John Sununu of New Hampshire, who lost to former Gov. Jeanne Shaheen.

Open Seat Races: The Club's PAC got involved in four open seat races - two in the House and two in the Senate.

Undecided Race: Club PAC-endorsed candidate Andy Harris is running about 1,000 votes behind in Maryland's first congressional district, but an unknown number of absentee votes remain to be counted. Maryland reports that 32,298 ballots were requested, but there are no reports yet on how many were mailed in.

Posted at 4:07 PM, November 5, 2008 | Trackback | Print | #