Election Update

I'm going to leave this post at the top through tonight and update when interesting items come through the vacuum tubes. If you want to follow the tallies and news, the ones seemingly doing the best job of updating are TPMCafe, ThinkProgress, and, of course, Kos. Here are also CNN's Senate results. And the House.

ThinkProgress reports these fine items:

– 8:27 PM ET: CBS News has called New Jersey’s Senate race for Sen. Bob Menendez (D) over Tom Kean Jr. (R).

– 8:24 PM ET: CBS News has called Ohio’s Senate race for Rep. Sherrod Brown (D) over Sen. Mike DeWine (R).

– 8:21 PM ET: ABC News has called Pennsylvania’s Senate race for Bob Casey Jr. (D) over Rick Santorum (R)...

– 7:59 PM ET: Fox News calls Ellsworth (D) over Rep. Hostettler (R) in IN-2.

A wild night ahead of us, especially with Webb and Allen duking it out in Virginia and swapping the lead with nearly each update. More updates coming....

8:53 ET: See also this "balance of power" page at CNN. The page documents more clearly the shifts in party seats. [via Political Wire].

9:13 ET: CNN has a Lieberman win over Lamont in CT.

9:21 ET: Good news. Cardin has been called over Steele in Maryland (CNN). A long way to go with this one, however.

9:24 ET: Webb closes to within a percentage point on Allen in VA with 75% reporting.

9:26 ET: Whitehouse (D) beats Chaffee (R) in Rhode Island. Another Dem addition.

9:38 ET: The Count is gone. "CNN projects Joseph Donnelly (D) defeats the incumbent Chris Chocola (R)." (ThinkProgress).

9:48 ET: NBC has O'Malley (D) winning over Ehrlich (R) for governor of Maryland.
Webb is closing on Allen in VA with about 15% of the voters to go - roughly, a 10,000 vote difference.
The Dems, by the way, have only three pickups to go now to take the Senate.

11:31 ET: VA is incredibly close. Webb has been slowly creeping up and is now a few thousand votes behind Allen with 98% of precincts reporting. The kicker: apparently, the remaining precincts are in liberal northern VA.

12:00 ET: Woo hoo! Webb has taken the lead over Allen by about 3000 votes with 99% reporting. Stay tuned.

12:04 ET: Proud of New York.

12:19 ET: It's looking like Webb could win VA outright. Close. But most of the remaining votes yet to come in are from Fairfax County, one of the bluest of precincts in Virginia. Right now, Webb leads Allen by about a tenth of a percentage. He need that to move past a .5% difference in order to avoid a recount. But... things are looking good in VA (apart from the idiotic "same sex" marriage ban).

12:22 ET: It looks to me right now like we're going to have a tie in the Senate (broken by the VP), and the Dems have the House. Montana needs to remain in the Tester column and we need a miracle in Tennessee or Missouri to pull out the Senate. Unlikely, at this point.

1:30 ET: Last of the night for me.... As of right now, it looks like the Dems may very well have the Senate too. Webb/Allen will go to a recount, but I think that's Webb's to take. Tester has a nice lead in Montana. Corker (R) beat Ford, Jr. (D) in Tennessee. So, it comes down to McCaskill in Missouri taking Talent's seat. These returns have looked bad all night. Just over the past hour they have completely turned. McCaskill is now up 49% to 48% with 84% reporting, a lead of about 20K votes.
Dems need those three to take the Senate: Webb, Tester, and McCaskill. It looks good right now. Let's see what it looks like over coffee in the morning.

Oh, and welcome, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

2:15 ET: OK, one more. CNN just called Missouri for McCaskill, the Democrat (votes left to count are in and around St. Louis - it's over and Talent has conceded). This means two more victories to go and the Dems have the Senate.

Webb is right now up by about 6000 votes [no - make that about 12,000 votes]. It is estimated that about 33K votes will be counted in the morning from Fairfax County. Fairfax is as blue as it gets in VA. Webb has this one in the bag.

This leaves Tester in Montana. Things are looking good there. Tester is up by 4 percentage points with 65% of the vote counted. A quick glance at the map appears to show that the more populated precincts remaining to be counted lean towards the blue side. This looks like a Tester victory.

THUS, coffee-in-the-morn' prediction is that the Democrats now have majorities in the House, the Senate, and the governorships. A good day 'twas.