Preliminary Senate Results

The real election night drama was and still is in the Senate. Right now, most of the networks have projected that the Democrats will get 56 seats (including the two independents) and the Republicans will get 40. Four races are still too close to call.

Perhaps the biggest story last night was the loss of Republican Sen. Elizabeth Dole to Democrat Kay Hagan in North Carolina. Dole had run a nasty, culture-war type of race displaying Hagan as an atheist in a vicious and blatantly untrue ad. Well, it seemed to have backfired. Hagan defeated Dole 53% to 44% last night with 100% precincts reporting.

Former Democratic Gov. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire defeated Republican Sen. John Sununu last night 52% to 45% with 93% precincts reporting.

Sen. Roger Wicker held off Democrat Ronnie Musgrove in Mississippi by a margin of 55% to 45%. Also, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell barely hung on to defeat Democrat Bruce Lunsford 53% to 47% in Kentucky.

And as expected, Democrats Mark Warner, and Tom and Mark Udall defeated their Republican opponents easily in Virginia, Colorado and New Mexico, respectively. These three races were for open seats and the Democrats picked up all of them.

Now, there's still four races that are too close to call: Minnesota, Oregon, Alaska, and Georgia. Here's the current totals for each of these races (asterisk denotes an incumbent).

MINNESOTA--100% Precincts Reporting
Coleman* (R): 42.0%
Franken (D): 42.0%
Notes: The votes are all counted here, and Coleman is up by 475 votes. But, that's close enough to trigger a statewide automatic recount, which will start in mid-November and could go on to December. We won't know the winner of this race for a while.

ALASKA--99.9% Precincts Reporting
Stevens* (R): 48.2%
Begich (D): 46.7%
Notes: Despite having been convicted on seven criminal charges last week, Ted Stevens looks like he will (narrowly) win re-election. He is up by 3,353 votes and almost all of the votes have been counted. If he is forced out of the Senate because of ethics charges, there will be a special election for his seat in 2010. Is it possible that Sarah Palin will run?

OREGON--73% Precincts Reporting
Smith* (R): 47.4%
Merkley (D): 46.9%
Notes: Smith leads Merkley by less than 7,000 votes, but there are still a lot of votes that have yet to be counted, and many of those votes are from more the Democratic counties.

GEORGIA--99% Precincts Reporting
Chambliss* (R): 49.8%
Martin (D): 46.8%
Notes: It looks as though Libertarian candidate Allen Buckley has siphoned off enough votes from Sen. Saxby Chambliss to keep his total percentage under 50%. Of course, Georgia law states that if no candidate gets to that 50% mark, a run-off election will be held between the top two candidates 4 weeks after election day, which in this case would be December 2. Allen Buckley is Jim Martin's best friend today, because now he will get a second shot at defeating Chambliss, although it will be very difficult for him to succeed.