Tuesday, November 2, 2010

We Won't Have an Exact House Count for Days

There are way too many super close races for us to get a full count on the House results any time tonight. The Senate it will be into the wee hours of the morning to get the Alaska race decided and we'll see how close some of the other races wind up. Here is what we know as of now to recap:
(1) Senate
Democrats have locked in 48 Senate seats, Republicans 44. Pennsylvania appears highly likely to go to the GOP, with Pat Toomey having now built a 4% lead and all of Philadelphia's vote already counted. Illinois appears headed to the GOP as well, so call it 48-46. Hawaii will break blue (expect an announcement at 12:00:01), so make it 49-46.

Colorado, Nevada, California and Washington still look to be up in the air....I still predict a blue hold in Washington and California and red pick-ups in Colorado and Nevada, leaving us with a 51-48. Alaska will probably go to a Republican or a Republican Independent, so we are back to my original 51-49.

(2) House
The GOP will be in the majority. They will have at least 230 seats, in my estimation. They have no path to get to numbers greater than 260. Within that range (230-260), we will simply need more race-by-race results to call it. We likely won't know those tonight.

(3) Governor's Mansion
Florida appears headed to the GOP, although the race is not 100% over...everything else, at least so far is holding to prediction, although many are close enough that they could still swing. Florida going GOP and the other races going according to my projection would give us the GOP control of 31 state houses. Assuming Lincoln Chaffee holds on in Rhode Island (he is up by a narrow 2 points with many votes left to count), this would leave us with 31 GOP, 18 Dem, 1 IND in the mansions of the 50 states.

I'll hang with this through the 12 AM poll closings, but unlike a Presidential year, we won't be able to get to a final result in the House and Senate tallies this evening.

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