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Take it to the bank.

The polls close in ten minutes. Hopefully Georgia has held the line today. Poll traffic was reported as steady here Northeast Atlanta today...

Today’s Senate runoff between Jim Martin and Saxby Chambliss has drawn national attention in large part because of the possibility that a Martin victory would give Democrats 60 seats in the Senate, enough to close off filibusters. However, Sen. Jim Martin would become that 60th vote only if Sen. Al Franken became the 59th. And that seems highly unlikely. Franken has fallen behind by more than 300 votes in the Minnesota Senate recount (although the Franken camp claims the real margin is less than 80), with less than 10 percent of the votes still to be recounted. According to The...

Former U.S. representative and current Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum (R) said he will “seriously consider” running to replace Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) in 2010. “At this point, my plan is — at the appropriate time — to announce my intention to seek reelection as Florida’s attorney general,” McCollum said in a statement Tuesday following an announcement from Martinez that he would not seek a second term. “However, given today’s development, I will seriously consider and discuss with my family a race for this U.S. Senate seat, and we will share our decision at a later date.” McCollum said he...

The hand recount of Minnesota Senate ballots is in its final week, but the results are likely to be inconclusive. The declaration of a winner will be on hold until thousands of disputed ballots are sorted out. By Friday, all of the state's 87 counties should be done with their collective review of 2.9 million ballots. A five-member board will gather beginning Dec. 16 to rule on ballot challenges made by Republican Sen. Norm Coleman and Democratic challenger Al Franken. As of Monday night, Coleman was up 344 votes when Nov. 4 and recounted numbers from precincts are put side...

Minnesota Senate candidate Al Franken's campaign says it may appeal to the U.S. Senate or the courts because it believes that up to 1,000 absentee ballots were improperly disqualified in the state's recount of votes, The Hill reports. "Wherever the numbers stand todayÂ…that number simply cannot be relevant if it does not include all the votes that were legally cast," Franken attorney Marc Elias said, according to the newspaper. "No recount can be considered accurate or complete until all the ballots cast by lawful voters are counted." Franken trails Republican rival Norm Coleman by 282 votes with most of the...

Al Franken’s (D) campaign may ask the Democratic-led Senate to intervene on his behalf to allow some disqualified absentee ballots to be counted in his quest to unseat Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.). 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. “No recount can be considered accurate or complete until all the ballots cast by lawful voters are counted,” Elias said of the recount that became necessary when only about 200 votes separated...

Clicking on the link and then registering for the website will allow you to view and vote for yourself on ballots which have been challenged by either campaign.

The recount is around 88% complete with Coleman ahead in the official tally by 282 votes. At the same time, there are 5,623 ballots which have been challenged by one or the other campaign, and these ballots are removed - temporarily - from the official tally. Therefore the 282 vote lead is not very meaningful; what matters is the dispensation of the challenged ballots. For example, if these challenged ballots break 52.6% to 47.4% in favor of Franken, he wins. Note also that the vast majority of challenged ballots will go against the candidate making the challenge. That's because most...

The setback at the Canvassing Board has forced Al Franken to face the fact that he didn’t get enough valid votes to beat Norm Coleman in Minnesota’s Senate Race. With the rejection of his bid to get the panel to add in thousands of rejected absentee ballots, there seems little chance that the remaining 15% of ballots left in the recount will produce the kind of change that 85% has not. What’s a surly, self-absorbed DFL candidate to do?Sue: Minnesota’s U.S. Senate showdown is veering down a path toward the courts and possibly the Senate itself after a panel’s ruling...

ST. PAUL - Hours after the Franken campaign failed to convince the Minnesota State Canvassing Board to intervene on its behalf, Senate President Harry Reid (D-Nev) supported Franken's attorney's statement that they are prepared to take the Minnesota election to the U.S. Senate for a decision. According to comments published by Talking Points Memo, Franken's lead recount attorney, Marc Elias, said: "There are a number of ways this can happen, whether it is at the county level, before the state canvassing board, before the courts of Minnesota, or before the United States Senate, we do not know," said Elias --...

The Coleman campaign has just issued the following press release that confirms the nightmare scenarios sketched out by John Fund in his Wall Street Journal column today: ST. PAUL - Hours after the Franken campaign failed to convince the Minnesota State Canvassing Board to intervene on its behalf, Senate President Harry Reid (D-Nev) supported Franken's attorney's statement that they are prepared to take the Minnesota election to the U.S. Senate for a decision. Later Wednesday afternoon, Reid opened the door for Senate intervention into the Minnesota election processing, saying: "Today's decision by the Minnesota Canvassing Board not to count certain...

A loyal family friend was appointed to Vice President-elect Joe Biden’s vacant Senate seat Monday as an apparent placeholder until Beau Biden can inherit it upon his return from active duty in Iraq. In one of her final acts in office, Delaware Gov. Ruth Ann Minner (D) selected Ted Kaufman, a longtime adviser and former chief of staff to the elder Biden, to be the state’s next senator. Biden (D) won election as Barack Obama’s vice presidential running mate but was simultaneously reelected to the Senate on Nov. 4. As he cannot take both jobs, there has been intense speculation...

ATLANTA | Democrat Jim Martin is campaigning feverishly, aided by Barack Obama's grass-roots organization from the presidential race and a flood of support from the national party, but he remains an underdog against incumbent Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss in a Georgia runoff election considered pivotal for the balance of power in the U.S. Senate. Mr. Martin is behind in polls, has half the cash of his opponent and early-voting turnout among black voters is stagnating - a crucial block for any Democrat in this mostly conservative state where Republicans also hold the other U.S. Senate seat, the governor's office and...

A discrepancy over the number of ballots in a box and the number recorded on a computer tape from Election Day prompted a dispute this morning at the U.S. Senate recount underway in Ramsey County. The mandatory statewide recount began last week in the race between Republican Norm Coleman and Democrat Al Franken. In Ramsey county, there were seven fewer ballots in the box from St. Paul's Ward 5, Precinct 8 than recorded on Nov. 4. Election judges counted the ballots three times before resealing the box amid protests from Franken's observers. County Elections Manager Joe Mansky said it's possible...

Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) could be ripe for a challenge for his seat in 2010, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll. Only 36 percent of voters in the survey said Martinez deserves a second term. More voters — 38 percent — say that he doesn’t, and 26 percent are not sure. When asked whom they would vote for if the election were held today, 40 percent said they would support the Democratic candidate and 36 percent said they would back Martinez.

Abstract: The runoff for a U.S. Senate seat in Georgia is providing a stark example of how candidates in the 2008 election have been able to skirt campaign-finance limits -- without actually breaking the law. Federal campaign-finance law limits individuals to donating $2,300 to a candidate per election. Yet Republicans and Democrats are soliciting donations more than 10 times that amount for the Dec. 2 runoff in Georgia. GOP fund-raisers are asking people to give as much as $65,500 toward incumbent Sen. Saxby Chambliss's campaign, while Democrats are seeking donations up to $30,800 for challenger Jim Martin. So how are...

After much speculation that his failed presidential bid would be his last campaign, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has decided to run for re-election to his Senate seat in 2010.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens dropped further behind Democrat Mark Begich in his re-election bid Tuesday as the convicted felon's 85th birthday became a grueling wait that could determine whether his decades-long hold on power is over. The longest-serving Republican in the history of the Senate trailed the Anchorage mayor by 2,374 votes out of 290,198 counted as election officials continued tallying absentee and other ballots. Begich had led by about 1,000 votes before Tuesday's count.

AK-Senate: Begich Widens Lead Democrat Mark Begich has nearly doubled his lead over Republican Sen. Ted Stevens with just 8,000 votes remaining to be counted in the Alaska Senate race, according to tabulations provided by the state's Division of Elections. With 16,000 of the 24,000 remaining ballots counted, according to the Anchorage Daily News, Begich now has 146,286 votes (47.56 percent) while Stevens has 143,912 votes (46.79 percent). Under Alaska law, a recount would be mandated only if the final margin is less than .5 percent ; Begich's lead is currently .77 percent. (Hat tip: Fellow numbers geek and Post...

The state Canvassing Board today directed that a recount begin tomorrow in the U.S. Senate race between Republican Sen. Norm Coleman and DFLer Al Franken, even as the board considers a last-minute request from the Franken campaign to include rejected absentee and mailed ballots in the initial count. The board confirmed that, with all the state's 87 counties reporting, Coleman leads Franken by 215 votes out of more than 2.9 million votes cast. After county canvasses showed a margin of 206, Coleman gained an additional 25 votes, and Franken 16, from a post-election audit of voting machines in 205 randomly-selected...

The 2008 United States Senate race in Minnesota is one of the closest electoral contests in recent history: as of this writing, out of over 2.9 million ballots cast only 206 votes separate incumbent Republican Senator Norm Coleman and his Democratic challenger, Al Franken. The Minnesota Senate race is slated to be recounted starting on November 19, 2008, and a key issue in the recount will be the approximately 34 thousand residual votes associated with it. A Senate residual vote is, roughly speaking, the product of a ballot that lacks a recorded Senate vote, and in the Minnesota Senate race...

Franken Asks State to Count Disqualified Ballots @ 2:44 pm by Hill Staff Democrat Al Franken’s (Minn.) campaign filed a campaign with Minnesota’s Board of Canvassers Monday asking the organization in charge of certifying election results to include some originally disqualified provisional and absentee ballots in the vote totals. “There are, of course, legitimate reasons to reject absentee ballots,” said Franken spokesman Andy Barr in a conference call with reporters. “But it is clear that there are some absentee ballots that have been rejected in error. Those votes should be counted.” The Franken campaign said they expected their campaign and...

Georgia supporters of the fair tax turned out en masse Sunday to cheer the idea of a national sales tax, which has become a thorny issue in the state’s high-profile Dec. 2 U.S. Senate runoff. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who won Georgia’s GOP presidential primary in February, joined about 2,000 people Sunday afternoon at the Gwinnett Civic Center in what became not just fair-tax rally, but a major campaign stop for Republican incumbent U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Moultrie. Chambliss backs the fair tax, which would abolish the Internal Revenue Service and replace the federal income tax and most...

Democrat Mark Begich now leads Sen. Ted Stevens (R) by just over 1,000 votes with more than 90 percent of the total ballots counted in the high-profile Alaska Senate race. The Alaska Division of Elections counted another 14,500 votes on Friday and Begich's lead increased from 841 before the day started to 1,022 when the counting ended.

The elections division still has over 10,000 ballots left to count today and thousands more through next week, but the latest numbers show Mark Begich leading Sen. Ted Stevens 125,019 to 125,016. The new numbers, reflecting nearly 43,000 absentee ballots counted today, are from all over the state. Election night, Ted Stevens led the Democratic Begich by about 3,000 votes. The state today is counting a total of about 60,000 absentee and questioned ballots. The Division of Elections said it expects to count roughly 35,000 additional absentee and questioned ballots over the next week.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who dipped into his own deep pockets to help finance his presidential bid, has directed $5,000 from his “Free and Strong America” political action committee to aid the recount effort of Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota. Mr. Coleman, the Republican incumbent, is locked in a tight race with his Democratic opponent Al Franken. Though the initial vote tally showed Mr. Coleman ahead by 725 votes, as counties double checked their figures over the last week that margin has thinned even more. As of Monday, just over 200 votes separated the two challengers. The vote totals...

The vote gap between Senate candidates Norm Coleman and Al Franken fluctuated throughout the day Thursday, with Franken closing to within 236 votes by Thursday evening.

It appears that Saxby Chambliss is going to have to have a runoff in Georgia for his Senate seat. Just heard John Kyl say that Obama is moving people and money into the state. Chambliss could be the difference in keeping the dems under 60 votes. If you can give $20-25 bucks to his campaign https://www.saxby.org/Contribute.aspx

Oregon return discussion thread.

Franken 208,357 44% Coleman (Incumbent) 190,986 40% 11% of precincts reporting

Some GOOD News for a change... Mary Landrieu is only 3000 votes ahead of her challenger!

SENATE PREDICTIONSELECTION DAY...FROM NOV 2008 election, here’s a list of the 35 Senate races. (including 33 regular and the MS & WY special elections)The GOP is defending 23 seats, and the Dems defend 12.THere are 65 Senate seats that are not up for election. The GOP starts with 26 carryover seats, and the Dems start with 39 (counting the 2 “independents” Lieberman-CT and Sanders-VT).I was way TOO OPTIMISTIC in the 2006 Midterms, so I am trying to be less optimistic this time...There are another 26 seats that appear SAFE, barring some major change of events over the next 50...

The Minnesota U.S. Senate race remains a tossup on the final weekend of the campaign, with the outcome likely to be decided by who can snatch away the most voters from third-party contender Dean Barkley. A new Star Tribune Minnesota Poll shows DFLer Al Franken clinging to a slim lead over Republican Sen. Norm Coleman among likely voters, 42 percent to 38 percent. That's within the poll's 4.1 percentage point margin of sampling error. Independence Party candidate Barkley, who held steady at 18 percent in the two previous Minnesota Polls, slipped three points to 15 percent. The fluid nature of...

Poll: Dole leads Senate race, but plenty still undecided Posted: 20 minutes ago Raleigh, N.C. — U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole is supported by many North Carolina voters that other Republican candidates haven't reached, according to a new WRAL News poll. Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc. surveyed 800 likely voters statewide between last Wednesday and Friday and found Dole leads Democratic challenger Kay Hagan by 46 to 42 percent. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

<p>WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline) -- A Washington jury on Monday found U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska guilty of all seven corruption counts he was charged with over gifts he accepted from an oil industry contractor but failed to report.</p> <p>Jurors said Stevens, who is running for a seventh term, deliberately failed to disclose on mandatory Senate financial disclosure forms more than $250,000 in home renovations and other gifts from the oil company VECO and its chief executive officer, Bill Allen.</p>

Illinois political insiders say Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., who defended Barack Obama after his father famously threatened to castrate him, is the favorite to replace the Democratic nominee in the Senate. Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) scolded his father, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, publicly after his comments were caught unexpectedly on tape before an interview with Fox News this summer.

Incumbent Democrat Tom Harkin continues to hold a solid lead over Republican challenger Chris Reed in Iowa's U.S. Senate race. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in the state finds Harkin leading 57% to 41%. Harkin has expanded his lead somewhat from late September,, when he led by 14 points. The senator has been well ahead since tracking of the race began in June. Harkin is seeking his fifth term in the Senate. In his last re-election bid, Harkin beat his Republican opponent, Greg Ganske, 54% to 44%. Reed is a Navy veteran and businessman. The race is noticeably close...

Former Gov. Jim Gilmore picked up the endorsements of two veterans groups today. Vets for Freedom and Iraqi Veterans Group said they are backing Gilmore's U.S. Senate campaign because of his military background and experience in fighting terrorism. Appearing with veterans at a news conference at the General Assembly Building, Gilmore said he supports the U.S. military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, which allows gays and lesbians to serve in the military until their behavior becomes overt. Gilmore, a Republican, is running against Democrat Mark R. Warner, also a former governor, for the seat of Sen. John W. Warner, a...

WASHINGTON - New campaign finance reports show that DFL challenger Al Franken raised nearly twice as much money as Republican Sen. Norm Coleman. But Coleman still had a healthy advantage in cash going into the campaign's final weeks.

Senate Republicans are pulling advertising from the Louisiana Senate race, the only contest in which they were on the offense. The decision, reported by local media, is a blow to the GOP candidate, Louisiana state Treasurer John Kennedy, and good news for Sen. Mary Landrieu, long seen as the lone vulnerable Democratic senator in this cycle. Landrieu won election in 2002 with just 52 percent of the vote, and some believe the state has turned more Republican since Hurricane Katrina, which shrank the size of New Orleans. Still, Landrieu has been comfortably ahead in recent polls. She led by 13...

Last time we wrote this very article, it was 9/26/08. So, let’s take a look at whether any changes are in line. Revisions or changes will be in RED. Here is the Tracker –> Senate Race Table. (Our Methodology: We take the polling average of the 4 MOST RECENT polls and average them together to reach a real number of where the race is at, statistically. That prevents outliers from effecting our numbers too much and needlessly shifting races) We have listed THREE GUARANTEED DEM Pickups: Virginia, New Mexico, and Colorado. Out: Virginia, Senator John Warner and New Mexico Senator...

The slogan on the Morton Salt boxes is, "when it rains, it pours." For Republicans, the past few years must seem like monsoon season. On the presidential level, the Gallup national tracking polls have shown Sen. Barack Obama with 50, 51 or 52 percent in every three-day moving average since Oct. 4, with Sen. John McCain between 41 percent and 43 percent in every average over that same period. No presidential contender in modern times has successfully closed this wide a gap in this short a time. At this point, a major international event would be required to shift the...

Anyone who has been involved in a school yard fight knows the old rule, 2 against 1 will win every time. At tonight's debate Norm Coleman sat literally in the middle of Independent candidate Dean Barkley and Democrat Al Franken. He was eviscerated by both men. The most devastating moment came when one of the moderators asked, "What do you think is the greatest threat to our country"? The moderator went on to say it could be any threat, not just of the military kind. Al Franken went first and said the biggest threat was Al Qaeda, and that the...

A new SurveyUSA poll suggests Oregon's Senate race may be shifting in the direction of Democrat Jeff Merkley. The poll, broadcast on KATU's noon news, showed Merkley with 46 percent to 41 percent for Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore. Constitution Party candidate David Brownlow had 7 percent and the remaining 6 percent were undecided. The margin of error is 4.1 percentage points, plus or minus.

Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman, locked in an increasingly tight and bitter election contest with Democrat Al Franken, said Friday that his campaign would halt negative advertising in a race recently dominated by it. Coleman, a Republican, said the unstable economy demands that the race focus on issues. He said he would also ask independent groups advertising on his behalf to pull negative ads, although by law they are not required to do so. "I decided I was not all that interested in returning to Washington for another six years based on the judgment of voters that I was not as...

Democrat Mark Udall still leads among Colorado's likely voters, but his Republican rival, Bob Schaffer, is narrowing the gap, according to a Denver Post poll. Udall, who had been up by as many as 10 percentage points in previous polls, is favored by 43 percent of registered voters surveyed, to Schaffer's 38 percent. But with 14 percent of respondents saying they haven't made up their minds less than a month before the election, it's clear the race is much tighter than it appeared to be over the summer, said Brad Coker, managing director of Mason-Dixon Polling and Research.

FIGHT FOR JIM GILMORE By Dick Armey Dear Virginia Taxpayer, I know what it's like to fight for what you believe in. As a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for 18 years, and the Majority Leader from 1995 to 2002, I know it takes courage and dedication to stand up for working families and protect taxpayers who are facing an ever growing burden as a result of what's happening in Washington. There is always someone who believes bigger government and higher taxes are the answer to every problem, someone determined to take away more and more of...

Schumer rips Chamber of Commerce By J. Taylor Rushing Posted: 10/08/08 01:17 PM [ET] DSCC Chairman Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) came out swinging Wednesday against the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, saying the business lobby was no longer nonpartisan and “has turned into a wing” of the GOP. In a press conference at Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) headquarters, Schumer said the path and pattern of the contributions indicate that the Chamber is afraid of the Democrats winning the critical Senate threshold of 60 seats — a goal he said is within reach now more than ever. Democrats already have 51 seats...

The National Rifle Association has endorsed New Mexico congressional candidate Ed Tinsley. Tinsley is vying for the seat being vacated by Congressman Steve Pearce, who is running for the U.S. Senate. The Republican candidate is running against Hobbs businessman Harry Teague. The National Rifle Association awarded Tinsley an A rating, which means the candidate is solidly pro-gun. The A rating is usually reserved for incumbents. Teague received an A-Q rating, which means his rating is based solely on a questionnaire. The Tinsley campaign recently criticized Teague's position on the second amendment, citing an Albuquerque Journal interview where the Democrat was...