Back on November 8, I wrote:
Lieberman’s margin of 114,773 votes over Lamont is 10.15% of the total number cast — which, in the BrendanLoy.com Senate contest “second tiebreaker,â€? is closer to Patrick Cullen’s prediction of a 12% margin than to Greg Rauen’s prediction of an 8% margin. However, because 10.15% is so close to the midway point between those predictions (10%)…it will probably be impossible to definitively declare a winner until…the Connecticut Secretary of the State’s office completes the official canvass in late November.
Well, I’m not sure if this is the final, official canvass, but I just looked up the official results as of November 15:
Lieberman (CFL) 564,086
Lamont (D) 450,837
Schlesinger (R) 109,196
Ferrucci (G) 5,922
Knibbs (CC) 4,638
Vassar (write-in) 80
Joy (write-in) 3
That’s a total of 1,134,762 votes cast… and a Lieberman margin of 113,249, which translates to a percentage margin of 9.97997818%. That would mean Rauen wins the BrendanLoy.com Senate Contest!
If the total number of votes cast is correct, a Lieberman margin of 113,477 or more would mean a Cullen victory; a margin of 113,476 or less would mean a Rauen victory. So just 228 votes separate the current situation from a Cullen win.
Like I said, though, I’m not certain if that’s the official final canvass. I may have to call the Secretary of the State’s office to find out, or ask my dad to look into it. :) So I’m not declaring a winner yet. But I do know the above-linked results are more up-to-date than the CNN results I linked to previously, because the Newington tabulation error is corrected in them. (My dad actually e-mail the Newington town clerk’s office to tell them about that error.)
In the BrendanLoy.com House Contest, meanwhile, Cullen is still poised to win, with four races still undecided. A Nun Mouse was eliminated when the Dems clinched GA-12, but Tony Badger still has a chance to win if any of the four undecided races — all currently led by the Republicans — go Democratic. What’s happening in those races?
• In OH-15, where the vote-counting was delayed by the Ohio State-Michigan game, the Republican led by 3,717 votes as of Tuesday, with 19,000 provisional ballots still to be counted. Results are expected next week.
• In NC-8, a machine recount cut the Republican’s lead from around 450 votes to 329 votes, and now the provisional ballot count has reportedly reduced it further, to 179 votes. The Republican is urging his challenger to concede; the Democrat wants a manual recount. According to UPI: “Johnnie McLean, the chief deputy director of North Carolina’s board of elections, said ballots in 3 percent of the precincts will be inspected by elections officials Nov. 29 and Nov. 30. A district-wide manual recount will be ordered if the sampling reveals a statistical inconsistency, McLean said.”
• In FL-13, the counting and recounting is over, and the Republican has been declared the winner by 369 votes — but the Democrat is challenging the result in court beacuse of that massive undervote in one county, which may have been caused by machine error, and may have cost the Democrat the elction.
• Last but not least, in TX-23, there will be a December 12 runoff between the incumbent Republican and the highest-vote-getting Democrat in what was a crowded field of challengers.
So, we won’t know the winner of the BrendanLoy.com House Contest until December 12 at the earliest — unless one of the other apparent Republican victories is overturned in favor of the Democrat before then. Badger only needs one of the above four races to go Democratic. Cullen needs all four to stay Republican in order to maintin his edge.
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Categories: Joe Lieberman, Election 2006
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November 24th, 2006 at 5:55:21 am
Note — unles I’m wrong here–that Brendan now admits the undervote in FLA 13th “may have been caused by machine error” whereas when he intially posted about this story he called it “technically voter error.”
Today’s Krugman column in the New York Times, available online in the pay service called “Times Select,” he raises the real issue about this particular race: the only reason it hasn’t made national news is that neither the Congress nor the White House is at stake in this race. He then goes on to ask if “….we have to wait for a constituional crisis to realize that we’re in danger of becoming a digital-age banana republic?”
November 24th, 2006 at 9:35:41 am
Analysis: Ballots favored Dems
Sarasota’s ‘undervotes’ were examined in 5 state races.
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/elections/orl-mvote2206nov22,0,1009612.story?coll=orl-home-headlines
November 24th, 2006 at 10:41:53 am
Mouse, here’s what I wrote in my initial post:
As you can see, I allowed for both possibilities — voter error and machine error — and defined, as best as I could, the difference between the two. Thus, clearly there is no contradiction in my saying that the undervote “may have been caused by machine error.” That is one of two plausible explanations.
The third explanation, that such a stunningly high percentage of voters in that particular county meant to skip Congress while voting for such offices as hospital board, is not plausible, IMHO, and I wish we could drop that charade of an excuse from the dialogue and just focus on whether it’s machine error or voter error. The media dialogue, however, is not that sophisticated, and of course the Republicans (and, to a lesser extent, the election officials) have a vested interest in pretending there is some doubt about whether the results reflected the intent of the voters. Clearly, they did not. This is just like Palm Beach County 2000: the results are obviously wrong. The only question is why.
November 24th, 2006 at 12:35:59 pm
I urge all of my worthy opponents to just go ahead and concede right now.
November 24th, 2006 at 12:48:36 pm
BLL, re your question, the CT results are Not final & official. They (or, their further-corrected versions :) will Become such at the Official Canvass (aka the Consecration of the Numbers :) which takes place either tomorrow or Wednesday ~ I think Wednesday.
November 24th, 2006 at 12:50:43 pm
Bah / correction: either TUESDAY or Wednesday. Nov. 28 or 29. Should be Wed. the 29th.