| Page 2 of 2 < |
Who Will Take Up the Gauntlet to Lead the GOP Out of the Wilderness?
|
TOOLBOX
   Resize
COMMENT
 Discussion Policy
 CLOSE
Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.
Who's Blogging  |
But, in at least two contested races -- in Minnesota and Georgia -- there was a significant drop-off between votes cast for Obama and those for his party's Senate nominees, an under-vote that might wind up costing Democrats two seats.
In Minnesota, Obama took 1,573,288 votes, compared with 1,211,335 for comedian Al Franken -- a drop-off of more than 360,000 from the presidential to the Senate race.
That under-vote is especially significant considering that Franken trails Sen. Norm Coleman (R) by 221 votes, according to the Associated Press, and the race is almost certainly headed to a statewide manual recount that could last into next month.
In Georgia, Obama won 1,838,281 votes, while former state Rep. Jim Martin received 1,753,030, a difference of more than 85,000. If Martin had matched Obama's vote total, he would still have trailed Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R), who took 1,864,015 votes, and the race would still be headed to a Dec. 2 runoff. But the narrower margin might have given Democrats momentum headed into the one-month sprint.
Of course, for every rule in politics, there is an exception. In Alaska, Obama took 80,340 votes, compared with 102,998 for Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich (D).
Although Begich ran considerably ahead of his party's presidential nominee, he still trails Sen. Ted Stevens (R) by 3,300 votes with 99 percent of precincts reporting.
Two days: The Republican Governors Association hosts its annual meeting in Miami -- the first chance for the future leaders of the party to kibitz about what happened and where to go from here.
71 days: Barack Obama is sworn in as the 44th president of the United States, the first African American to assume that post.
