Update: The National Journal’s Hotline blog helpfully announced that Republican Senate hopeful Jim Gilmore is yet to concede to Democratic candidate Mark Warner. MSNBC continues to bring the projections snappier than Keith Olbermann’s suits: Jeanne Shalen, former New Hampshire governor, was just projected as winner of the New Hampshire senate seat, another gain for Democrats in the Senate. Among the incumbents Democrats Dick Durbin (Illinois), John Kerry (Massachusetts) and Frank Lautenberg (New Jersey) are projected to keep their seats, as are Republicans Susan Collins (Maine) and Lindsey Graham (South Carolina).
Slate.com has an instructive essay on delivering a concession speech. (Example: McCain might fare well with straight talk, but could he show Adlai Stevenson’s empathy or, hell, Bob Dole’s humor?) As projections give our nation a collective heart flutter and electoral acid reflux, it seems time to ask: Which Senate candidate will give the first concession speech?
Oops, make that a possible three seats nabbed by Democrats: MSNBC also just named Democrat Kay Hagan as the projected winner in North Carolina, bumping off incumbent Elizabeth Dole.
The Senate is the rockiest ground in the 2008 election, a series of results that begins on a slant: With 35 seats up for grabs in the U.S. Senate, 12 are currently held by Democrats and the remaining 23 by Republicans. If the Democratic incumbents win reelection across the board and pick up roughly half of the available Republican seats, Democrats will have a Senate majority that, when voting as a block, cannot be filibustered.
And, depending on where you look, Virginia could go either way. When it comes down to endorsements, both The Washington Post and Daily Progress selected Republican candidate Jim Gilmore as the ideal replacement for retiring Republican Senator John Warner. Meanwhile, Wikipedia’s collection of Senate predictions gathers data from Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball, The Rothenberg and Cook political reports and CQ Politics, and all place Virginia between "Likely Democratic" and "Safe Democratic." The Richmond Times-Dispatch seems to think Warner has it all wrapped up, too.
And it appears that he does. Now, I’m a slow typer, but news of a Warner victory swept through faster than I could type "Filibuster." About 10 minutes ago, MSNBC projected a Warner victory in Virginia. And here come the follow-ups for the race that the Charlottesville Newsplex called "down to the wire": FOX and Richmond’s WRIC just called the race for Warner.
Red to blue: Early reports name Democrat Mark Warner as Republican John Warner’s successor in the U.S. Senate.
