The Tryptophan is Gone

And there are still two open Senate races.

Georgia and Minnesota still have unfinished elections, with an on-going recount in Minnesota and a run-off election scheduled for Tuesday in Georgia.

Following up on earlier posts, let us start with Minnesota. Democratic challenger Al Franken is down by about 280 votes to Republican Norm Coleman with 12% of the votes yet to be recounted and over 5000 challenged ballots awaiting a ruling from the state canvassing board (according to the Star Tribune).

Things are so close in this race that its really difficult to predict how it will turn out (straight from the horse's mouth so to speak). Franken could pick up some more votes before it comes down to the challenged ballots and lots of ballots are getting challenged, more and more by both sides as the recount continues.

The Star Tribune offers a graphic on what types of winning percentages on the challenged ballots as things currently stand each side would need in order to win. The bottom line is that it's still a bit of a steep hill for Franken to win, but there is no way to account for the quality of the challenges so who really knows what it'll end up looking like.

Down in Georgia voters will be returning to the polls this week to vote for either Democrat Jim Martin or Republican Incumbent Saxy Chambliss (Libertarian Allen Buckley who helped necessitate the run off by snagging 3% of the initial votes and thus preventing any candidate from reaching the 50% plateau is no longer on the ballot).

Early voting closed before Thanksgiving and no one has any idea how to predict what turn out will look like. There has been a lot of national media attention applied to this race and to the fact that President-elect Obama has not campaigned for Martin despite many other political celebrity appearances on both sides. The polling all shows a close race with Chambliss in the lead but again remains largely irrelevant in the face of unknown turnout, basically it doesn't matter who people say they'll vote for if they don't end up voting on election day. The general feeling seems to be that Chambliss will eke out the win despite the swell of Obama organizers flocking to the state to bolster the Martin campaign.

If want to keep track of all this on your own; Five Thirty Eight still has that election jones, the Star Tribune and Atlanta Journal Constitution both have god election pages up still for a local perspective, and when something definitive finally happens this site will be one of many to have the news...