Coleman Clings to a Shrinking Lead

With 64% of the vote recounted, Sen Norma Coleman (R-MN) still leads Democrat Al Franken, but his lead has dropped from 215 votes to 120 votes, a loss of 95 votes. If his loss continues at this rate, Coleman will ultimately lose 148 votes and thus win the election by 67 votes out of 2.9 million cast. However, past vote loss is no guarantee for future vote loss. Coleman might do better or worse with the remaining 36%, which will be recounted next week.

In addition, there are other factors to be considered. First, about 1000 ballots have been challenged. These are ballots that the election judges counted for one of the candidates and which the other candidate's lawyer objected to. A lawyer can object to a ballot that was marked for one candidate but then the voter added additional marks indicating that he or she really meant a different candidate. A lawyer can also object to a ballot that was unambiguously marked by which was invalidated for other (legal) reasons, such as the voter writing his or her name or social security number on the ballot. The challlenged ballots will be examined on Wednesday by a five-man board consisting of the secretary of state, Mark Richie, and four state judges.

In addition to the challenged ballots, there are thousands of absentee ballots that were rejected for various reasons. A court case is pending to have them counted. Often they were rejected for minor infractions of the law, such as no zipcode or the signature on the wrong line. The decision in this case may ultimately determine the election. If the loser doesn't like the decision, the case will probably be appealed at least to the state supreme court and maybe to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Net Gain/Loss in the House since 2002

The National Journal has compiled a list of how many House seats each party has gained or lost since 2002. The Democrats have picked up seats in all regions of the country. By region, the gains are Northeast (+20), South (+6), Midwest (+15), and West (+11). Here is the list sorted by amount of gain per state, using unofficial tallies in those states where the 2008 election is still undecided.

Blogads.com Annual Reader Survey

If you didn't do the Blogads.com annual survey yesterday and can spare 10 minutes, it would be greatly appreciated if you could do it as it will help the many blogs that depend on ads for their survival and operation. For example, Daily Kos sponsored many valuable polls this year, something it couldn't have done without the ad revenue. Thanks.

The State of Minnesota

The Great Minnesota Recount continued yesterday. With 46% of the vote now recounted, Sen. Norm Coleman's lead has slipped from 215 votes to 136 votes. If Al Franken picked up 79 votes on 46% of the recount, projecting this linearly, with 100% of the vote he will pick up 172 votes and Coleman will win by 43 votes. However, there are 823 challenged votes yet to be resolved. In addition, Franken is trying to get thousands of absentee ballots that were rejected for technical reasons (e.g., no zipcode listed) counted. Detailed county-by-county results can be found here. After the recount is finished, then the court challenges begin. This could go on for a while. Stay tuned.

If you want to see why hand recounts sometimes go slowly, take a look at some of these actual ballots from Minnesota. These are also relevant to the posting yesterday about instant runoff voting. Many people sent mail pointing out alternatives to IRV that are "better" in some sense. Unfortunately, one criterion for acceptance is that the voters understand the system. When you look at the actual ballots cited above, you get a better idea of what might work and what might not work. IRV is probably at the outer limit of what low-information voters could manage although it is used in Australia and seems to work there. Anyone advocating a more complex scheme should imagine trying to explain the scheme to one of the voters whose ballot is pictured in the link above, keeping in mind that filling in a single oval was beyond his or her capacity.

Waxman Defeats Dingell for Energy Committee Chairmanship

Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-CA) made history yesterday by challenging and defeating the sitting chairman of the House energy and commerce committee, Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) by a 137 to 122 vote of the full Democratic caucus. This committee is immensely important, with jurisdiction over a wide variety of domestic matters. Waxman is a close ally of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is also from California. Both of them want much tougher laws to reduce global warming, something Barack Obama also promised. Dingell, in contrast, was much more concerned with protecting the automobile industry than with protecting the environment. Waxman's counterpart in the Senate is yet another Californian, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA). With most of the power concerning the environment in hands of Waxman, Boxer, Pelosi, and Obama, it is likely that global warming will be addressed very quickly in the new administration, with the views of the Californians playing a dominant role.

In other ways, too, Waxman's victory represents a tectonic shift in the House. Ben Pershing of the Washington Post puts it like this. First, the seniority system is dead. If Dingell could be toppled, how long can Charlie Rangel (D-NY) and John Conyers (D-MI) last? Second, ideology matters. Waxman is a reformer. Everyone in the House knows that. He won not because he is the friendliest guy in town (he can be very irritating) but because a majority of the Democrats agree with his philosophy of government. Third, Nancy Pelosi's power is hugely increased by this turn of events, in part because she and Waxman see eye to eye on almost everything and she now has an ally in a key position. But also because other chairmen now know that if they displease her, she is quite capable of urging a member of their committee to challenge them and she won't lift a finger to save them.

In a little-noted move, Obama named Philip Schiliro as his liason to Congress. Schiliro is not exactly a household name, but Waxman knows who he is: Schiliro was Waxman's chief of staff for 25 years. This appointment means that Waxman has a direct pipeline into the heart of the White House and Obama has a close assistant who probably knows the powerful chairman as well as anybody in the government. While previous Presidents have often had their plans foiled by poor relations with Congress, Obama's personal experience in the Senate and Schiliro's ties to Waxman (and via Waxman, to Pelosi) are likely to provide a smoother ride for Obama.

Public's View of the Republican Party Continues to Drop

A new Gallup poll shows that 34% of Americans have a favorable view of the Republican Party vs. 61% who have an unfavorable view. The 61% unfavorable is the highest for any party in history. For the Democrats the numbers are 55% favorable and 39% unfavorable. As the debate rages within the Republican Party about what to do, the poll gives some guidance. Some 59% of the Republicans polled want it to become more conservative, 28% want it to remain the same, and only 12% want it to become less conservative. With most of the congressional moderates defeated either in 2006 or 2008, the remaining Republicans are very conservative and come from states and districts that are also very conservative, so individual members of Congress have a strong personal incentive to see the party become more conservative: to enhance their chances at the next election. The only problem with this strategy is that piling up even bigger margins in Oklahoma, Wyoming, and Utah is not much consolation if you lose Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Indiana, Ohio, Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada by even bigger margins as a result.

Blogads.com Annual Reader Survey

Blogads.com, the company that handles the ads here and on most of the major blogs, runs an annual readership survey to find out what the readership demographics are. It would be greatly appreciated if you could take a few minutes to fill out its survey even if you did it a few weeks ago. That one was mostly on politics; this one is to give the advertisers a rough idea of who is out there and what kinds of products and services they buy. Please be sure to answer all the questions that are marked with an asterisk, otherwise the survey won't be used. Your cooperation helps all blogs and Websites that run ads. Thanks.

McCain Wins Missouri

John McCain won Missouri. It was close. His margin of victory was only 3632 votes out of 2.9 million cast. This means the final electoral vote tally is 365 to 173, more than 2 to 1 for Obama. For Missourians, the downside of going for McCain is the state loses its much-heralded bellwether status--it has voted with the winner every time since 1956--except 2008.

Stevens Concedes

Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) has conceded defeat in his Senate reelection bid. Anchorage mayor Mark Begich will be the new senator from Alaska. He brings the total of Democratic senators to 58, with Minnesota doing a recount and Georgia having a runoff on Dec. 2.

Instant Runoff Voting

Yesterday's posting mentioned that Bob Bird got 12,000 votes in Alaska that would undoubtedly otherwise have gone to Ted Stevens. As a consequence of Bird's presence on the ballot, Mark Begich was elected, something Bird voters probably did not want. Several readers mentioned that the problem lies in the voting system. There are other voting systems, such as instant runoff voting that handle this kind of situation much better. In IRV, as it is called, the voter is asked to mark his or her first choice, second choice, etc. on the ballot. Conceptually, when the votes are counted, they are sorted into piles based on everyone's first choice (which in the case of the Alaska Senate race would have contained a pile for Bird with 12,000 votes). If some candidate gets 50% of the votes, he or she wins and the election is over.

If no one gets 50%, the people who voted for the least popular candidate are told: "Your candidate didn't win. Who is your second choice?" Since they have already marked their second choice, nobody has to actually ask them. Instead, all the votes in the smallest pile are now redistributed based on their second choice. The other votes stay where they were. If somebody now has over 50%, he or she wins. Otherwise, the process is repeated by again taking the smallest pile and redistributing the votes to the highest ranked choice still in contention. Eventually you get