I Guess We’re Not All Georgians Anymore

I heard Chuck Todd on MSNBC today saying that Obama will likely not campaign for Jim Martin in his Senate runoff campaign. I can understand that he’s focused on the transition right now, and also that Martin faces an uphill climb. Still, I think it’s a mistake. For one thing, with the Alaska race moving our way and Minnesota still a good possibility, Georgia could end up being the Dems’ shot at 60 seats. Now, given the fluidity of cloture votes, I don’t believe that 60 is the magic number some have made it out to be, but it does represent a psychological hurdle, and besides, a Sen. Martin is a heck of a lot less likely to join a filibuster than Sen. Chambliss.

I also don’t really see what Obama has to lose by getting involved. If Martin loses, that will be what was expected, so Obama will hardly be associated with that loss. On the other hand, if he helps Martin pull off the upset, it will have Republicans shaking in their boots and will serve to validate not only his coattails but also his 50-state strategy. Besides, it’s not like this race is in Mississippi; Obama came within a few points of McCain in Georgia. Nor is Martin running away from Obama; in fact, he seems eager to have him visit.

The Republicans are going all out to crank up their base. Obama is the one guy who can truly help the Democrats turn out theirs. He should go to Georgia.

AK-Sen: Begich up over Stevens by Three (!) Votes

Big news out of Alaska:

The elections division still has over 10,000 ballots left to count today and thousands more through next week, but the latest numbers show Mark Begich leading Sen. Ted Stevens 125,019 to 125,016.

The new numbers, reflecting nearly 43,000 absentee ballots counted today, are from all over the state. Election night, Ted Stevens led the Democratic Begich by about 3,000 votes.

The state today is counting a total of about 60,000 absentee and questioned ballots.

I’ve frankly been very confident about the Dems picking up this seat, given the number of outstanding ballots, and the fact that I found it confounding that Alaska voters would vote to send a convicted felon back to Washington. It appears that many outstanding votes are from Dem friendly districts. So we’re getting closer to getting to the magical 60 senate number.

Senate Runoffs

Partisan considerations aside, it strikes me that two of the remaining contested Senate races seem to have their processes exactly backwards. In Georgia, Saxby Chambliss and Jim Martin are heading for a runoff, despite the fact that voters expressed a fairly clear preference for the incumbent. I suppose it’s possible that Chambliss will fail to add 0.1% of the remaining third-party voters in the runoff — and as a Democrat, I hope that happens — but the more likely outcome is that it will prove to be a waste of time and resources that merely confirms the results of the initial round. And in the event that Obama’s victory shakes up the race and allows Martin to win over voters who had supported Chambliss in the first round, suddenly we’re not talking about a runoff so much as a new election.

In Minnesota, meanwhile, you could make a good case that a runoff would be clarifying. Coleman and Franken have effectively tied with 42 percent each, which means that a runoff would allow the 16% of the electorate who voted for someone else the chance to express their second choice. Instead, as happened in Florida in 2000, the election will be decided by a vote margin that will almost certainly be less than the margin of error of even the most accurate counting method.

In the unlikely event that I were ever given the opportunity to write a state constitution, I would probably go with a modified version of the Georgia model. That is, require a runoff if no candidate reaches a certain level of support, but set that threshold below 50 percent, perhaps at 45. That way, runoffs would be reserved for elections in which a third-party candidate garnered significant support, not one in which a few gadflies chipped away enough of the frontrunner’s vote total to keep him or her below a majority.