[CedarDave]

An aide to Sen. Conrad Burns (R) tells the Hotline this morning that Burns has no plans to concede the MT Senate race anytime soon. The aide said that 21K absentee ballots have yet to be counted and other counties still haven’t finished canvassing their regular returns. Democratic officials are confident that Jon Tester (D) will win.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1734746/posts

[conservative in nyc]

Yellowstone County supposedly counted the absentee ballots before counting other ballots and is now 100% reporting per CNN. I'm not sure how it worked in other places, but unless Burns' people are correct, he ain't winning.

There also seems to be some turnout discrepancy in certain areas - Gallatin, Lake and Yellowstone Counties have higher turnout than in 2000, yet many other counties do not, and the vote tally statewide lags. Whether this is because they haven't counted absentees or simply because more people voted in those areas is not clear.

I've yo-yoed on this race all day - at one point, it looked impossible for Burns win. Then, the extrapolations were looking good. Now, it looks downright impossible that he'd win unless the absentee votes are actually out and are from Republican-leaning areas. I'm NOT optimistic.