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Posted on 11/09/2011 11:25:27 AM PST by freespirited
University of Virginia political prognosticator Larry J. Sabato isn’t optimistic about the chances of incumbent Democrat Edd Houck overcoming Republican challenger Bryce Reeves in the presumed recount in the race for the 17th State Senate District.
Houck finished election night the unofficial loser, down by 86 votes in a race that saw 44,986 votes cast in all, according to the Virginia State Board of Elections.
“In my experience 86 votes are tough to find when you’re looking for them,” Sabato said this morning, though he emphasized it’s not impossible they’ll turn up.
Control of the Virginia State Senate appears to hang on the race in the 17th. Control of the Senate would give Republicans both chambers of the General Assembly and the governorship.
In a statement released after midnight on election night, Houck’s campaign manager, Craig Bieber, described the race as “too close to call,” citing among issues that need to be resolved provisional ballots and “several significant discrepancies during Tuesday night’s tabulation.”
I agree with Sabato. The VAGOP will regain the Senate and they will gain more seats with redistricting in 2013. It sucks to be a Democrat.
So the GOP will control both legislatures in Virginia and North Carolina — and North Carolina will add a GOP governor to boot next year. Throw in South Carolina and you’ll have a clean GOP sweep of state government from Washington, D.C., to Charleston, S.C.
The latest tallies put Reeves even further ahead. We got two but it was clear from the results that there were several other targets we should be able to take in the future. Unless the VA GOP go stupid (and they have been known to do that) the future isn’t bright for Democrats in the state.
I’m sure they are all in mourning at the Daily Regress.
Where can I find the latest? I checked the Board of elections site and it still shows Reeves ahead by only 85 votes.
Reeves worked really hard. He deserves to win this.
86 votes? Stuart Smiley found 25,000.
Unhappily, redistricting has taken place, and the next general election for Virginia state senate won’t be until November, 2015.
The constitutional offices and the House of Delegates are the subject of the 2013 general election. The GOP won 67 seats in the House yesterday, plus independent Lacey Putney who caucuses with the GOP; the ‘Rat party only has 32 seats.
Wow, I didn’t realize Gordonsville was in this district. That’s where my grandfather was born.
Craig's Bieber was stunned.
Want to know how well the Democrat Senate did in their gerrymandered redistricting?
They won 20 our of 40 seats, for a 50/50 split.
IN those races, they won 40% of the vote, to the republicans’ 56% of the vote.
So the republicans beat them overall by 14% , but only came out even. By vote, you would expect 16 democratic seats, 23 republican seats, and 1 independent seat.
Of course, those numbers are somewhat skewed because the democrats didn’t run people in a lot of races.
I’ll do the same evaluation using the house races to see what the democrat/republican differential is. But since I have to enter the numbers manually (I think eventually there will be a nice csv file with the info), I might wait a while.
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