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. After the recount is finished, then the court challenges begin. This could go on for a while. Stay tuned.
http://ww2.startribune.com/news/metr...nt/msenco.html
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/fea...enged_ballots/
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.