10:44 AM: Here's a link to the AJC where Martin claims a runoff is coming and Chambliss says 'Nuh-uh!'
http://www.ajc.com/...
Total votes cast in Georgia according to SoS is now 3.82 million for press, which is approaching 'not completely insane' in terms of turnout. I'd still expect it to be higher, but at least the website isn't making it look like we had flat turnout.
That being said, I wouldn't be surprised if Goergia breaks 4 or even 4.25 million votes. Looks like pres will tighten (to within 5?) and I'm pretty sure we'll have a runoff in December! Anybody know where we could find some volunteers for that?
10:12 AM: Probably the last update here, but you all will want to keep following.
First: Chambliss, at the current moment, has lost his majority! Looks like a runoff is all but certain.
SoS results: http://www.sos.georgia.gov/...
AJC article: http://www.ajc.com/...
Also, at around 4am last night Sasatlanta suggested that the reason it looks like more votes are in than have been counted may have to do with the database of who voted, though the votes themselves (hopefully) weren't impacted:
I had an interesting experience today that might shed light on this. We were volunteering in South Dekalb, and one of the things we did was prepare lists of folks who had not yet voted so we could go canvas and GOTV.
Well, we had a bunch of people say they already voted, some who had voted early. My job is to do all work related to Vote Builder, the on line tool that allows us to look up voters and do reports. When I looked these folks up in Vote Builder, they were marked as not having voted.
My next check was to go onto the Secretary of State Poll Locator which indicates if you voted early. Same result, these folks were all missing the text that indicated you had voted early.
I called our Obama Field Coordinator to explain this. We both agreed that there must be folks who voted early who had not made it into the early voting database. She said she was going to look into this, but never got back to me.
Maybe these are the same folks whose votes are not yet counted.
Hope this helps!
7:04 am update: Looks like they're not counting votes yet. That's fine, I'm going back to bed
3:45am new intro:
Kos looks to be keeping track of this on the main page, so let this die if need be. I'm going to sleep so if somebody in GA is still counting votes I won't be able to update for a few hours.
Right now here's where we stand:
- The AP and local Georgia press have called neither the presidential nor senate races. The media seems to have blown it - by a little and there's no harm no foul, but by a lot and we could see some fall out.
- The numbers aren't adding up. Looking at turnout trends, exit polls, and early voting there seem to have to be far more unaccounted for votes than the reporting makes it appear. No concrete reason why right now.
As of 3:50 am, Chambliss has 50.4 - lose that 4/10 of a point and we have a December run off. '98.7%' reporting may mean nothing if there are really a few hundred thousand ballots left to poke through, and based on numbers in neighboring states it may come to that. Happy news watching and good night all!
The rest of the post details the hunt for information... comment if you pick up on anything!
Info from the AP:
ATLANTA (AP) — Although John McCain already conceded the presidency to Barack Obama, reliably Republican Georgia had yet to tally an unknown number of early votes from heavily populated counties, complicating the process of awarding the state's 15 electoral votes.
With an unknown number of votes still to be counted, McCain had 53.6 percent and Obama 45.6 percent of the votes counted.
Georgia's closely watched Senate race was also too close to call early Wednesday, with incumbent Republican Saxby Chambliss leading Democratic challenger Jim Martin. With a third-party candidate also on the ballot, Chambliss needs a majority to avoid a runoff.
Article link: http://ap.google.com/...
Info from closer to 2am:
----
The external number is M 53.6 O 45.6 97.3% in. This one was called early in the night almost everywhere - is it closing? are there enough votes?
I'm going to dig deeper and update.
http://www.politico.com/...
Update 1:
Here are numbers. Something big is going on here:
Georgia 2004 total votes: 3,301,870
CNN 2008 vote: 3,370,436 with 97.3% of precincts reported
Georgia Secretary of State reported early voting (before November 4th): 2,020,839
This cannot be right. Turnout was up everywhere, as was the ground game. Something is going on here and I can't tell you what it is - but this might tighten or even switch.
The biggest effect may be on the senate race, where if Chambliss loses even .8% of his vote share we go to a run off!
Update 2:
here's a link to a story about this from the comments:
http://www.ajc.com/...
"With nearly 90 percent of the state’s precincts reporting, McCain had a huge lead: 56 percent to 44 percent for Obama... But those figures included fewer results from metro Atlanta and apparently none of the ballots cast in metro Atlanta during massive early and advance voting. More than 600,000 ballots cast before Tuesday in Cobb, Fulton, DeKalb and Gwinnett were to be counted after the live Tuesday votes.
"This left Obama’s Georgia team hopeful."
Yes, they are hopeful. So am I.
Update 3: more links to local press refusing to call Pres or Sen in Georgia and information about early votes from comments. Still no major, concise story about where this could go. Hello national media - your horse race senate race is going to come down to this! This is THE story of the night if we get a run off!
http://www.wsbtv.com/...
http://www.11alive.com/...
http://media.myfoxatlanta.com/...
http://www.cbs46.com/...
Update 4: Numbers coming in from... somewhere. Politico now has Chambliss is now up by just .3% - even if we don't win it, it looks like we'll get a run off. Lots of number crunching in the comments show that there are impossibly few votes counted.
Could there be a half a million out there somewhere?
Update 5: First time on Rec list! Thanks guys, let's keep this up. I doubt we'll get answers tonight as it's 2:30 am in Georgia (and in Ithaca where I am...). I'll keep with this and edit it as any information comes in. Keep posting - let's try to keep the tin foil hats off, but there's definitely something going on.
Update 6: 2:36 am - partial answers from the AP. I'm updating faster than I'm reading and internalizing, so forgive me if this comes across as rushed at all:
From the comments:
Posted 2:15 am eastern from the AP: http://ap.google.com/...
Apparently, early votes are dealt with on a COUNTY BY COUNTY basis, so some early votes were counted before the others and some weren't.
Looking at the numbers, I can guarantee you that Dekalb county (very dense and populated almost exclusively by African-Americans and lefty young white urbanites) was not among the counties to count early.
Georgia, how I love you...
Update 7: Thankfully I have nothing to do until noon or so tomorrow!
A comparison to North Carolina shamelessly taken from the comments:
North Carolina has just slightly fewer voters than Georgia. NC had 4.2 Million votes for President this election. Georgia should have at least that many! (It also rained in much of NC today and was sunny in Georgia)
(Note that Georgia now has 3.5ish million votes cast)
And yes, at 3:27 am eastern, having screamed my lungs out and barely able to keep my eyes open, Georgia is on my mind: