2006 Midterm Elections

Following will be my attempt to live blog a bit on tonights Elections and at the same time give a little bit of Canadian perspective on the results.

Who knows how successful it’ll be but hey, i’ll be watching TV all night, so might as well use my time to its’ fullest. 🙂

I’ll simply keep updating as the night goes on… Just click More to see the latest updates.

9:17PM PST – So the night is down to 4 races… for control of the Senate.  The Democrats need 3 of 4 to take the Senate.  The races are in:  Missouri, Montana, Tennessee, and Virginia.

At this moment, they are leading in Virginia and Montana… in Virginia.. with 99% reporting.. by only a few thousand votes!

In Montana, the lead is more solid, but only 22% of precincts are reporting so far.  In the other two races, the Republicans are winning by reasonable margins.  I’d say they’re likely to take both.  Though it was expected that Henry Ford Jr. would win Tennessee, it doesn’t appear to be happening.
8:51PM PST – It looks like the Democrats have really taken a lot of House seats. And the Senate right now is projected as “tied” which really means just that there are a bunch of Senate races that are too close to call.

I have to think that if the Democrats do manage to take the Senate, all it will do will be to create deadlock in Congress and in Washington. I just can’t see how President Bush will “relent” and pass Democratic bills. Oddly that might be a good thing in terms of Canadian trade. The Democrats are generally more protectionist and anti-free trade, so many think that their coming to power might cause trouble for Canadian exports. That said, Bush hasn’t exactly been a helping hand… his intransigence and unwillingness to show any diplomatic tact has really been a big part in the many stalemates in US-Canada relations.

Hopefully Democratic Congressmen, Senators, and perhaps more importantly, Governors will be more open to working on solutions to problems that affect us both.

8:22PM PST – I definitely recommend CPAC coverage. They’re taking calls from around the country. Have updated numbers and are going in and out to live feeds.

It looks like the Democrats will take the House. The Senate is still up for grabs according to the Networks. We’ll see what happens.

Some very good comments coming from callers (R, D and In).
8:20PM PST – OK this is starting to get on my nerves with this no coverage thing… thank god for CPAC!
8:00PM PST – I don’t have full cable, so I don’t have the benefit of CNN to get the “all news” perspective, but I still get all the American channels. So what the heck is going on here.. why are there no results on network TV. I got an hours worth on NBC, now I have to watch “Friday Night Lights”. What the HELL! There are results floating around eveywhere…
so what’s going on?

It’s odd. Just odd.
7:47PM PST – Note: I’m opened up comments tonight. Anyone please feel free to hit the comment thread and leave your opinion of things. I do encourage you to register so that you can leave comments after today… but for tonight, everything is wide open, spambots be damned! 🙂

7:26PM PST – I just want to say one thing right at the start of this… the first article I opened this morning at 6AM, was an article from CNN talking about problems with Electronic Voting Machines.

I have to say that I hope these machines just utterly crash and burn. As it appears many are doing… that, perhaps is the only possible way that voters and citizens and *gasp* Elections officials in the US might understand that no, it is *not* smart to rely on these machines. And maybe.. just MAYBE… there should be a national standard for Federal Elections.

As a Canadian, it just boggles my mind that there is so much stress and wasted effort going into these machines… when the whole issue could be solved by a simple pencil and paper.

The people who say “oh it’s just too complicated to count all the paper” or “oh there are too many candidates”… blah blah blah. THe solution, is more poll workers. Well tell me, why would any election in Canada be that much different than any election in the United States. You simply scale up the Election officials to handling the electorate from a population of 30 million, up to a population 300 million.

I hope this election solves that riddle for people.

7:12PM PST – Ok, so Election coverage has started here in the West. First Impressions… so far, what I’m seeing is a lot of Democratic Senators taking seats… 3 or 4 on last count according to NBC and CBC Newsworld.

In terms of Canadian impressions. It will be interesting to see the reaction of Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The US is, of course Canada’s largest trading partner, and vice versa. So whateve happens in these elections, it will be of consequence above the 49th parallel.

If Congress stays as is… then we can expect a tightening of the relationship between the White House and Prime Ministers Office… however, if the House goes Democratic, or, both the Senate and House flip, then surely the PMO will have to spend much more time talking to Democratic leaders about policy affecting the Canadian/American.

The key will be what will Canadians think the PMO should do. If the House goes Democratic then I think there will be pressure on Stephen Harper to turn a bit more of a cold shoulder to Bush and the Administration. It would likely be political suicide for him to be seen as cozying up to a US President who has been basically reprimanded through the midterms…

more later….

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