So what's next for Harold Ford, Jr., now that his surprisingly strong challenge to GOP Senator-elect Bob Corker earned him national attention?

Sources tell Election Central that Ford is mulling a range of options, from a challenge to GOP Senator Lamar Alexander in 2008 to a possible talk show on CNN. The network has contacted Ford to discuss a possible on-air role, a source says.

A senior adviser to Ford says an Alexander challenge is "unlikely," because it would be a massive uphill struggle, but says it remains possible. "The typical Democratic performance in Tennessee is 43%, and we showed we can move the ball to 48%," the adviser says. "But Alexander has 30 years of good-will built up in Tennessee. The Alexander brand is strong. And the negativity thrown at Ford would be enormous, just as it was this time around. Ford had seven negative ads running against him at one time."

"I think it's accurate to say all options are on the table and no options are off," the adviser continues. "It's unlikely that he would challenge Lamar, but it's possible. He doesn't know what he wants to do."

A CNN talk show is also a possibility. On the morning after Ford's defeat on Election Day, CNN contacted Ford to explore the possibility of his becoming a talk show host, according to a source familiar with the discussions. "CNN's talent division contacted him three times before 10 A.M.," the source says. (A CNN spokesperson couldn't immediately be reached for comment.)

Ford is 36 years old.

Senator John McCain has launched his preliminary run for President, officially kicking off the 2008 Presidential race. A quick wrap-up of McCain news after the jump.

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Chuck Schumer -- one of the "architects," as it were, of the Dems' Senate takeover -- is confirming that he'll likely stay on as head of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee for another two years at Harry Reid's request. "I'm likely to take it," Schumer has just told The Politicker blog's Jason Horowitz, confirming an anonymously-sourced report in today's New York Post. The Post recaps some of Schumer's tactics:

* Controlling the hires of candidates' top campaign staff.

* Giving $1 million off the bat to vulnerable incumbents in red states to scare off Republican challengers.

* Signing off on campaign ads and requiring candidates respond within 24 hours of an attack against them.

The Post, predictably, also claims that Schumer's success was based on his pick of "moderate" Dems to knock off GOP incumbents. While it's true that Dem Bob Casey, who took out Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, is anti-abortion, Ohio Senator-elect Sherrod Brown is a strongly progressive economic populist, while Montana Senator-elect Jon Tester is an organic farmer who called for repeal of the Patriot Act. Schumer's success was in picking strong and aggressive candidates, not simply moderate ones.

No, the election isn't over yet. Here are a few of today's updates from the eight remaining as-yet-undecided House races:

CT-02: Dem Joe Courtney picked up one more vote after the first of 65 town-level recounts. Reviews of nearly a quarter million more votes are scheduled through Wednesday. [Courtney: 121,316; Simmons: 121,149]

FL-13: The recount is set to begin Wednesday. GOPer Vern Buchanan had a 373-vote lead in the initial count.

OH-15: Ohio election officials are delaying the count of over 9,000 provisional ballots by one day to avoid disrupting the popular Ohio State vs Michigan football game on Nov. 18. GOP Rep. Deborah Pryce currently leads Dem Mary Jo Kilroy by 3,536 votes.

WA-08: GOP Rep. David Reichert is still leading Dem Darcy Burner in this slow-counting state, but many votes remain to be tallied as the vast majority of voters cast ballots by mail. [Reichert: 87,062; Burner: 83,942]

You can read a full rundown of the yet-to-be called races here. Our TPM Election Scoreboard with up-to-date info on all the races' outcomes is here.

Here's your Election Central guide to the intraparty wars going on between ambtious GOPers battling for leadership slots in the wake of Tuesday's disastrous loss and the (sometimes forced) retirement of much of the 109th Congress' GOP leadership. The jockeying reflects an intense debate about why the GOP lost on Tuesday and what it must do to move forward. Elections are set for next week. View our guide after the jump.

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The new Democratic majority will quickly move to bring at least a token number of troops home from Iraq when Congress convenes in January, the Associated Press reports:

First stop next year will be legislation calling for an undetermined number of troops to come home immediately. Though Democrats are divided over exactly what to propose, they say their effort will send a loud political signal to disgruntled U.S. voters, and to Iraqis to assume more responsibility...

Aides say when the new Congress convenes in January, Democrats plan to call for troops to begin coming home from Iraq and to increase money for veterans and training special operations forces.

One interesting dynamic to watch: How Joe Lieberman -- who opposes withdrawal -- will react to such moves. His allies are struggling mightily to spin his win as a victory of the mainstream over extremism. Yet exit polls showed that an astonishing 63% of Connecticut voters favor withdrawing "some" or "all" troops from Iraq. Only 31% oppose withdrawal.

So: If some sort of vote for withdrawal comes to the floor, will Lieberman support the wishes of mainstream Connecticut, or will he vote against withdrawal, thereby representing less than a third of Connecticut voters?

"Our party does not suffer the affliction of being a boiling mad collection of fringe interests with notions so cockeyed that they ultimately rub each other raw and make average Americans cringe. Republicans will never be that."

— Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, describing the Democratic Party in an interview with Reuters.

If what happened on Election Day is any indication, however, "average Americans" don't "cringe" at the party's ideas at all. Exit polls show that the Dems won the popular vote with a clear majority, 53%-45%.

Atrios says:

That's the phrase coming out of the mouths of all good Washington pundits right now, that the Democrats must govern from the center.

I have no idea what that means, and nor do they. There was a time when the "political center" had some actual meaning and some genuine relationship to voter preference, but it's now a concept which has been redefined to be equated with the elite consensus. Centrism is sensible, sensible pundits are sensible, so whatever sensible pundits think is correct is the center. Magic!...

The truth is any agenda that the Democrats are likely to work on is entirely mainstream, and this would probably be true even if they had an 80 seat majority in the House and a veto-proof majority in the Senate. Whether or not this mainstream agenda will be judged as "centrist" by the sensible people who make such determinations I have no idea.

The unfolding battle right now is over who gets to decide what constitutes mainstream opinion.

In addition to what Atrios points out, right now what's galling about the calls that Dems govern from the "center" is that those presuming to dictate what the majority wants from Dems are the same people who said for months that Dems would be courting disaster if they dared question the "commander in chief's" conduct of the war on terror during wartime or if they embraced the "extreme" positions of backing a change of course or some sort of withdrawal from Iraq.

To indulge in a bit of oversimplification, Dems didn't listen to what these pundits were claiming was majority opinion, and instead listened to what the American people had to say about what their own opinions were. And it worked out pretty well for Dems, didn't it. Maybe there's a lesson in there somewhere about how seriously we should take those who are again telling us what mainstream opinion does or doesn't want from the Dem majority right now.

Here's a simple explanation for why the GOP got routed on Election Day: Republicans were insisting that American troops should stay in Iraq, but the voters strongly disagreed — they want out. Exit polls show that a solid majority of voters — 58% — voiced support for withdrawing "some" or "all" of the troops, while only 38% of voters supported keeping the same troop level or sending more. (No timeframe was given for withdrawal in the question.) And here's a look at voter support for withdrawal in states with key Senate races:

* Virginia: Withdrawal has a 52%-40% advantage

* Ohio: Withdrawal leads 57%-39%

* Virginia: Withdrawal is favored 52%-40%

* Missouri: Withdrawal is up 50%-44%

* New Jersey: Withdrawal 62%-32%

* Pennsylvania: Withdrawal 60%-36%

* Tennessee: Withdrawal 46%-41%

* Rhode Island: Withdrawal 69%-26%

* Montana: Withdrawal 50%-44%

* Maryland: Withdrawal 62%-32%

And here's the most mystifying one of all: In Connecticut, where the Senator who opposes withdrawal solidly beat back a challenger who supports it, voters back withdrawal by...63%-31%.

Lincoln Chafee may be the most popular Senator ever to not win re-election, exit polls suggest. The exits showed that despite the fact that voters elected Dem Sheldon Whitehouse to replace Chafee, some 63% of those same Rhode Island voters actually approved of Chafee's performance in office. So how did he manage to lose? The exits also show that 63% of voters wanted Democrats to control the Senate. Bottom line: Senator-elect Whitehouse's argument — that a vote for Chafee was a vote to keep the GOP in control of the Senate — worked.

There's an interesting debate bubbling away in the lib blogosphere over who should get more credit for the Dem win, the netroots or the DCCC's Rahm Emanuel. The reason the argument's noteworthy is that it roughly foreshadows some of the coming battles over who has cracked the secret code of how best Dems can convert the party's gains into a durable majority.

In the crudest of summaries, the battle essentially lines up like this: Some say the netroots deserve credit because they had the guts, foresight and online organizational clout to push quirky but principled candidates whose strongly articulated opinions slowly generated appeal among voters. Others point out Rahm's fundraising helped "netroots" candidates at least as much as the bloggers did, and note Rahm's successful pragmatic candidate-recruitment. A third school of thought holds there's plenty of credit to go around and the two camps actually complement each other.

A quick wrap-up of opinion on all sides of the argument after the jump.

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Evangelical leaders, including Focus on the Family head James Dobson, slammed the GOP during a post-election panel discussion today while claiming Democrats have "moved into the vacuum that the Republicans have left" for so-called values voters. "If the Republicans are not going to support those principles, then somebody else is," Dobson told the panel. "We've been harder today on the Republicans than we are on the Democrats because in fact it's the Republicans who dropped the ball here." Though there was much speculation that white evangelicals would abandon the GOP this year, they ended up voting for the GOP in similar numbers to 2004, while other religious groups cut more than usual towards Democrats.

The Christianity Today headline below just about says it all:

An interesting postscript on the Maryland Senate race: Exit polls suggest that the "white lie" phenomenon, in which more white voters tell pollsters that they'll vote for the black candidate than actually go through with it in the end, may have helped doom black Senate candidate Michael Steele. This is a phenomenon more often noted against Dems, of course, since African-American candidates are Democrats much more often than they're Republican, but in this case, it may have harmed GOPer Steele as well.

Steele lost by 10 points — a higher spread than some pre-election polls suggested. Exit polls show that white voters split their vote evenly between Cardin and Steele, well short of the percentage of whites that ordinarily back the GOP candidate in seriously contested races in Maryland. In pre-election polls, meanwhile, respondents were promising to vote for Steele at a higher rate: a Baltimore Sun poll from five days before the election had Steele leading Cardin among whites by seven points. So the Republican candidate may have been victimized by the "white lie" after all.

In a little-noticed episode right before the election, Karl Rove began laying the groundwork for some post-election spin should the GOP lose: Rove had his allies leak word that he was "privately frustrated that individual candidates have not been more aggressive in drawing contrasts with Democrats on national security." In other words, Rove was saying, if the GOP loses, it'll be the candidates' fault, not mine.

In today's Washington Post, GOP strategists are shown continuing with this post-election spin, again trying to shove off blame for Tuesday's catastrophic defeat onto individual candidates who apparently lost because they didn't heed the national party's advice closely enough.

More after the jump.

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The AP reports that GOP Sen. Craig Thomas, recently reelected, has been diagnosed with a form of leukemia. The 73-year old Thomas was hospitalized in the Washington area with pneumonia Tuesday night, when he was re-elected with 70-percent of the vote. We here at Election Central wish him a speedy recovery.

Update: Thomas's office released a statement, expressing optimism about his condition. Key quote:

It is expected that Thomas will be able to perform all duties of his office following treatment. Dr. Brian Monahan, Director of Hematology and Medical Oncology at the National Naval Medical Center, said “The majority of people with Craig’s great physical condition and general health attain remission.”

The current Dem pickup stands at 28 House seats, with no losses and 10 races still undecided. Here's where they are now:

Dem-Leaning:

CT-02: Dem challenger Joe Courtney has declared victory with an 167-vote edge, but the miniscule margin automatically triggers a recount. The 167-vote margin includes absentee and military ballots, but not provisional ballots, which need to be verified before being counted. The recount must be completed by midnight next Wednesday.

GA-12: Incumbent Dem John Barrow leads by less than 1,000 votes, with a recount being likely. Barrow has declared victory. If Dems hold this seat, they will have completely shut out the GOP on House, Senate and governorship pick-ups.

Republican-Leaning:

FL-13: The race for Katherine Harris's open seat is potentially going to the courts. Dem Christine Jennings trails by less than 400 votes, with reports of voting-machine problems.

NC-08: Down by 346 votes, Dem Larry Kissell is calling for a recount in his race against GOP Rep. Robin Hayes, who has already declared victory. Provisional ballots won't be counted until Nov. 17, and the official result will not be certified until Nov. 28. In North Carolina, recounts have traditionally favored the candidate who leads going in.

NM-02: GOP Rep. Heather Wilson leads by 1,395 votes, with provisional and absentee ballots yet to be counted.

OH-02: GOP Rep. Jean Schmidt has declared victory, but Dem Victoria Wulsin is waiting for all provisional ballots to be counted before conceding. Though a Wulsin victory is still a possibility, she seems to be facing a statistical uphill battle.

OH-15: With a lead of 2,835 votes GOP Rep. Deborah Pryce has declared victory, but Dem opponent Mary Jo Kilroy will not concede until some 20,000 uncounted absentee and provisional ballots are tallied, a sum which she feels could tilt the election towards her. Pryce has also announced she will not seek re-election for Chair of the House Republican Conference if she wins.

WA-08: GOP Rep. David Reichert holds a two-point lead over Dem Darcy Burner with three-fifths of the district's ballots now counted. If the final vote count ends with the candidates a half a percentage point or less apart, state law requires a recount.

WY-AL: Dem Gary Trauner, trailing Rep. Barbara Cubin by 970 votes, might request a recount after canvassing is completed. However, his current deficit is a few dozen votes larger than the margin that would provide for a state-paid recount. Cubin has declared victory.

Runoff:

TX-23: GOP Rep. Henry Bonilla fell short of 50 percent, and faces a runoff with former Dem Rep. Ciro Rodriguez

One key point that's been all but lost in the post-election coverage is this: The Dem routing of the GOP on Tuesday represents a huge vindication for those who demanded that Dems counterattack aggressively in the face of GOP national security attacks and stop scurrying for cover every time Karl Rove promised yet another "escalation" in such rhetoric.

No, I'm not talking about Rahm Emanuel, who was lionized at length today in the New York Times for aggressively taking on the GOP over Iraq. Rather, I'm talking about those who pushed for a fearless, genuinely oppositional Dem posture on national security issues early in the cycle, when it wasn't anywhere near as obvious as it became later that doing so would produce victory.

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Dems will control both Houses of Congress. According to MSNBC, the Associated Press is reporting that Conrad Burns has conceded the Montana Senate race to Senator-elect Jon Tester. Virginia Senator George Allen is expected to do the same at 3 P.M. today. From the New York Times:

Senator George Allen is expected to concede his re-election campaign against his Democratic challenger, Jim Webb, later this afternoon, according to two Republicans connected to the Allen campaign...

Many election analysts concluded that Senator Allen was unlikely to close the roughly 7,000 vote margin separating him from Mr. Webb, who has already claimed victory. And the Associated Press, a widely accepted authority for calling elections, agreed on Wednesday with Mr. Webb, declaring Mr. Allen, a Republican, the loser. A Webb victory gives the Democrats control of the Senate, with 51 seats.

A senior Allen adviser who spoke on condition of anonymity said on Wednesday that if the margin did not narrow significantly, Mr. Allen would not challenge the result.

It's just about over.

Robert Novak's election post-mortem:

The apparent Democratic takeover of both houses of Congress left Republicans stunned and divided, unable to comprehend that the nation's political realignment creating a GOP majority had crested and reversed. The confidence that relied entirely on a generously funded Election Day organization now looks like arrogance. The party's cocksure political mechanics simply could not believe the outcome as the results poured in.

Democrats capitalized on a mood that was not so much pro-Democrat as anti-Republican. Republican leaders are still in denial in the wake of their crushing defeat. They blame individual losing candidates for failing to prepare themselves for the election, but the real fault lies with the GOP's Washington establishment, which played its hand at Republican governance so disastrously that by Election Day Republicans could hardly get a cab ride anywhere in middle America.

Novak also brings up the interesting fact that all six GOP House members who left their seats to run for higher office — either for governor or the Senate — lost, while half their abandoned seats went to Democrats. His full post-mortem is here.

Gallup has just released its comprehensive analysis of post-election polling data, and it shows that a key reason Dems won was that in addition to enjoying solid base support, they also made important gains among whites, married voters and rural voters -- traditionally GOP-dominated groups -- as well as among independents. Says Gallup:

An analysis of Gallup's final pre-election poll data shows that the Democratic victory in Tuesday's House elections was because of a rising Democratic tide that lifted support in almost all key subgroups. In addition to solid support from their core constituent groups such as liberals, nonwhites, women, urban residents, and older Americans, Democrats also owe a significant debt to independent voters, who tilted strongly in their direction. Whites and those who are married -- groups that usually favor the Republican Party -- were evenly divided in their vote. Democrats did better among rural voters, a change from previous voting patterns.

Opposition to the Iraq war appears to have helped the Democratic cause. Although supporters and opponents of the war voted about equally for the Republican and Democratic parties, respectively, the fact that opponents outnumbered supporters made Iraq a net-plus for Democrats. In general, it appears that Democratic efforts to get out the vote played a significant part in the win, because those who were contacted by Democrats and urged to vote for Democratic candidates strongly supported Democrats, even if they were also contacted by Republicans.

Key stats: Nearly half of whites and married voters voted Dem this year, more than in previous years. Even more interesting, some 55% of both rural and urban voters chose Dems -- whereas in past years rural voters were significantly less likely to vote Dem than urban voters were.

Gallup's full analysis here.

Good times! These are the good times! Leave your cares be-hind. These are the good times! Good times! These are the good times! Our new state of mind. These are the good times!

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As noted below, it seems likely conservative criticism will multiply should GOP Senator George Allen pursue a recount against Dem James Webb, because such a move could subject the GOP to more damage at a moment of extreme political vulnerability.

First the conservative blog Redstate.com slammed Allen for entertaining the idea. Now check out what James Taranto of the right-wing OpinionJournal.com has to say today about Allen's quixotic recount quest. Taranto says that it's not only unbecoming, but destined to fail, and calls the race for Webb:

The Democrats also will take a 51-49 majority in the Senate, having won every close race except in Tennessee--though it may be awhile before that's official, depending on whether Virginia's George Allen decides to take his razor-thin loss gracefully like Richard Nixon or brutishly like Al Gore.

Since a comparison to Al Gore is among the very worst insults Taranto could possibly dream up to throw at someone -- and since Taranto intends a comparison to Richard Nixon as something apparently to be desired -- this doesn't leave much room for doubt. Taranto is blasting the Allen recount idea, and should Allen continue with it, my bet is more conservatives will follow suit.

A bit more on this question of whether George Allen will really request a recount now that he's trailing Dem Jim Webb by some 7,000 votes.

RedState.com, the conservative blog, is now calling on Allen not to request a recount. The blog reports that "the RNC is mobilizing lawyers and publicists and whatnot to fight a protracted battle down in Virginia," and warns: "Let's not re-do Florida in 2000."

Under Virginia law, a recount wouldn't take place until next month, because it can't even be requested, let alone begin, until the official vote canvas happens and the vote count is certified, which would happen on Nov. 27. That means weeks would go by with control of the Senate hanging in the balance. The Allen camp is saying they won't make up their mind on the recount until they see some of the new numbers from the official canvas.

Let's be clear on a few things about this.

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During his victory speech last night in one of tightest — and dirtiest — races in the country, Jim Webb just couldn't resist one last stab at George Allen's personal character. After assuring supporters that the remaining votes would go their way, he added, "This is a great moment for all of us who believe in an inclusive society."

Will GOP Senator George Allen, who's currently trailing Dem Jim Webb by about 7,000 votes, request a recount, thus dragging out the question of who will control the Senate for at least another month? It seems that will depend on what kind of numbers come in for Allen after the official canvas is complete. Today's Richmond Times-Dispatch reports:

A senior advisor to George Allen's Senate campaign said Allen would wait until after the vote is official later this month to decide whether to seek a recount.

Ed Gillespie said Jim Webb was leading Allen by about 7,000 votes this morning, or about .3 percent of the total votes cast. He said that could change during the official canvas that is starting today in localities around the state. He said it is likely some vote totals will change as mistakes in tabulating totals are discovered....

"We'll want to see how the canvassing turns out" before deciding on whether to ask for a recount, he said.

It seems likely that the Allen camp has come to terms with the fact that a recount would almost certainly fail to overturn Webb's current 7,000-vote lead, and Allen probably won't ask for one unless the numbers shift substantially in Allen's favor. In other words, game's almost over -- Dems look like they're about to take the Senate, too. Or, as Webb put it late yesterday, "the votes are in, and we won."

And then there was one? The MSNBC, the Associated Press, and the Billings Gazette are all calling the Montana Senate race for Dem Jon Tester. Tester will give his victory speech at 11 a.m. Mountain Time, according to the Gazette. His current lead is now beyond even the 0.5% margin under which the Burns campaign could opt to pay for a recount. Burns hasn't conceded, but if and when he gives up and makes that difficult congratulatory call to Tester, that will leave one last GOP Senator — George Allen — between Dems and control of the Senate.

Update: The Times calls it for Tester, too.

Though the Democrats have conclusively gained control of the House with a pick up of at least 27 seats, 13 races have yet to be officially called by at least two major news sources. Here's why:

Update: CNN and NBC have both called GA-08 for Dem Rep. Jim Marshall and PA-06 for GOP Rep. Jim Gerlach.

Update 2: In PA-08, GOP Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick concedes.

* CT-02: Democrat Joe Courtney leads, but still too close to call, waiting for a recount. A Courtney victory would be another Dem pick up.

* FL-13: GOPer Vern Buchanan declared victory in this race to succeed GOP Rep. Katherine Harris, but Dem Christine Jennings won't concede until a recount, which won't be completed until Nov. 18. Voting problems are suspected to have occurred in the district.

* GA-08: Dem Rep. Jim Marshall leads GOPer Mac Collins by 2,048 votes — outside the 1% recount zone — but the race won't be certified until Friday. Called for Marshall.

* GA-12: Dem Rep. John Barrow declared victory, but it has not been confirmed by GA election officials due to server problems in one county.

* NC-08: GOP Rep. Robin Hayes declared victory, but a recount is expected as he only leads Dem Larry Kissell by 468 votes. A Kissell victory would be a surprise pick up for the Democrats.

* NM-01: No winner declared in this close race where provisional and absentee ballots are still waiting to be counted. A victory by Patricia Madrid would be another pick up for the Dems.

* OH-02: Dem Victoria Wulsin has refused to concede, but GOP Rep. Jean Schmidt leads by slim margin.

* OH-15: Fox News called it for GOP Rep. Deborah Pryce, but Dem Mary Jo Kilroy will not concede, waiting for absentee ballots to be counted.

* PA-06: The Philadelphia Inquirer has called it for GOP Rep. Jim Gerlach, but no other official source has followed suit. Called for Gerlach.

* PA-08: Dem Patrick Murphy declared victory, but GOP Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick refuses to concede. A Murphy victory would be another Dem pick up. Fitzpatrick concedes.

* TX-23: There will be a run-off election between GOP Rep. Henry Bonilla and Dem Ciro Rodriguez because Bonilla failed to win more than 50% of the vote.

* WA-08: GOP Rep. David Reichert leads Dem Darcy Burner, but more than 10,000 absentee ballots still need to be counted.

* WY-AL: Race between GOP Rep. Barbar Cubin and Dem Gary Trauner is too close to call and a recount is expected. A Trauner victory would be another Dem pick up.

Election Central just spoke with Bowen Greenwood, communications director for the Secretary of State's office in Montana, and we got a quick primer on Montana's recount law. If the margin is within 0.25% — Tester's current lead is higher than this, at 0.43% — the losing candidate can request a state-paid recount. If the gap is above 0.25% and less than 0.50%, as with Burns's current gap, the Burns campaign could post a bond to pay the full cost of a recount, which would be refunded if they won and forfeited if they lost.

According to the Washington Post, the recount law in Virginia is similar, but the threshholds are different — a state-paid recount is provided for a margin of less than 0.5%, while a candidate can post a bond and request a recount if the margin is less than 1%.

Here's a statement just out from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee on the Montana and Virginia races:

Both Jon Tester and Jim Webb have won their races in Montana and Virginia but want to make sure that every vote is counted. We expect to have official results soon but can happily declare today that Democrats have taken the majority in the U.S. Senate.

Notes on the situation and process below... 

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Here's that video of Jim Webb addressing his supporters, shortly after they had taken the lead and a somber George Allen had already spoken to his own supporters about the ongoing count. Note that S.R. Sidarth (of Macaca fame) is one of the people standing onstage behind Webb.

With a recount looking likely in the race between Dem Jim Webb and GOP Senator George Allen, it looks as if we may not know who won the Virginia Senate race -- and possibly which party controls the Senate -- until next month. This morning's New York Times reports:

While a recount seems likely, though, if it comes it will not come quickly.

According to a statement issued this month by the state’s Board of Elections, no request for a recount may be filed until the vote is certified, which is scheduled to happen this year on Nov. 27th.

After certification, a losing candidate has 10 days to file a recount request in the state courts. The petition will be considered by a panel made up of the Chief Judge of the Circuit Court in Richmond and two judges appointed by the Chief Justice of the state Supreme Court. Those judges then set out guidelines for conducting the recount...Last year, a recount involving the race for state attorney general did not begin until Dec. 20th.

Webb is leading Allen by around one-third of a percentage point with 99.75% precincts reporting, meaning it's all but certain that Allen will be entitled to a recount. See you next month.

Some new numbers out of Montana this morning: With 96% of precincts in, Jon Tester is clinging to the narrowest of leads — 1,556 votes. Still remaining to be counted: About two-thirds of remaining ballots in Gallatin County, where Burns looks to have a slim to nonexistent lead, as well as a meager six percent of precincts in Yellowstone County, where Burns appears to be narrowly ahead. There is also one rural county, Meagher, which has not reported any ballots as of yet. In other words: We may be looking at a Montana recount. As if Virginia weren't enough.

Update: With 99% of precincts reporting, including all of Gallatin County, Tester's lead over Burns has now crept up to 1,586 votes.

Here they are, all 27 of them:

* AZ-05
* AZ-08
* CA-11
* CO-07
* CT-05
* FL-16
* FL-22
* IA-01
* IA-02
* IN-02
* IN-08
* IN-09
* KY-03
* KS-02
* MN-01
* NC-11
* NH-01
* NH-02
* NY-19
* NY-20
* NY-24
* OH-18
* PA-04
* PA-07
* PA-10
* TX-22
* WI-08

And it could turn out to be 28, depending on the outcome of the pending recount of CT-02.

Update: A commenter points out that Dem Patrick Murphy is hanging on to a 1,521-vote lead in PA-08 over GOP Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick with 100 percent of precincts reporting. So the Dem pickup could reach 29.

Dem Diane Farrell has edged into a lead over GOP Rep. Chris Shays. Farrell leads Shays 51%-48% with 48% precincts reporting.

CNN projects that Dems have won the House of Representatives. "They will be the majority in the House of Representatives," Wolf Blitzer says.

CNN just called Dem Kirsten Gillibrand over GOPer John Sweeney, Dem Gabrielle Giffords over GOPer Randy Graf and Dem Ron Klein over GOPer Clay Shaw. Two seats to go for Dems to win the House.

As Atrios would say, Bye Mike. CNN and NBC call it for Dem Ben Cardin. Dems have held on to the two at-risk Dem seats -- Jersey and Maryland. Now that Dems have knocked off both Ohio Senator Mike DeWine and Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, that means Dems are four seats away from taking the Senate.

Dem Sherrod Brown has successfully ousted GOP incumbent Mike DeWine, CNN says. With New Jersey safe, that means five Senate seats to go for Dems.

Update: Santorum goes down in Pennsylvania. Four seats to go for Dems.

CNN calls it: Dem Senator Robert Menendez defeats GOP challenger Tom Kean, Jr.

Kenneth Blackwell is finished. CNN's Wolf Blitzer just said the network is projecting that Dem Ted Strickland has won the race to be Ohio's next Governor.

Virginia Senator George Allen tried to make Dem Jim Webb's treatment of women a central issue in the campaign, attacking Webb on the stump and in ads for his allegedly misogynic fiction writings and his essays about the problems of having women in military academies. But CNN's exit polls are finding that these attacks may have failed: They find that Webb is winning over Allen among women 56%-43%.

The Associated Press has just posted a piece on its exit polls, and just like CNN's exit polls found, AP is finding that corruption is a key issue driving voters today. AP's exit numbers are also finding a surprisingly high number of evangelicals going Dem, a trend that many political analysts noted early in the cycle:

Those early exit polls also showed that three in four voters said corruption was very important to their vote, and they tended to vote Democratic. In a sign of a dispirited GOP base, most white evangelicals said corruption was very important to their vote — and almost a third of them turned to the Democrats.

AP also finds, unsurprisingly, that voters are heavily driven by the Iraq war:

Two out of three voters called the war very important to them and said they leaned toward the Democrats, while six in ten voters said they disapproved of the war. About the same number said they were dissatisfied with the president — and they were far more likely to vote Democratic.

Only two areas were keeping their polling places open late to compensate for delays and problems earlier in the day, we reported earlier.

Now a third -- Ohio's Cuyahoga County -- will extend voting hours for its residents, because of "technical glitches an delays in opening," the Cleveland Plain Dealer is reporting.  Voters there will have until 9 p.m. local time to cast their ballot.

ABC News has just released some exit poll numbers, and strong majorities of today's voters disapprove of both President Bush and the Iraq war:

Preliminary exit poll results indicate that nearly six in 10 voters today disapprove of the way President Bush is handling his job.

About four in 10 approve. That's down from 53 percent approval in 2004, and 67 percent just before the 2002 midterm elections.

About four in 10 "strongly" disapprove of the president's work, more than double the number of strong approvers.

Intensity of sentiment for and against, by contrast, was about equal in 2004: Thirty-three percent strongly approved of the president's performance, and 35 percent strongly disapproved. And in 2002, strong approvers dominated, quite a contrast from today.

The war in Iraq is a serious concern. In preliminary exit poll results, nearly six in 10 voters disapprove of the war, while about four in 10 approve. Approval of the war was higher, 51 percent, in the 2004 election. And about four in 10 now "strongly" disapprove of the war, up from 32 percent two years ago.

A glance at PM election stories shows voters are coming out in record numbers, at least in states with tight races:

Virginia: "A state elections official says reports from around Virginia early Tuesday indicated an extraordinarily high turnout for a midterm election- with perhaps 65 percent of registered voters expected to cast ballots. That would double the midterm turnout in 2002." (AP)

Missouri: "Election officials raced across St. Louis to deliver additional voting machines as exceptionally high turnout at many polling places led to long lines and short tempers. . . . 'We've never had this kind of turnout -- ever,' St. Louis Board of Election Supervisors Matt Potter said[.]" (WSJ)

Montana: “'The line for late registration is a good hour wait,' Missoula County Clerk and Recorder Vickie Zeier said at 1:15 p.m. Tuesday. 'There are so many people, it’s unbelievable.' . . . Elsewhere in Missoula County, polling places were reporting heavy traffic." (Missoulian)

Tennessee : "Even in rainy Tennessee, officials are noting a nearly 50 percent jump in turnout over the 2002 midterms." (AP)

Is corruption in Washington, D.C., the dominant issue driving voters at the polls today? That's what CNN's exit polls are showing, according to Wolf Blitzer and Bill Scheider, who are chatting about their exit numbers on TV as we speak. Scheider just said that 42% of voters cited "corruption in Washington" as the issue which is "extremely important" to them. If true, this would obviously bode ill for the GOP, given the string of GOP officials facing investigation or indictment and given the fact that the GOP runs the place.

Other issues right up there with corruption, according to CNN's exits: terrorism, the economy, and Iraq. (The numbers don't add up to 100% because voters gave multiple answers). One other interesting tidbit: An overwhelming amount of voteres (62%) say national issues are motivating them, while around half that (33%) say local issues are. In whose favor would that play?

The Greater Danbury News Times has just reported that there's massive, massive, massive voter turnout in Connecticut:

Some 70 percent of the registered voters will go to the polls today, according to Connecticut Secretary Susan Bysiewicz.

By comparison, 56 percent of the state’s voters cast ballots four years ago, Bysiewicz said.

"We only had 5 hours of voting this morning and we’ve already at nearly 30 percent in some cities," she said.

All eyes, of course, are on not just how this will impact the Senate race, but also how it will affect efforts to dislodge GOP Reps. Chris Shays, Rob Simmons and Nancy Johnson. Some 86,000 new voters have been registered since May 1. Anybody have any idea what the party I.D. breakdown is?

Update: Possible record turnout in Virginia, too.

Late update: More on those new voters. According to the New Haven Register, of 74,000 of those new voters only 14.3% are Republican.

Later update: Here are some more numbers on those new voters. From the Associated Press:

More than 86,000 residents registered to vote between May 1 and Tuesday, the deadline. Of those new voters, 38 percent are Democrats, 15 percent are Republicans and 47 percent are unaffiliated, state officials said.

Late openings at polling places and other problems have caused long delays for voters across the country today, leading some groups to call for delayed closings at certain trouble spots.

Despite that, only two precincts are currently known to be postponing their end time.

Voters in Illinois' Kane County will have until 9:30 PM local time to vote, according to Chicago's CBS-2 News. That gives voters an extra half-hour. Indiana's Delaware County also extended its voting hours, until 8:40 local time.

Officials in Cook County, Ill., Colorado, Florida, Utah and Pennsylvania have been asked to grant extra time for voters to go to the polls, according to the non-partisan Election Protection pollwatching coalition. So far, none has agreed to do so.

The campaign of GOP Senator Conrad Burns had a curious reaction to a local paper's decision to write an article about a poll showing Burns down: It lashed back at the newspaper, yanking its credentials to cover Burns' election night event. Making matters even stranger, the paper, the Great Falls Tribune, hadn't even comissioned the poll. It was done by U.S.A. Today and found Dem Jon Tester leading Burns 50%-41%. The paper simply wrote a story about it. But a Burns spokesman defended the punishment: ""Running a bogus poll on the day before an election to try and suppress Republican voter turnout is irresponsible," he said. More after the jump.

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So by now the Cook Political Report, CQ Politics, and the Rothenberg Political Report have all made their final predictions. We here at Election Central thought it would be interesting to look at which races they agree on. So we drew up a chart indicating which assessments are shared by at least two of the three analysts. The result? The analysts agree that an astonishing 43 GOP-held seats are either toss-ups or are tilting towards the Dem. Update: It's actually 44 seats. Check out our full chart after the jump.

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The book that Washington Post political editor John Harris co-wrote with Mark Halperin -- called "The Way to Win" -- was very flattering to Karl Rove. So it would be interesting to hear what Harris thinks of some disparaging comments about the Post's political coverage that Rove just made in an interview with Hugh Hewitt. Via Tristram Shandy, here's what Rove said:

HUGH HEWITT: And Virginia, you’re confident about [GOP Senator George] Allen? Because Democrats would have us believe that Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio are lost.

KARL ROVE: Well, you know, it’s interesting. The Washington Post, you’ve got to remember the mindset. Most of the people who are commenting on these races live inside the Beltway, and get the coverage of the Washington Post. The Washington Post coverage of Virginia is so elitist, it’s unbelievable.

More on Rove's interview after the jump, where he twists the facts in a phony attack on the Times.

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Reader PW writes:

My wife just came home from voting here in Webster Groves MO. She used the electronic touch-screen voting system. . . She touched Claire McCaskill's picture and the machine recorded a vote for Jim Talent. She then called one of the people running the polling center who helped her correct the problem. My wife then had to call the person over another time after it recorded her vote a Republican again. In her frustration she asked the person who was responsible for the design of this system. The polling person leaned in very close to my wife and whispered, "We're f----d."

The Missouri Senate race is perhaps the closest in the country, and polls are being watched very closely, by both sides, for any errors or malfeasance.

Reader GA writes:

I live in Montclair NJ, heavy Democratic territory. Went to vote at 10:30 am; the two electronic voting machines for my district (Ward 3, District 5) and the neighboring District which votes in the same location (Ward 3, District 3) were both broken. [Poll workers said] both had been operational at the open but broke when people tried to put in write-in candidates. . . . I was handed an emergency ballot and had to fill it out in the open room. Not enough pens to go around and it does not look like there are enough emergencey ballots on hand for the rest of the day.

BlueJersey.com reports voting machine troubles in Montclair, as well as in North Plainfield, Bloomfield and elsewhere.

The Denver Post reports:

Election day in Denver began with long lines, as computer problems appeared to make it difficult for workers at vote centers to check registrations against the master list.

By 8 a.m., lines stretched up to a city block at places like the Colorado Convention Center, Corona Presbyterian Church and Denver Botanic Gardens.

At the Convention Center, though 100 people stood in line, only 25 percent of the voting machines were in use at any given time, as poll workers tried to get verification of voter registration from computers that were frequently down.

Dejected downtown workers attempting to vote before work could be seen walking away from the polls as the line barely moved.

A TV ad running through Election Day on local Illinois stations against Dem House candidate Tammy Duckworth is urging voters to express their views on higher taxes by calling Duckworth -- at her home. The ad, which includes Duckworth's home number at the end, is being paid for by the Free Enterprise Fund -- you remember, that third-party group funded by Swift Boat bankroller Bob Perry that recently ran those delightful ads in Montana attacking Dems as "Brokebank Democrats." A Duckworth adviser tells Election Central that soon after the ad went up on the air, her home phone started ringing virtually nonstop -- until Duckworth disconnected it and plugged the line into a fax machine.

More voting problems -- this time in Pennsylvania. From the Election Protection coalition's morning update email:

Poll monitors encountered countywide problems with voting machines in Allegheny County, where machines were not working and there was a lack of paper or provisional ballots—long lines resulted, with some voters leaving polling places without voting. EP officials were following up with election officials to resolve the problems. Additional voting machine-related delays were reported in Philadelphia and in Lebanon County.

GOP Rep. Ron Lewis hasn't faced a seriously competitive race since he first ascended to the House in 1994, but Lewis' rusty campaign skills and a tough challenge from Dem Mike Weaver have combined to make a Dem upset a suddenly distinct possibility in this western-Kentucky district, CQ Politics reports. CQ has now changed its rating of the race from "Likely Republican" to "Leans Republican," meaning a surprise Dem victory is s "plausible possibility" in this district, which President Bush carried by 65% in 2004. Key reasons: Lewis' failure to engage Weaver early on; the dominance of Iraq; and Weaver's refusal to commit support to Nancy Pelosi as speaker. CQ's full analysis here.

From the Election Protection coalition's morning update email:

EP volunteers and the EP hotline received widespread [reports] of voting machine problems leading to delays, as well as problems with confusion implementing the state’s photo ID requirement. Additionally, one polling place opened late because of an overnight break in. A local TV station aired footage of Congresswoman Jean Schmidt’s battle with an optical scan voting machine, which repeatedly rejected her ballot.

Dem Jon Tester -- complete with flattop haircut, wide grin, and hunting gun -- offers his closer: "I'll always do my best to make Montana proud -- because the fact is, right here, right now, we need Washington to look a lot more like Montana. I ask for your vote on Tuesday."

Yesterday's Gallup poll shows Tester leading GOP incumbent Conrad Burns by nine points -- 50%-41% -- though the race has tightened considerably in recent days.

In this morning's Roll Call, Stuart Rothenberg speaks to some GOP insiders and finds that they've got that losing feeling in a big way:

Even the most optimistic Republican insiders I can find seem to think a loss of 18 or 19 seats is inevitable, while others counter that a loss of more than 30 is more likely. Most GOP insiders would be ecstatic if the party held its losses to two dozen or less.

Rothenberg predicts Dems will win with 30-36 House seats and four to seven in the Senate. His full analysis after the jump.

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Do you know what today is?

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Charlie Cook's final predictions are in. He sees Dems picking up 20-35 House seats and 4-6 Senate seats, and he doesn't think much of assessments which say the race for Congress is tightening:

Going into Election Day, we see a 20-35 seat gain for Democrats in the House, a four to six seat gain for Democrats in the Senate and a six to eight seat gain for Democrats in the governor's races.

All Monday there was considerable talk that the national picture had suddenly changed and that there was a significant tightening in the election. This was based in part on two national polls that showed the generic congressional ballot test having tightened to four (Pew) and six (ABC/Wash Post) points.

Seven national polls have been conducted since Wednesday, November 1. They give Democrats an average lead of 11.6 percentage points, larger than any party has had going into an Election Day in memory. Even if you knock five points off of it, it's 6.6 percentage points, bigger than the advantage that Republicans had going into 1994.

Stuart Rothenberg, meanwhile, is predicting Dem gains of 30-36 House seats and 4-7 Senate seats. We'll see who's right tomorrow.

Despite the tanking domestic auto industry and GOP candidate Dick DeVos' $40 million in campaign spending, Dem Governor Jennifer Granholm has edged out of trouble in the home stretch of her reelection campaign, CQ Politics reports. CQ has just changed its rating of her race from "No Clear Favorite" to "Leans Democratic." "Granholm notes that the auto industry’s problems and the state’s overreliance on the carmakers greatly predate her election as governor in 2002," CQ says. "She also contends that national economic factors — including policies pursued by the Republican Bush administration — have contributed to the state’s problems." It appears to be working. CQ's full analysis here.

So it looks as if Karl Rove has gotten himself into a bit of a snit over Charlie Crist, the GOP gubernatorial candidate who canceled a last minute event rather than be seen in the presence of President Bush and his mid-thirties approval rating. From Reuters:

"All I know is that yesterday morning they apparently made a decision that, rather than being with the governor and the president and 10,000 people in Pensacola, they made it a last-minute decision to go to Palm Beach," Rove told reporters.

"Let's see how many people show up in Palm Beach on 24 hours notice versus eight or nine thousand people in Pensacola," Rove said.

Rove knows what an awful message Crist's snub of the Prez sends to Republican activists, advisers to candidates, and even voters across the country. No wonder he's pissed.

Robert Novak's final predictions are in -- he foresees Dems taking the House with 19 seats, but falling short in the Senate with a gain of only two seats (Dems will win Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Montana, he says, but will lose Maryland), a considerably lower number than most other analysts predict. His reasons:

1. The first is an arrogant and politically tin-eared Republican establishment in Washington. In the handling of key issues such as the occupation of Iraq, the response to Hurricane Katrina, and a meaningful follow-through on Social Security reform, the White House displayed incompetence. Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, Republicans encouraged practices (such as earmarking in the appropriations process) that let corruption run free.

2. Last, but not least, comes the brilliant candidate recruiting and fundraising on the part of two men – Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) Chairman Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) Chairman Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).

Novak's full analysis here.

Though as late as the end of October the race between GOPer Jim Gibbons and Dem candidate Dina Titus was tipping towards Gibbons, it now appears to be slipping back the other way, CQ Politics reports. CQ has changed its rating of the race from "Leans Republican" to "Toss Up," a reflection less of any surge by Titus and more "the result of highly publicized controversies," CQ says. These controversies include allegations that Gibbons threatened to rape a drinks companion, charges of cronyism, and an alleged illegal nanny in the '80s. "Every poll taken since the controversies erupted has shown Gibbons’ lead diminished to within the margin of error," CQ says, paraphrasing a local expert. CQ's full analysis here.

Is the Tennessee Senate race really over? The newest polls show the race evening out, and the behavior of the parties themselves show continuing suspense about it. Going into the home stretch of a campaign, you can tell a lot about the parties' priorities by where they send their big guns. Yesterday, both Corker and Ford held rallies featuring some considerable starpower: Bob Corker's rally featured John McCain, while Harold Ford Jr. brought in Barack Obama. So apparently the Dems think an appearance by Obama could potentially fire up supporters to win the race, while the Corker campaign felt the need to bring in McCain to secure their current lead.

As the midterm elections enter their final hours, we're presenting here a montage of this campaign's most memorable visual examples of the exploitation of 9/11 by the GOP and its allies. These images constitute a kind of campaign epilogue. Because if the GOP loses its majority tomorrow, it may in part be because the party's ability to harnass 9/11 -- to exploit 9/11's emotional power to to propel the story the party's been trying to tell from President Bush's choreographed bullhorn moment atop the smoking rubble right on up through his most recent speeches -- has finally run out of steam for good.

The GOP has long done its best to use lingering trauma from 9/11 -- and whatever bond President Bush was able to create with the electorate by identifying himself with it -- to persuade Americans to give GOP leadership the benefit of the doubt despite its many and glaring failures. But Iraq, Katrina, corruption, the failure to catch Osama bin Laden, and many other failures of leadership -- not to mention the aggressive if belated efforts of Dems to strike back hard at the GOP's 9/11-related mythmaking -- may have finally broken the GOP's 9/11 spell. For the GOP, 9/11 may be a spent force.

View our exploitation-of-9/11 collection after the jump.

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And the winner of the editorial sweepstakes in the Connecticut sweepstakes is...Joe Lieberman. Of 14 Connecticut newspaper endorsements tallied by Election Central, Lieberman got 10, while only 4 have gone to Lamont (though he did win the support of the New York Times twice):

Lieberman:

The Hartford Courtant
The Day
County Times (not online)
The Norwich Bulletin
The New Haven Register
The Connecticut Post
The Greenwich Time
Newtown Bee
Stamford Advocate
Republican-American

Lamont:

Danbury News Times
Lakeville Journal
Meridan Record-Journal
Westport News

CNN reports that George Allen will close out his campaign — arguably the worst run by an incumbent Senator this cycle — with a two-minute, prime-time address to the people of Virginia. It will be his third such address since this became a serious race, and he will be flanked by Sen. John Warner as he was in the second one. The last two addresses failed to stop the bleeding of his poll numbers, but this could this last one provide the small boost he needs to survive, or will it instead be seen as a sign of further weakness?

Here are a few of the last big-money expenditures by the parties as we head into the final hours of the midterm elections:

* The NRCC dropped $1,647,295.65 into 36 races in 23 states on Friday. Key stat: A startling $1,066,400.61 of that was pumped into negative ads attacking Dem Tammy Duckworth in the district being vacated by Rep. Henry Hyde. And $269,520.20 went into ads targeting Dem candidate Harry Mitchell in Arizona.

* The RNC dropped $275,000 into ads targeting Dem Jack Davis, who's challenging Foley-stained Rep. Tom Reynolds.

* The DCCC sank $597,019.81 into 25 House races in 15 states, mostly on final-stretch activities like phone-banks and mailings. Some $199,625.25 went on an ad targeting Colorado Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, and another $99,812.25 went to ads slamming New York GOP Rep. Jim Walsh.

More numbers are coming in showing Dems with a sizeable lead over the GOP going into Election Day. The latest? A Fox News poll released today finds that Dems are leading the GOP by 13 points in the generic Congressional matchup, 49%-36%. Key stats: President Bush's approval rating is stuck at 38%; nearly equal numbers of voters think either Dems or Republicans would keep the country safe from terrorism; and a full third of Republicans say "most Republicans in Congress do not deserve reelection."

This GOP mailing is pretty impressive: It's the first we've yet seen that manages to link a Dem to Nazis, child rapists and gay Boy Scouts all in one shot. It was sent out by GOP Rep. John Doolittle, who's facing an unexpectedly stiff challenge from Dem foe Charlie Brown:

The mailing attacks Brown for being a member of the ACLU -- and, yes, the cliche "card carrying" does make an appearance -- charging that the group has defended Nazis, groups that allegedly coach child molesters and even the rights of gay kids to join the Boy Scouts. View the rest of the mailer after the jump -- and don't miss the skinhead with a tatoo of a swastika on his neck.

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GOP Rep. Nancy Johnson is touting an appearance with the President to shore up her sagging political fortunes -- President Bill Clinton, that is. Her official Web site is displaying a pic of her with the former President from October, when he came to Danbury to applaud students for donating charity to tsunami victims. Incidentally, Johnson -- who's trailing Dem challenger Chris Murphy by small margins in polls -- voted to impeach Clinton in 1998, charging: "No one is above the law, not even the President." View the pic touted by Johnson below:

To our knowledge Johnson is now the second GOPer to tout ties to Clinton and his 70 percent approval rating: Embattled Florida GOP Rep. E. Clay Shaw, who also voted to impeach, did the same in late October.

In yet another sign that national Dems view Kirsten Gillibrand as having an increasingly good shot at bumping off GOP Rep. John Sweeney, who's reeling amid charges of domestic violence, Bill Clinton has scheduled a last-minute visit to the district at 1:45 P.M. today to help Gillibrand close the deal with voters, according to Capitol Confidential, the blog of the Albany Times-Union. As Election Central reported below, Gillibrand had a great weekend politically: She racked up the endorsement of the Times-Union, even as a Siena poll found that she'd surged to a three-point lead over Sweeney, whose favorability ratings have plunged an astonishing 14 points amid his scandals.

If the race between the GOP and Dems in the generic Congressional matchup is tightening, as several polls seem to show, then that's news to CNN's pollsters. A new CNN poll out this morning finds that Dems hold a 20 point lead over the GOP among likely voters, 58%-38%. That's a wider gap than many other recent polls have shown, so it could be an outlier, though it's basically the same spread CNN found nearly a month ago.

Larry Sabato's final prediction: Dems will win the Senate by overthrowing GOP incumbents in Montana, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Rhode Island, Missouri and Virginia. And Dems will win the House with a pickup of 29 seats, meaning Dems will enjoy a solid majority. Interestingly, that despite a tightening of generic Congressional polls which he sees as potentially "bad news" for Dems, Sabato has compiled a list of 20 "late breakers" -- that is, races which have over the weekend suddenly leaned one way or the other -- and 15 of them are breaking towards Dems. Sabato's list of "late breakers," as well as his analysis of all the other races, is here.

Interesting: A new CNN poll just out this morning finds that some 41% of voters say their midterm vote is driven by disapproval of Bush. While 42% say Bush is not a factor in their voting, only 16% say they'll be voicing support for Bush with their vote. CNN also finds that Bush's approval rating has dipped to 35% -- four points lower than two weeks ago.

Iowa's first district has been held by conservative Republican Jim Nussle for 16 years -- but thanks to Nussle's decision to run for governor, the seat is now looking like it will be picked up by Dems, CQ Politics is reporting. CQ has just changed its rating of the race between Dem Bruce Braley and GOPer Mike Whalen from "No Clear Favorite" to "Leans Democratic," suggesting that now that the GOP's advantage of incumbency has been removed, the district's residents are getting closer to abandoning their traditional ticket-splitting -- in which they've voted for Dem Presidents but backed GOPer Nussle -- and vote a Democrat into Congress. CQ's full analysis here.

Gallup/U.S.A. Today just released a batch of new polls of key Senate races. They find Dems with sizeable leads in Montana and New Jersey, slight leads for Dems in Missouri and Rhode Island, and bare leads for the GOP in Virginia and, surprisingly, Tennessee, where GOPer Bob Corker's lead over Dem Harold Ford has been whittled down to three points:

MT-SEN:: Tester 50%, Burns 41%
NJ-SEN: Menendez 50%, Kean 40%
MO-SEN: McCaskill 49%, Talent 45%
RI-SEN: Whitehouse 48%, Chafee 45%
VA-SEN: Allen 49%, Webb 46%
TN-SEN: Corker 49%, Ford 46%

Gallup comments: "The races in four of these states are currently within the margin of error, making the forecast for control of the Senate at this point truly too close to call."

In another sign that the GOP implosion in Ohio continues apace, CQ Politics has just shifted its rating of two Ohio races -- in the first and second districts -- from "Leans Republican" to "No Clear Favorite." The races are Dem John Cranley's challenge to GOP Rep. Steve Chabot, and Dem Victoria Wulsin's effort to knock off GOP Rep. Jean "Mean Jean" Schmidt." CQ: "The Democrats have the momentum in Ohio. Their nominee in the open-seat race for governor, Rep. Ted Strickland, is a solid favorite to win on Tuesday, and their Senate nominee, Rep. Sherrod Brown, holds a lead, though a somewhat less dominant one, over Republican incumbent Mike DeWine." As noted below, today's Columbus Dispatch predicted a Dem sweep in Ohio. CQ's full analysis of both races here.

The campaign of Dem Harold Ford, Jr., is claiming that a U.S.A. Today poll will soon show that the race with GOP candidate Bob Corker is approaching a dead-heat race, with Ford trailing by a statistically insignificant three points. The U.S.A. Today numbers aren't yet online but were sent out in a press release by the Ford campaign. The U.S.A. Today poll will show Corker up 49%-46%, the Ford camp says, adding that the poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 5 points. We'll bring you the U.S.A. Today poll as soon as it's available. We don't know how significant this poll is, given recent independent polls showing a Corker lead, but we're passing it along for your enjoyment and edification, anyway.

Speaking of Florida, CQ Politics is reporting that Dems are making serious gains in their efforts to take Katherine Harris' old seat from the GOP. CQ has just changed its rating of the race between GOPer Vern Buchanan and Dem Christine Jennings from "Leans Republican" to "No Clear Favorite," a reflection of what CQ calls Buchanan's "problems" and Jennings' "strong upset bid." CQ reports that President Bush will make a last minute appearance tomorrow in a last-ditch effort to shore up Buchanan. CQ's full analysis here.

Veteran GOP Rep. Clay Shaw is suddenly trailing by 10 points in his closely-watched reelection campaign against Dem challenger Ron Klein, according to a new poll released today by the Miami Herald. The survey finds Klein ahead of Shaw 49.2%-39.6%, a significantly larger spread than other recent polls have found. The race is attracting national attention as a key harbinger of what's going to happen nationally on election day, according to Amy Walter, who tracks House races for the Cook Political Report. "If he were to lose, it would say everything about the environment and very little about Clay Shaw," Walter tells the Herald, adding that should Shaw fall, it's likely that Dems will pick up other key Florida seats, such as those of former GOP Rep. Mark Foley and Senate candidate Katherine Harris. "What voters are doing now is that they don't see these as individual candidates as much as proxies for the national party."

Reeling from charges of domestic violence, GOP Rep. John Sweeney has now fallen three points behind surging Dem challenger Kirsten Gillibrand, a Siena Polling Institute survey released today shows. The poll finds Gillibrand up 46%-43%, an astonishing turnaround from the last Siena poll on Oct. 19, which had Sweeney up 53%-39%. Sweeney's favorability rating has plunged 14 points, from 49% to 35%. All in all, a very good day for Gillibrand: As noted below, she also picked up a key endorsement today from the Albany Times-Union, an influential upstate paper.

Here's a quick and handy round-up of Sunday morning predictions:

* Washington Post: "In the battle for the House, Democrats appear almost certain to pick up more than the 15 seats needed to regain the majority...A three-seat gain [in the Senate] is almost assured, but they would have to find the other three seats from four states considered to have tossup races -- Virginia, Tennessee, Missouri and Montana."

* Charlie Cook: "It's very hard to imagine how the House majority does not turn over...Let's just say it's 20-35, but that the possibility of this getting bigger, is very real...The bottom line [in the Senate] is that it is more possible today than a couple weeks ago that Republicans could hold their losses to just four, or it could end up being the six."

* Associated Press: "A miracle day for us would be 14 seats lost," said Joe Gaylord, who was the chief strategist for Newt Gingrich in 1994 when Republicans swept to power. "A good day would be around minus 20, and a bad day would be over 30."

* New York Times: "Republican Party leaders [were] saying the best outcome they could foresee was losing 12 seats in the House. But they were increasingly steeling themselves for the loss of at least 15 seats...Democrats said they thought they were almost certain to gain four or five [Senate] seats and still had a shot at the six they need to take control."

* Columbus Dispatch: "Fueled by a huge margin favoring gubernatorial candidate Ted Strickland at the top of the ticked, Democrats [are in a] position to sweep all [Ohio] nonjudicial offices."

The Albany Times-Union, an influential upstate paper which backed GOP Rep. John Sweeney for reelection the last two times, today threw its support to Dem challenger Kirsten Gillibrand. Like many local papers across the country backing Dems against GOP incumbents, the TU decides that whatever Sweeney's done for the district is outweighed by his support for national GOP policies which have damaged the country as a whole:

But for the past six years, he also has been a prominent and unapologetic advocate of deleterious Bush administration policies, from the Iraq war to tax laws that favor the rich over the poor. At a crucial moment when his voice might have been raised on behalf of openness and accountability in Congress, Mr. Sweeney remained a supporter of the ethically challenged House GOP leadership...

This election is about more than who's best for the interests of the 20th Congressional District. It's about who's best for the interests of the country. Ms. Gillibrand is clearly the better choice.

Full endorsement after the jump.

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