Begich Takes 814-Vote Lead in Alaska Senate Race

There would be about 120 recount sites across the state, Ritchie said. He added that his office has set Dec. 5 as the target date for the local centers to report back with the recounted vote results, with Dec. 16 as the target date for the state canvassing board to meet to review challenged ballots. “We expect everything to move smoothly,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Dec. 2 Georgia Senate runoff, now less than three weeks away, was the topic of a conference call with reporters held by first-term Republican incumbent Saxby Chambliss . Chambliss, who on Nov. 4 fell just short of the majority he needed under state law to claim an outright victory over Democratic former state Rep. Jim Martin, was joined on the call by Nevada Sen. John Ensign , chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), the campaign arm of the Senate GOP.

Though Chambliss is confident of obtaining the small uptick in his vote percentage that he needs to win in the one-on-one runoff, he admitted to concern about the vast financial advantage held throughout the election cycle by the NRSC’s partisan counterpart, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “We’re a long way away from having the resources we need to match the Democrats,” Chambliss said.

Chambliss emphasized the boost he is receiving from leading Republican figures as he seeks to pull out victory in an election in which he was once heavily favored. McCain, who carried Georgia by 5 percentage points even as he lost the national presidential election to Democrat Barack Obama , has committed to campaign for Chambliss in Georgia, as has former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who earlier this year contended against McCain for the Republican presidential nomination. Martin, though, is receiving organizational assistance from veterans of Obama’s strong presidential campaign and is holding out hope that the president-elect might come to the state to stump for him.

According to the latest vote count, Chambliss received 49.8 percent in the general election to 46.8 percent for Martin with 99 percent of precincts reporting. Libertarian Party candidate Allen Buckley received the remaining 3.4 percent. Results are expected to be certified this week, and the runoff will be officially scheduled for Dec. 2 if, as expected, Chambliss remains under the 50 percent threshold.

The outcomes in these races will determine whether the Democrats’ final gains in this year’s Senate races will be big or super-sized. Democrats already have won confirmed victory for six seats held by Republicans, expanding their effective majority from the current razor-thin 51 seats to at least 57 seats — the biggest number for either party since the Democrats held 57 in 1993.

Meanwhile, with the outcomes in five U.S. House races still pending, the Democrats are ensured of at least 255 of the 435 seats, with their net gain over the Republicans now at 20 seats. The latest decision in their favor came Tuesday, as Democratic prosecutor Frank M. Kratovil Jr. clinched victory over Republican state Sen. Andy Harris in Maryland’s 1st District, where Harris had defeated nine-term Republican Rep. Wayne T. Gilchrest in a Feb. 12 primary.

The three Nov. 4 general elections that remain undecided, all for Republican-held seats, have had no dramatic new developments over the past couple of days:

• California’s 4th District. Republican state Sen. Tom McClintock maintained a 928-vote lead Wednesday afternoon — 50.2 to 49.8 percent — over Democrat Charlie Brown, a former Air Force lieutenant colonel, as absentee and provisional ballots are counted in the historically Republican 4th District in northeastern California.

McClintock’s campaign admitted Tuesday that their candidate could have a net loss of as many as 1,500 votes — more than his current lead over Brown — as votes are counted in Nevada County. The tally in that 4th District county Wednesday afternoon showed Brown pulling 57 percent of the vote there. But additional votes remain to be tallied in other counties, including some where McClintock held the advantage in the initial count.

Officials of both campaigns have indicated they will wait until all ballots are counted before taking further action. The candidates are competing to succeed Republican Rep. John T. Doolittle , who nearly lost to Brown in a 2006 election viewed as a referendum on Doolittle’s ties to now-convicted influence peddler Jack Abramoff.

• Ohio’s 15th District. Republican state Sen. Steve Stivers leads Democratic county commissioner Mary Jo Kilroy by 149 votes, according to election officials in Columbus who are in the process of tallying thousands of provisional ballots. Stivers’ strong showing in the contest was not a given: He was running against the same Democrat who in 2006 came within one-half of 1 percentage point of toppling Republican Rep. Deborah Pryce , whose decision to not seek a ninth House term this year left the seat open. Though Kilroy lost that race two years ago, Pryce’s margin did narrow as provisional ballots were tallied.

• Virginia’s 5th District. Democrat Tom Perriello, an organizer of faith-based groups, declared victory Nov. 7 over six-term Republican Rep. Virgil H. Goode Jr. , who is trailing by 745 votes out of nearly 317,000 cast in a district that includes Charlottesville and Danville. Goode, who is bidding for a seventh term, has not conceded the election and could ask for a recount if the state election board’s certification on Nov. 24 still shows him trailing by less than 1 percentage point. Perriello presently leads by about one-fourth of 1 percentage point.

Begich Takes 814-Vote Lead in Alaska Senate Race

The other two yet-to-decided races are general elections to be held Dec. 6 in two Louisiana districts, the 4th and the 2nd. The 4th District race has one more Republican seat in play, as Democratic prosecutor Paul J. Carmouche and Republican physician John Fleming are in a close race to succeed retiring Republican Rep. Jim McCrery . But the Democrats’ hold on the seat in the 2nd District, a New Orleans-based party stronghold, appears secure, as Democratic Rep. William J. Jefferson is heavily favored to defeat Republican lawyer Joseph Cao. The election calendar was thrown off by a hurricane that hit in early September and delayed the Louisiana primary.

And there is one state, Missouri, in which the outcome of the presidential race is not yet determined.

• Missouri Presidential. As of Wednesday afternoon, McCain led Obama in Missouri by 4,986 votes out of more than 2.9 million cast, a margin of less than two-tenths of 1 percentage point. When the week began, McCain’s lead was 5,859 votes. Local election officials have been tallying provisional ballots before they certify their results to the state on Nov. 18. Though the outcome in Missouri will affect only the scope of Obama’s victory, a McCain win there — as seems likely — would mark only the second time in the past 100 years that Missouri has not sided with the presidential election winner. It would mark the third consecutive election, and eighth in the past 11 dating to 1968, in which the state has gone Republican for president.

With Missouri’s 11 electoral votes still pending, Obama holds 365 electoral votes, or 95 more than the bare majority of 270 he needed to claim victory. McCain currently has 162 electoral votes.