Call It A Comeback
Mangieri is probably toast unless Madigan delivers huge numbers. Second, Birkett seems likely to win the Lt. Gov race unless things change.
OTH, Judy and Oberweis may be a real nailbiter. Looking at the downstate numbers where I’d expect Judy to put some numbers over him, there’s not a big lead–this could change if she can carry DuPage strongly.
Very early, but they are coming.
The numbers for Judy and Oberweis out of there should tell us a lot about the rest of the night–down in comments at IlliniPundit–McLean is going about 60% Brady, only 20% Topinka (a surprise to me) and 15% Oberweis, the importance if this holds up is that you’d expect Judy to put some numbers up on Oberweis in a lot of these areas. Confusing the situation worse is that turnout is funky in Central Illinois.
Everyone is claiming it’ll be a late night, but frankly, the only hard part is getting the voters to use the new equipment–counting is far easier when you don’t have to send the damn votamatics through a machine that jams and doesn’t work well and is built for the 1960s. I’d expect it to be not so bad in terms of lateness.
Seals is holding relatively steady and McSweeney is up, but no idea on the geography. McSweeney around 38-40. Seals is running around 60-70
Lake County is heavy as of now
But if you want local Chicago TV and you aren’t near the area, Channel 5 will be webcasting starting at nine.
Looking around, Oberweis is slightly ahead or very close to Judy–whether this is significant it’s hard to say–given he might have spurred more early voting with die hard supporters, it could fade away.
Or it might not, but it is interesting.
Blagojevich appears to be hitting about 2-1 most places that have reported so far. Probably not as good as he’d like, but about what I’d expect.
Eric suggests we should have a networked system to give us immediate results—no, no, no,
One of the points of not using a network is the system is far more secure and many, if not most systems have been rfp’d to not be networked for that very reason. Once the systems on a network–it becomes far more vulnerable.
So, don’t worry, there’ll always be a chance to bloviate.
County/City Sites are the best for immediacy, for cross jurisdiction races, you should rely on the media—State Board of Elections does not have a centralized count. Go here for urls to many counties
Media will provide the best combined reports.
So go over there for the fastest stuff–I’ll be checking in an linking
ArchPundit