THE BIG SHOW POST

I'm doing the tee-vee tonight--the proverbial local yokel political scientist geek on the set of the studio trying not to knock over too many lighting fixtures. What's really cool about all this is that it's like being a fantasy football geek and getting to watch the Super Bowl from inside the studio, or, better, a college basketball geek getting to watch March Madness tournament compressed into one night with the complete raw CBS feeds. There's about 8 large screen HD tee-vees on the wall with all sorts of different channels running at once, a definite Sports Night atmosphere, plus the network feeds, lots of noise, and free pizza.

Throw in the foot massage and one screen devoted to Battlestar Galactica re-runs and I'm in heaven.

Anyhoo, on more serious business (like, you know, the fate of the republic and all) it's looking to be bad news for the Republicans in the Senate. Tradesports has Allen going down, hard, and there's nothing coming across the internals that seem to contradict that. Webb + McCaskill +Casey + Tester +Brown =trouble. Add in Chafee heading off to a distinguished professorship at West Warwick Tech, and you see where I'm going with this. Fah.

At least there's free pizza....

UPDATE: Here are the Virginia internals, which currently has Allen and Webb tied. The page is annoying as it doesn't automatically update.

7:39 PM Mr. Flaccid Support---our old pal Allahpundit---has now put up a Youtube Rocky clip--and it's Rocky versus Clubber Lang.

I'm not sure if that's because he's feeling renewed perkiness about the Chimperor's chances, or if the fair KP has come to her senses and they're eloping to Atlantic City.

Sometimes the signals coming into the fillings the CIA planted in my molars are unclear.

7:51 PM----CLEVELAND HAS THE LEAD, BUT ELWAY HAS THE BALL: Allen's numbers are starting to rise up off the floor. Webb's tanked on Tradesports. Forget Sports Illustrated---it's the LLamabutcher Jinx!!!

I'm afraid to use my newfound powers for good....

7:54 PM---STEELEY EYED MISSLE MAN watch

The VA Marriage amendment numbers are looking very strong, the scrambling here is it's looking like that could possibly carry Allen in.

How many more weasel words can I cram into one sentence?

Allen is right at 52%--48%, which is what we predicted last night.

Yeah, like that's not going to fluctuate like the (fill in the blank) at Fleet Week...

8:15 PM Anomoly: just under 800K votes counted in Virginia, Allen up on Webb by 38 votes.

The big indicator is the Marriage Amendment, which currently is drawing the roughly five percent overlap with a vote for Webb. Webb and Allen are at 49s, but the marriage amendment is at 57. About 7% of people who are voting for Senate are not voting in the amendment so far.

8:28 PM VA-5 Update: Goode/Weed goes to ...Goode.

The Good Weed race---you would have thunk that this would have been the one for Josh Jennings to show up in.

In honor of Virgil Goode's victory:

Ah Josh, we'll miss your service to the Republic:

MARKET INEFFICIENCY ALERT--8:42 pm Both Allen and Webb are at $55 on Tradesports. Danno, you got the stones to use some Hedge Fund mojo?

Meanwhile, back at the Ranch, Allen's opened up a 20,000 vote lead with 61% in. Allen's up 50-48. Parsing the returns, the big NoVa districts are almost all counted, leaving the remaining returns to the south central and south west. Good news for Allen.

IN THE IMMORTAL WORDS OF JOEY LAWRENCE, "WHOA." 9:03 pm--

Allen up by 45K with 68% in. It's spread well over who still has left to report--no big burps that I could see in Richmond or NoVa that's being held back for the LBJ margin. UPDATE: Fairfax City has not reported at all, and Loudon is only at 12% in. Both should have a lot of Webb votes.

I see dead people voting.

But the big news of the evening---Mark Foley is winning?

SHOUT OUT TO MY HOMEYS IN CT.

Rob Simmons is up in CT-2.

THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY---9:23 PM Allen/Webb back at 49s, with Allen up by 12K votes.

No report in from Fairfax City and Lynchburg City. Lynchburg had some problems at one precinct which ran out of paper ballots and the punch screen stopped working.

9:30 PM---FAIRFAX CITY COMES IN

Big surge for Webb in percentage, but only adds 1000 vote differential. Allen still up by 9000 with only Lynchburg City as the last big chunk of completely unreported votes.

The eyes of the nation are on Lynchburg......

Be afraid...be very afraid.

9:37 LYNCHBURG IS IN....AND IT'S.... Allen by 800 votes, balancing off Fairfax City.

The real story of the night is Gail Parker's Greens and their 21K votes.

Four tenths of a percent with 17% of the vote totals to go.

9:43---NUTMEG UPDATE: Simmons back up on top in CT-2; this is the seat that Uber-Donk Sam Gejdenson fended off Eddie Munster in 1994 by 27ish votes.

9:49 UPDATE 5135 votes.

9:54 UPDATe 87%......2280 vote differential for Allen.

9:55 UPDATE Arlington is only 40% reported and it's going 3-1 for Webb.

That's going to put Webb up soon---but he's still down in the 30s on Tradesports.

Danno, got the stones to make that bet?

10:00 PM UPDATE---PSYCHE!

Danno, hope you didn't take that bet--Allen's back up by 25K with 90% in.

Not sure what jurisdiction that did it---probably the little known county of Dieboldistan.

I kid.

10:13 PM 92% in, and Allen's up by 20K votes. But it's within a percent, so now I'm frantically researching Virginia's recount rules.

The basics: not automatic.

10:19 OKAY, ELWAY SCORED, BUT CLEVELAND HAS THE BALL BACK.

Big troves of unreported votes in Arlington, Richmond City, and Norfolk City, all going 3-1 to Webb. Loudon County--Security Mom and NASCAR Dad country--is really behind in reporting.

10:35 MARRIAGE AMENDMENT UPDATE:

Good thing the Marriage Amendment is going to pass, what with Britney divorcing K-Fed.

Got to keep the sanctity of hetero marriage safe, right?

10:38 ---JOEMENTUM!

I'll take my victories where I finds them.

10:43--12K votes, 94% in. The remaining district troves are Richmond City (heavily Webb) and Loundon and Prince William (tilting Allen).

Are their enough votes in Hollywood Cemetary? Can Webb rally the Scots-Irish warriors buried on Monument Ave.?

I kid!

10:50 NAIL BITER!!!! Franklin County--moonshine country--is in for Allen, leaving only the remaining votes to come from the urban eastern part of the state.

50% turnout of registered, .54% Allen lead.

11:31---97% in, 5K vote lead.

Still left to report? Richmond City with Webb pulling 3 votes for each Allen.

Not good, folks.

Yet Tradesports has Allen at $80. Market inefficiency? Danno? Mister Hedge Fund Dude? Your call.

And no linky-love from Hot Air.

Bah.

11:39 PM Simmons in CT-2 holding on by 700 votes.

11:43 PM I'm going home--it's an hour drive, it's raining, and I've got to teach tomorrow morning.

My prediction: no winner tonight for Allen/Webb. 3100 votes, 2% of precincts remaining, almost all from Richmond. Tradesports has Allen at $77, but beginning to drop. Investment opportunity.

11:58 And there's your Tradesports swing to Webb. Advantage LLamabutchers!

12:10 AM Wednesday 1865 vote spread for Allen on the state's website.

Cue Twilight Zone music....

2:45 AM UPDATE: Cue Porky Pig: That's all folks!

Here's Doug Wilder's Richmond results: no absentee ballots counted yet.

Want to bet that there are enough to cover the spread elsewhere in the state?

It's too late for me to start digging through the reports on which counties and cities have reported their absentees yet. But I'm leaving it up to the second shift Hot Air readers, now that AP (blessed be his holy name!) has finally linked this freakin' post. Here's the official state results page. Click on "locality" right under the Senate race results, which gives you the counties, followed by the cities. Click on details to get the breakdow for each jurisdiction (this link takes you to Richmond City). THEN click on "precinct" (this takes you to the precinct breakdown in Richmond).

This is a multi-person job to blogswarm between now and lunch tomorrow. We need to get a sense of how many cities and counties have counted their absentees and reported them (they show up as a separate precinct). Let me know what you get---put it in the comments section below.

On the recount, we did a thing on the air about this around 1030. Basically, it's not automatic: the election is first certified in about 10 days-two weeks (too beat right now to look it up, but last year it was about two weeks after the gube election), then a challenger who loses by less than 1% can petition for a recount.

Obviously, as it stands right now, 3/10ths of 1 percent is the margin---don't take any crap from Donks about how Webb ran a clean campaign and won fair and square. If Allen's razor thin lead all night (until Richmond finally came in) had held at 3/10ths of 1 percent, they'd be baying for a recount, and would be perfectly in their rights to do so.

It aint over, folks, at least until we get a sense of what the disposition of the absentee ballots is---and we don't need to wait for our minders and betters in the MSM to tell us, we can damn well find out for ourselves.