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Leading Off:
• Pres-by-CD: Daily Kos Elections is pleased to announce the first two official installments in our effort to compile presidential results for all 435 congressional districts. The main link will take you to our complete chart, which we'll be updating continually until this project is complete. To get things started, two states have already certified their election returns, so that's allowed us to go ahead an crunch the numbers in Georgia and Oklahoma. A word on each (as well as links to our detailed spreadsheets) just below:
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Georgia provided us with a happy surprise, in that the entire state now allocates all early votes and absentee votes by precinct. (Previously, only Gwinnett County did so.) This helps us improve the precision of our numbers greatly: Early votes and absentees comprised more than half the vote in many counties in 2008 and the precinct-by-precinct distribution had to be modeled mathematically. Now, though, we can simply use actual tallies.
The state itself swung about 1.5 points away from the president, but it's interesting to see where the drop-off occurred ... and didn't occur. The Appalachian-flavored 9th district saw the greatest swing from McCain to Romney (about 4 points), but Obama actually approved his standing in three of the state's four black-majority districts (the Macon/Albany-based 2nd, and the suburban Atlanta-based 4th and 13th).
The fourth majority black district, the Atlanta-proper based 5th, saw a slight swing towards Romney. That may be attributable to the sizable swath of urban whites in the district (the swing was more pronounced in DeKalb and Fulton Counties), among whom the president's numbers were not as resilient (as among black voters); indeed, the president's numbers improved in the Clayton County part of the 5th.
• Meanwhile, in Oklahoma, we can see that GOP Rep.-elect Markwayne Mullin had quite the tailwind in OK-02, with Romney outpacing Obama by more than 35 points. The floor is really fell out from this ancestrally Democratic territory, seeing as Obama's performance dropped the most here of any seat in the state. (And it shows you just how impossible a hold this was for Team Blue when Rep. Dan Boren decided to retire.) On the other end, Obama held the line in the OKC-based OK-05, losing by almost exactly the same margin as in 2008.
There are also some unofficial numbers for Minnesota and Virginia already plugged into our full chart. You'll definitely want to bookmark it.
Senate:
• AK-Sen: This is very interesting to see: Dem Sen. Mark Begich, who faces a helluva re-election battle no matter whom he faces, is going bold with a serious plan to protect Social Security from meddling conservatives and centrist hacks as their "fiscal cliff" dissembling begins in earnest. This is no Third Way malarkey: Begich actually wants to increase benefits and raise the cap on high-income contributions. If Begich is calculating that a campaign based around full-throated support for Social Security offers him a path to victory, then I look forward to seeing him pick that very fight.
• CA-Sen: A while back, the Daily Kos Elections crew idly speculated about which politician might have received the most votes in any single election other than for president. We figured it had to be in CA (the largest state, natch), and we also figured it was probably a relatively recent Senate contest. Turns out the new record was just set by Dem Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who, as Greg Giroux points out, has now beaten fellow Dem Sen. Barbara Boxer's 2004 record of 6,955,728. At last count, DiFi had 6,968,383 votes, good for 62 percent overall against Republican Elizabeth Emken.
House:
• CA-07: Just a little wrap-up note: When the race in CA-07 was initially called last Thursday night, GOP Rep. Dan Lungren refused to concede to Democrat Ami Bera. But he apparently had a change of heart overnight, because he wound up making a concession on Friday.
• FL-13: While the final results of Democrat Jessica Ehrlich's underfunded campaign weren't much of a shocker, here's something to consider: Her 58-42 loss to ultra-veteran GOP Rep. Bill Young was the second-narrowest victory of his lengthy career, and the tightest since 1992. If the 81-year-old Young (who first won office in 1970) decides to retire soon, Ehrlich, a 38-year-old former congressional staffer and first-time candidate, might have performed just well enough to set herself up for a second run at this seat. Indeed, she isn't ruling out a repeat bid, and even Young said, "I told her I expect to see her name (on a ballot) again in the future."
• LA-03: One more congressional election still awaits us: the Dec. 8 runoff between GOP Reps. Charles Boustany and Jeff Landry in Louisiana's 3rd District. There haven't been many fireworks to report since election night, when Boustany led a five-way field with 45 percent of the vote to Landry's 30 percent, and this latest "news" is of a piece: Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal says he won't endorse either man. However, third-place finisher Ron Richard (a Democrat who took 22 percent) has thrown his support behind Boustany.
Other Races:
• NC-LG: Though she trailed by less than the 10,000-vote threshold that would have allowed her to request a recount, Democrat Linda Coleman has conceded the North Carolina lieutenant governor's race to Republican Dan Forest. It was still quite a squeaker, with Coleman losing by less than two-tenths of a percentage point. She also evidently was successful in distancing herself from the gubernatorial ticket, seeing as Democrat Walter Dalton lost to Republican Pat McCrory by over 11 points.
• NYC Mayor: One of the few big-name races taking place in 2013 is for mayor of New York City, though the contest has, in some ways, been slow to take shape, partly because it's hard to gain attention for an off-year election while you still have a presidential battle to focus on. But all that's starting to change, and now there's one sizable development worth mentioning: Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer says he'll run for city comptroller instead of mayor. Early polls showed Stringer faring poorly in a hypothetical Democratic primary, and it was hard to see a path to victory for him.
The comptroller's seat should be open, though, since the current occupant, John Liu, still intends to seek Gracie Mansion, despite the serious ethical issues he's been facing for a while regarding his campaign finance practices. Liu actually praised Stringer's move, as did just about everyone else who's likely to run for mayor, including City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, and former Comptroller Bill Thompson, all in a bid to woo Stringer's supporters. I doubt we'll ever be able to determine conclusively whether any of this matters, though.
By the way, if you're wondering about the Republican field, the New York Times mentions a few possibilities: community newspaper publisher Tom Allon, former Bronx borough president Adolfo Carrión, and non-profit founder George McDonald. For a more detailed look at possible GOPers, though, you'll want to check out Colin Campbell's piece in Politicker.
Redistricting Roundup:
• NYC Redistricting: Final redistricting maps are now available for the city council in America's biggest town—New York, of course. Colin Campbell's initial take is that it's an incumbent protection map—unsurprising, given that the technically independent commission responsible for it is mostly made up of council appointees. A formal vote on the map won't come until later, but naturally, it's expected to pass easily. And CUNY Graduate Center's Center for Urban Research also has their usual "comparinator" tool, which allows you to examine the old and new maps side-by-side.
• UT Redistricting: At long last, Utah Republicans have released 16,000 pages worth of documents related to redistricting that Democrats had demanded be made public. If you'd like to take a look yourself, the documents are all here. And if you find anything interesting, Robert Gehrke of the Salt Lake Tribune is asking that you drop a comment here to flag the relevant document.