While the counting of challenged ballots continues and there is still the issue of the inappropriately uncounted absentee ballots to be resolved by the Minnesota Supreme Court, it is VERY encouraging to see that the current Minneapolis Star-Tribune estimate for the result of the challenged ballots projects Franken to come out of the resolved challenges with a 171 vote lead. This is a big enough lead that the US Senate would probably seat Franken, pending the outcome of the court challenges.

These projections WILL be changed somewhat by the recount board, but they should be pretty good ballpark projections for a final total (without any votes added because of the uncounted absentee ballots). The good news is that the Star Tribune projections are much more optimistic than the Franken camp's projections, which estimated that Franken was up 8 votes total if all challenged ballots were allocated per the decision of the County recount official who first judged them.

That's right. With 91.13% of the vote recounted, Al Franken leads Norm Coleman by 4,108 votes! That's 1,105,030 for Franken and 1,100,922 for Norm Coleman. Wow, let's just stop here. That's close enough for horse shoes and hand grenades. Thanks for playing Norm. We're just going to take our board and go home.

Um.......

I'm a male, and an Obama supporter, I used to be an Edwards supporter, and would have been a Jan Schakowsky supporter if she had run, simply because I felt that each of them represents the best candidate we could have chosen. That said, it's a time when a lot of women and men who fought one hell of a good, sometimes dirty, fight for Hillary are nursing their wounds and it would do each Obama supporter well to offer them a gracious and respectful hand in acknowledgment for their cause and for the race well run.

Sure, there will be a few self-interested sour grapes from folks like Geraldine Ferraro, but why should we expect the ranks of Hillary's female (and male) supporters not to include a few grumbling bigots and sore losers? On the whole, what the Democrats will get out of Hillary's undaunted race is a new model for warriorhood from the many sisters and brothers who will, mostly, wipe their bloodied noses, suck it up and stand shoulder to shoulder with us in the Fall as we all fight to remove the vestiges of the most malignant administration this country has ever known.

According to a great ongoing results thread on Turn Maine Blue, Barack Obama now leads hillary Clinton 15 wins to 7 in Maine causus results reported so far. Also, Obama's victories have often been by very large margins while Clinton's are by smaller margins.

See: http://www.turnmaineblue.com/showDiary.d o?diaryId=779

There is also a very extensive debate thread at DailyKos at:
http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/10/ 133322/424/621/453996

Since it will be so much fun to listen to all the frothing Hillary fans spin and wheedle, here's yet another poll that shows just how much more electable Obama is than Hillary. The Time mag poll released today shows that, while Hillary and McCain are tied in a national match up at 46-46, Obama has a statistically significant lead of 48-41 over McCain.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/ 2008/president/national.html

I'll also point out that Hillary leads Obama 48-42 in the same poll--in the interest of fairness, not something that there's been much of on this site in the past few months. (Jeez, I wish Lonette33, aka areyouready, had a day job--unless, shudder, this is it.)

On the other hand, the daily four-day Rasmussen Poll today showed Barack tied for the first time with Hillary at 44-44--a four point increase in the four-day rolling average in just one day. Oh boy, tomorrow should be a day for gnashing of the teeth among the Hillarians.

According to John Zogby, Barack Obama has surged to a huge 49-36 lead in California, up from 46-40 the day before, so Obama's Monday numbers must have been huge. Obama is also up 45 to 42 in Missouri, and 49 to 29% in Georgia. Hillary Clinton apparently stopped the Obamomentum in NJ and is now up 46-41 after being tied 43 to 43 just yesterday. In Missouri, Zogby has Obama up 45-42.

http://zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=14 46

John Edwards's SC debate success has him surging rapidly in the South Carolina race and continuing to accelerate according to Survey USA's final 1/25/2008 data. This is confirmed by Zogby's Friday polling as well. This is confirmed by Zogby's Friday polling as well.

http://www.surveyusa.com/index.php/2008/ 01/24/what-are-south-carolina-independen ts-trying-to-tell-us/

Edwards Debate Video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=OlGlQrqP7PE

Boston Globe 01/25/2008: http://www.boston.com/news/politics/poli ticalintelligence/2008/01/edwards_says_h e_2.html

In just the last week, among likely Saturday voters, Survey USA says Edwards has soared nine percentage points, and the Zogby polls show he's risen six points in the last two days alone.

According to the latest Rasmussen Reports numbers, the anticipated Obama national bounce seems, instead, to be pointing John Edwards's way. The latest Rasmussen Daily Democratic Presidential tracking polls show that as of today, John Edwards has increased his percentage of likely US voters  by 6 percentage points from 14% to 20%. This compares to Hillary Clinton's loss of 5 percentage points in the same time period from 43% to 38% and Barack Obama's 1 point increase during the same time period from 24% to 25%.

Rasmussen Reports Daily Democratic Candidates      (1/5/08)

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_c ontent/politics/election_20082/daily_pre sidential_tracking_polling_history

Date        Clinton        Obama        Edwards

1/5/08        38%        25%        20%
1/4/08        38%        26%        18%
1/3/08        41%        24%        17%
12/31/07-1/2/08        No polling - New Year's Holiday
12/30/07    42%        23%        16%
12/29/07    43%        24%        14%