Return to Transcripts main page
The Situation Room
Election 2006
Aired November 07, 2006 - 19:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: It's approaching 7:00 p.m. on the East Coast and we are able to make our first projections. In Indiana, the long-time Republican Senator Richard Lugar will be reelected as the United States senator. He didn't even have a Democratic opponent. He ran against the libertarian. Lugar will easily win his sixth term in the United States Senate.
Another one, Vermont, Bernie Sanders, he will be elected as an Independent senator from Vermont. We can project he will win in Vermont. In Virginia, we do project that the ballot question number one, the ban on same-sex marriage that will be approved. That will require marriage being defined as a union between a man and a woman in Virginia.
We cannot project a winner in Virginia between the fiercely fought battle between George Allen and Jim Webb this contest right now. The polling is closed in the Commonwealth of Virginia, but this contest clearly close. We can't project a winner right now. But we have been able to project the first two winners in the United States Senate in Indiana and Vermont -- Anderson, no great surprises in either of those races.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: The Virginia race, of course has been very closely watched. We have been watching it and talking about it an awful lot. John King, it has been a fascinating race to say the least.
JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: And it's one of the races where yes, there's antiwar sentiment in Virginia, but George Allen's problems are largely of his own making, a few statements that came back against him. And it shows you how quickly your life can change in politics. Many thought George Allen would get 60 percent. He was a conservative, the son of a former football coach, wanted to go out there and run for president. Now he's fighting for survival tonight in a race again that yes, there are some of the national dynamic can play in Virginia, but mainly a race that's very close because of his own problem, keeping himself in line, his candidacy in line.
COOPER: Candy Crowley, but Jim Webb has had his own problems as well, some of the books he wrote in the past coming back to be mentioned on the campaign trail.
CANDY CROWLEY, CNN SR. POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: I knew this race was off the rail when I looked up at some point and Webb was reading from one of his books. And I thought, OK. (LAUGHTER)
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: Book reviews, even.
CROWLEY: Exactly. So I thought this was you know one of those anomalies in the entire country in terms of what was it about.
(CROSSTALK)
CROWLEY: No, you know I mean it mattered because it just -- it added to the kind of you know if you had a proclivity to like Webb, this made you like him more because he's being attacked. I think it just sort of solidified people's feelings about. The other thing I'll say is that Allen went on the air for two minutes on all of the major markets last night, saying I know I've made mistakes in this campaign, and I brought them on myself and then went on. If you're like feeling good about your campaign, you don't make that kind of speech.
COOPER: Marcus Mabry, the fact there was a ballot initiative to ban same-sex marriage and it seems to have passed at this point, does that -- I mean the idea, I guess is to help mobilize conservative voters to come out. Is that going to help Allen?
MARCUS MABRY, "NEWSWEEK" MAGAZINE: That's exactly right. That's the idea. It's what happened in Ohio. Many analysts think afterwards in the 2004 election, in theory it will help Allen. But this is really I think going to be a great test of the GOP's much vaunted get out the vote effort. This will be the place where in the end most polls had Allen actually up about three points at the end. This is going to be the place where we're going to see if that actually, that got the vote effort actually worked and he actually has that margin or if it evaporates because other polls have had Webb ahead.
COOPER: How did Iraq play in this race? Jim Webb, famously his son served in Iraq. He walks around in his son's combat boots. How did it play?
KING: He's a Republican who said the only reason he switched parties to run in this race is because he thinks the president made a misguided choice in Iraq. Senator Allen most of the race was on the stay the course message. The president is right. We need to keep going, but late in the race like many Republicans all around the country started saying well the administration does need a new strategy.
We can't pull the troops out right away. That would be a mistake, but we need a new strategy, which is again, win or lose in Virginia, you're seeing this dynamic play out in a number of races. And many Republicans who are on the ballot this year who were stay the course Republicans three months ago are now change the strategy Republicans. The question is on Monday morning -- on Wednesday morning, excuse me, will they be fire the defense secretary Republicans.
COOPER: Candy.
CROWLEY: I think the other thing is that you heard Allen in his speech last night, saying I want the troops to come home too as soon as possible. I care about these troops, so it did play a role in it. It just got off course on a lot -- a number of other things, but certainly the ads were about that, about how Allen always backed the president. Certainly Webb made it one of his signature issues just by how he dressed.
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: Was he successful? Was Webb successful in sort of linking Allen to President Bush?
CROWLEY: Well, absolutely. I mean it's hard...
MABRY: Hard not to.
CROWLEY: Absolutely, it's hard not to. And this is -- you know remember, this is kind of a Washington neighborhood over there in Virginia. So they were playing to a -- particularly in Arlington and near suburbs, these are very Democratic areas. They've been trending more Democratic. They have had a Democratic governor over there now twice, elected twice. So this is -- this could be a real pickup for Democrats, and it has the potential to really turn the color of that state in some ways.
MABRY: The amazing thing about Virginia is it's really two states. It's the north and the south. It's like the Civil War. As if the Mason-Dixon Line went straight through there instead of between Maryland and Pennsylvania. And in the north, in Nova, in the Washington suburbs it is increasingly affluent, increasingly well educated, increasingly Democratic. But the amazing thing about this is it's in that southern part of the state, the Tidewater area around Norfolk, where you've got huge naval bases. Webb -- Democrats generally do not do well there. Webb, however, a former Naval secretary under Ronald Reagan, the most Republican of modern day Republican presidents, actually he's doing well there. I think that's where we're going to see if he loses or wins this race. It's what happens in the Tidewater region.
COOPER: Regional politics playing a role there, also in Tennessee. We'll talk about that a little bit later on. Let's go back to Wolf, who's watching a couple of the House races -- Wolf.
BLITZER: All right, Anderson, thanks very much.
I want to update our viewers. We're getting some initial numbers on three congressional races that could be indicative of what's going on. First let's go to Kentucky Three. Kentucky Three is a race where there's an incumbent Republican. Anne Northup, she is now trailing with 37 percent of the precinct reporting so far, 48 to 51 percent against John Yarmuth, her Democratic challenger.
One out of three votes apparently cast so far. Let's go to Kentucky Two right now. Ron Lewis is the incumbent Republican facing a challenge from Mike Weaver. Only three percent of the precincts are reporting, still very, very early, 53, 47 percent. These are Republican seats obviously, so if Democrats win, these are pickups for the Democrats.
Hostettler in Indiana, John Hostettler is facing a stiff challenge from his Democratic opponent Brad Ellsworth. Only 13 percent of the precincts reporting, but you can see in those 13 percent, Brad Ellsworth doing a lot better than John Hostettler. These are three important seats. We're going to be following these early on.
If the Republicans are in trouble in three seats, where they're the incumbent, they have the seat in the House of Representatives. It could be indicative that the Democrats are going to have a relatively good night. We're going to watch those. We can't project any winners yet, but we're going to keep you up to speed on these and all the other close races.
Let's bring in Paula Zahn. She's watching together with Bill Schneider some of the exit polls. We're getting some indications of what's going on in the country, Paula.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: We're getting some really interesting numbers, Wolf, out of Virginia right now. And Bill and I have been fascinating by them as we've heard our team across the news room talk about how hotly contested this race is and in particular all of the controversy surrounded some of the comments and some of the writings of the Democratic candidate James Webb. Take a look at these numbers about how women voted. Of course James Webb criticized by his opponents for writing things that were out and outright, he said disrespectful of women. He had written an article in the late '70's suggesting women can't fight. Fifty-six percent of women voters actually voting for James Webb.
(CROSSTALK)
ZAHN: What does this mean? None of those attacks worked. None of the...
WILLIAM SCHNEIDER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: It did not work. Women traditionally vote Democratic in most states including Virginia and Webb kept that woman support, 56 percent. That's clearly a victory for Webb among women because Allen's effort to discredit with women voters doesn't seem to have paid off.
ZAHN: Now, we also asked these voters as they came out of the polls after they had cast their votes of those who had served in military, who did they vote to and it broke down like this. The incumbent, Senator George Allen with 43 percent of that vote. Actually we have these numbers flipped here. We haven't quite moved. It was 57 percent for George Allen, 42 percent for James Webb. What happened?
SCHNEIDER: These are veterans. Now they could be voting for James Webb, because James Webb was the secretary of the Navy. James Webb is a decorated hero and a veteran of the Vietnam War. He might have done very well with veterans. But this is -- if women were a breakthrough for Webb, the veterans' vote was a breakthrough for George Allen. George Allen, the Republican, carried 57 percent of the veterans' vote in Virginia despite the fact that Webb is a decorated veteran and a former naval secretary.
ZAHN: And of course, we have just gotten this news, this -- that this ban on gay marriage amendment has passed. We have a sense now of how that also broke too. That favoring...
SCHNEIDER: Very interesting, it -- the ban on gay marriage passed in Virginia, but 33 percent so far, among voters interviewed at the polls, 30 percent of those who voted for the ban on same-sex marriage also voted for Jim Webb, the Democrat, so while it certainly delivered a lot of votes for Allen, 69 percent of the supporters of the ban voted for Allen, almost a third of them voted for Webb. So it wasn't totally determinative.
ZAHN: And we should make it very clear, Wolf. We have another wave of exit polling coming in to us at this hour. But I think it's fair to say that it appears as though this race at least is trending towards issues of national interest and it wasn't driven by local issues.
BLITZER: No, all politics not necessarily being local, Paula.
ZAHN: You've got that right.
BLITZER: All right, thanks very much.
Jeff Greenfield, I wanted to come up with the -- I want to talk a little bit, Jeff, about these House races. Because this will be an early indicator of what's going on. Specifically let's talk about Indiana, the eighth district.
JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SENIOR ANALYST: The so-called bloody eighth because there have been some incredible partisan fights about recounts upon recounts in that one. Brad Ellsworth, by the way, is a county sheriff and a social conservative. So this may be one of those races where Democrats are electing people who are not quite the model of what people of as liberal Democrats. This was considered one of the most vulnerable Republican seats in the entire country. Hostettler doesn't take PAC money. He's a bit of -- his critics call him eccentric. He calls himself his own man and Republicans have been worried about this race from the very, very beginning.
BLITZER: And it's only 13 percent of the precincts reporting. If we move down, only three percent in this race over here, the Republican ahead by three percent is a very, very small number of precincts reporting. More interestingly over here, Anne Northup, the incumbent Republican is behind by three percentage points with 37 percent of the precincts reporting.
GREENFIELD: This is a swing district. John Kerry narrowly carried it in 2004. Anne Northup was elected in '96 by a sliver. Tom DeLay put her on the Appropriations Committee as a freshman so that she could bring home the bacon or if you prefer the pork, and she -- while she's a conservative she has always run on her delivering the goods for her district.
BLITZER: And even as you're speaking 55 percent of the precincts now reporting Anne Northup up at 50 percent. John Yarmuth down at 49 percent, so it's gone back and forth, but if you look at the aggregate, the total numbers there, there's a relatively small number of difference right now. This is only about half of the vote in.
GREENFIELD: We're not going to be calling this race any time soon.
BLITZER: I want to walk over to the Senate, to the board, your smart board. Why don't you go over there and give our viewers a sense because as we know 15 seats. The Democrats need to pick up 15 seats...
GREENFIELD: Six of the seven...
BLITZER: ... in the House of Representatives, but they need to pick up six in the United States Senate. That's going to be a lot more difficult.
GREENFIELD: Right. Let's do the quick chalk talk. There are 100 seats in the U.S. Senate, 33 of them are up for reelection, 17 Democrats, 15 Republicans and this one seat interestingly, Jim Jeffords, the retiring Republican turned Independent, will be succeeded by Bernie Sanders, an Independent who will...
BLITZER: We have already projected that. That Bernie Sanders will be the next United States senator from Vermont.
GREENFIELD: Exactly so and there we go. Bernie Sanders will win. Bernie Sanders will caucus with the Democrats. He's the only self-avowed socialist in the United States Senate, Bernie Sanders, and he also has the thickest New York accent of any Vermont senator probably in history.
BLITZER: He's originally from Brooklyn.
GREENFIELD: Right. But if I can just show you the other things that we're doing here -- of the 33 seats we believe 24 are beyond doubt. We could be surprised, which leaves nine seats that will decide the Senate, seven held by Republicans. Those are the seats that are circled in red -- two held by Democrats, New Jersey and Maryland, those are the seats circled in blue. When we call a state...
BLITZER: When we project a state.
GREENFIELD: I bed your pardon and we have to be careful about that. When we project a winner, we will color in that state by the blue for Democrat, red for Republican, so right now seven Republican seats, two Democratic seats, those are the seats that will tell us who runs the Senate starting next January.
BLITZER: And Virginia clearly being very important. The polls have closed in the Commonwealth of Virginia, but we don't know whether George Allen will be reelected or Jim Webb will be elected, the United States senator from there.
GREENFIELD: It is astonishing to remember that just a few months ago Allen was considered a walkover winner. He was going to run up the margins to get ready for a presidential campaign in 2008. Now he's struggling to survive.
BLITZER: The whole issue as we look at this control, if it's 50/50, a lot of our viewers are probably wondering, 50 Democrats, 50 Republicans. Explain to them what happens then.
GREENFIELD: It happened in fact after the 2000 election. If the Senate splits 50/50, Vice President Dick Cheney decides who controls the Senate. It is expected he will vote Republican. I think that's a fair project. But if he does and we go back to what happened after 2000, while the Republicans will chair all of the committees they will engage, if they do what they did six years ago in power sharing, they'll give the Democrats an equal number of seats on each committee and they will give them virtually equal funding.
BLITZER: Stand by. We're going to take a quick break. We have a lot more to talk about. I just want to remind our viewers what's going on. Six -- six seats, that's what the Democrats need if they want to be the majority in the United States Senate. Fifteen seats they need to pick up in the House of Representatives if they want to be the majority there.
We're watching all of these races. The results are now beginning to come in, in those states where the polls are closed. We're going to have a lot more of that coming up.
We're also going to take you to Washington to an Internet cafe, The Tryst, where a group of bloggers have now gathered to update their readers on the Internet on what's going on. This is something you'll see only here on CNN. At the bottom of your screen, you'll be able to constantly see what's going on as far as the balance of power is concerned in the Senate and the House of Representatives. Much more of our special coverage from CNN Election Headquarters here in New York right after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LOU DOBBS, CNN ANCHOR: We're back as "America Votes 2006". Our coverage continuing, you're looking at the great wall here in CNN World Headquarters. North Carolina, Ohio, West Virginia displayed prominently on the map. You see the numbers 11:23 as the countdown continues toward the closing of the polls, 7:30 p.m. Eastern in those states.
And we'll be bringing you those results. Wolf, we'll have the latest as soon as those polls do close now in just a little over 11 minutes. We're -- we're pleased that CNN is hosting a very important party in Washington, D.C., a party for the most important bloggers or certainly a lot of them, in Washington, D.C. because those bloggers have played a very, very important role in this campaign and election.
So we're going to turn to Abbi Tatton who's there as hostess. And we'll turn it over to you, Abbi.
ABBI TATTON, CNN INTERNET REPORTER: Hi, there, Lou. Yes, here we are at Tryst. This is an Internet cafe here in Washington, D.C. We've been joined by about 30 prominent bloggers left and right and as you said, these are people who have really been getting involved in this cycle. They have been fund-raising online, using new online tools. They have been getting together to make sure people are getting out to vote in the last few days, even having contest to make sure people are doing that.
I'm surrounded right now by a group of bloggers left and right. We've got Bob Sesker (ph) right down here from the Huffington Report, a couple of representatives here from America Blog, both of those blogging on the left.
And then we've got behind me here Mary Katharine Ham from TownHall, Ed Morrissey there from Captain's Quarters. And we're going to be talking to them throughout the evening about what they're seeing, how they're reacting. And also what they're hearing from their readers. What we've seen on many of these blogs, the left and right today, is reports from around the country, some voting problems, some turnouts, that kind of thing, the issues what people are seeing on the ground. I know Jacki Schechner is also here with me. She's talking to a few bloggers behind me right now -- Jacki.
JACKI SCHECHNER, CNN INTERNET REPORTER: Well, Abbi, one of the things that people always ask us are why are blogs important. Why do we cover blogs? And one of the answers that we both give is that it's disparate voices, diverse voices. I want to introduce you to Jeralyn Merritt, who blogs at TalkLeft.com. She's actually a criminal defense attorney and one of the things she's looking at today with the voter irregularities are the differences in how states are handling it. What have you blogged about with regard to this?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well in Colorado a judge has refused to keep the voting polls open late, even though there's been so many problems. Whereas in Ohio, the judge near Cleveland ordered 16 precincts to stay open until 10:00 p.m. So not only are there irregularities all over the country, but the courts are treating them differently.
SCHECHNER: Are you finding that most of your readers come for that sort of analysis from you?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, they come for that more than they do the number crunching you know in terms of the predictions. I'm not a poll. You know I don't do the polling crunching. But I do, do the analysis and the results and what it means and where the problems are in particular.
SCHECHNER: That's what so wonderful about gathering together all of these people in one room is they all have different niches and different specialties. We've got liberals and we've got conservatives. And you can go to CNN.com/BlogParty and that's got a link to all of the blogs that are in this room and I'm telling you it is an unbelievably impressive list of very smart people. And they're actually furiously blogging right now, Anderson, but we certainly know that there will be some conservation as it gets more heated.
COOPER: All right, we'll be watching the blogs. Thanks very much for that. What kind of power do the blogs have this time around? What has their track record been this far?
CROWLEY: Well we'll see. Ned Lamont was -- it's certainly one of those that got attention through the blogs. There was a lot of complaints from inside.
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: Running against Joseph Lieberman...
(CROSSTALK)
CROWLEY: Running against Joe Lieberman who beat Joe Lieberman in the primary.
COOPER: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) Joe Lieberman now running as an Independent.
CROWLEY: Exactly and it looks as though, if the polls were right going into this poll, it looks as though Lieberman might win pretty handily. This ends up being in that negative. I mean for bloggers and those who pushed Lamont. They're very antiwar sort of left kind of bloggers. The other example we have is Howard Dean. What's happened with bloggers is they have proven very effective at raising money and funneling it towards campaigns. They have yet to kind of turn a race that we can see.
COOPER: Go ahead.
KING: Well we've had to change the way we communicate because of the blogs for better or for worse. The exit poll people were sequestered in a room, no Blackberries, no cell phones, no nothing because in the last campaign, the early wave of the exit polls leaked out, was spread like wildfire on the Internet and the blogs. Turned out they were wrong, so you had this discussion going on all around about the country about the Kerry administration and the Kerry inaugural and who would be in the Kerry cabinet and it turns out the exit polls were wrong, and it was -- it's sort of embarrassing. You have that information out there it's communicated so rapidly. And you can't get it back. One person cannot go on and say hey guess what, this wave was wrong when it's all over the blogs and all over the Internet, so it has changed the way we do business. They had to lock everyone in a room this time to keep it from leaking earlier.
COOPER: Marcus?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I mean I think clearly these guys have a real impact, both the left wing and the right wing blogs and I think what's interesting is while we you know in the main stream media and in the case of "Newsweek", the dead-tree media, as they call us, in the print world, while we try to stay balanced and have this kind of objectivity, what makes these folks listen to and read, and linked to, which is important in that blog world is the fact that they do give opinions and people look for that and that's...
COOPER: Let's talk about Ned Lamont in Connecticut. Has he been able to -- obviously he did very well in the Democratic primary with the far left voters -- has he been able to reach some of those more centrist voters and those independents?
CROWLEY: They tend to -- at least the last sort of internals that we looked at with Joe Lieberman was that his basic support was coming from Republicans and after that it was coming from Independents and after that it was coming from Democrats. So Democrats were the least likely to support Joe Lieberman. But if I remember correctly very high number of Independents were supporting him. So Lamont has reached out to a certain extent. It may not be enough to overcome all of the Republicans that are supporting Lieberman.
KING: And he is a vehicle for fascinating dynamic that will carry out through the results of this election and through what happens to the Democrats after this election. Like Howard Dean, he was the favorite of the liberals. He was the antiwar candidate in the race. It got him the nomination. He knocked off the United States senator in the primary. If he loses the election, many will say is this enough? What -- how does the Democrat Party decide to deal with the war? If Nancy Pelosi is speaker, there are three or four or five different views on the war within her caucus, what will the Democrats in the Senate do? So Ned Lamont is a vehicle for the antiwar debate within the Democrat Party that if they get power tonight, will be much more important because they will then have responsibility.
COOPER: And what we have been seeing in races around the country relates that this has been a national race in many ways. We're seeing that also in the exit polls. For now let's go to Paula and Bill -- Paula.
ZAHN: Thanks so much. And we're just beginning to find out, from talking to voters as they left the polls, what they ranked as issues of chief concern to them. And when we posed the question, how important were these specific issues to your vote? This is what they had to say.
Forty-one percent said corruption. Forty percent said terrorism. Thirty-nine percent said the economy. Thirty-six percent said Iraq. Now these are pretty closely lumped together. I think a lot of people...
SCHNEIDER: Yes.
ZAHN: ... might have thought that Iraq would have had a higher number.
SCHNEIDER: What this says is it was a national election, but it was a multi-issue election. Iraq wasn't the single dominant issue. Thirty-six percent said it was extremely important, but just about as many said corruption, terrorism and the economy where also extremely important. And we found that among those voters who cited Iraq, predictably they voted heavily Democratic. Those were cited corruption voted heavily Democratic. Some surprises on those other issues.
ZAHN: There are some real twists that a lot of people weren't expecting, specifically when it came to the economy, and we asked those voters, those who voted Democratic and Republican, how important that was to them. Let's see what we found out. Sixty percent said the economy as Democrats was important, 38 percent as Republicans. Now, Republicans have been out there, particularly the president saying this is a great economy. The stock market is up, gas prices are falling. These numbers don't reflect that.
SCHNEIDER: They do not reflect the voters voting rewarding Republicans for a good economy. Those who said the economy was extremely important that says 60 percent of them voted for the Democrat, which means there's a lot of anxiety out there. Yes, stock market is high, gas prices are low, but housing values people are nervous about, wages are stagnant and people are worried about jobs.
ZAHN: Democrats were hoping at least at this stage of what we're beginning to learn with this polling that that would be the case. Do you think Republicans will be surprised by that number this early on...
SCHNEIDER: I think they'll be surprised because they thought the economy was their issue. It was not their issue.
ZAHN: Let's move on to the issue of terrorism. And this is what voters who told us that 53 percent of them who voted Republican, that terrorism was extremely important, 46 percent of the Democrats.
SCHNEIDER: No. This is really surprising not because Republicans carried a majority of voters who said terrorism was important. That was the issue Republicans won on in 2002 and 2004. This time, yes, a majority of the voters who said terrorism extremely important did vote Republican, but only a bare majority, 53 percent. Democrats got 46 percent of voters who said their top concern was terrorism. That's a pretty good showing for Democrats on an issue that's not supposed to be their issue.
ZAHN: So once again national issues seeming to drive a lot of races here this evening, but as you can see, Wolf, it's a whole range of issues that is affecting the vote.
BLITZER: I love this kind of information. Paula thank you very much. We're going to keep watching it together with you, Bill, throughout the night. Jeff, these are four important congressional races that we're going to be watching very closely. In some of the precincts, you see a very small percentage of the precincts reporting, but let's talk a little bit about each one, three in Indiana and then at the end we'll talk about Kentucky.
GREENFIELD: Chris Chocola, Joe Donnelly, this is one of the endangered Republicans. Here's a case where if not all politics being local, some politics is. People in this district are very angry about a privatized toll road and the fact that the governor pushed the whole state to Daylight Savings Time. This may not mean much to you, but out there that's a very, very big issue. BLITZER: He's seeking his third term as the Republican in Indiana Three.
GREENFIELD: Right. This was not one of the most endangered Republicans. This is Mark Souder versus Tom Hayhurst. I think it's fair to say that if this race were to go Democratic, that question we asked at the 7:00, might be some sign that we're talking more of a wave than a trickle.
BLITZER: And it's only three percent of the precincts reporting.
GREENFIELD: Right.
BLITZER: Indiana Nine right over here, eight percent of the precincts reporting, another Republican slightly ahead right now, but it's very early.
GREENFIELD: Well this is the third straight match up between Mike Sodrel and Barron Hill. Sodrel took the seat away from Hill by about I don't know, 1,000, 1,500 votes, so that's where we are.
BLITZER: In Kentucky Three, this race has been going back and forth, 64 percent of the precincts now reporting and the Democrat challenger slightly ahead of Anne Northup.
GREENFIELD: And it's one of those seats that the Democrats look at when they look at a national map that says except for the south we think we can compete everywhere. This is one of the seats they really would love to take away from a 10-year veteran Republican congresswoman.
BLITZER: And remember, only 64 percent. We're going to take a look as we look at 7:30 coming up. Three states will be closing their voting in North Carolina, Ohio, and West Virginia. We're going to be watching these races very, very closely -- North Carolina, Ohio and West Virginia. Ohio has got an incumbent Republican in danger.
GREENFIELD: They have an incumbent Republican Senator Mike DeWine in danger. They have Ken Blackwell, the secretary of state, the Republican...
(CROSSTALK)
BLITZER: And we're going to be able to project some winners right now.
In West Virginia, Robert Byrd, no great surprise, the Democratic senator. He is easily re-elected beating the challenge from John Raese. And in Ohio, we can now project a winner for the Ohio gubernatorial race, Ted Strickland, the congressman running against Ken Blackwell. We project that the Democrat will be elected the next governor of Ohio.
GREENFIELD: Ohio has been a solidly Republican state throughout the 1990s, as I mentioned earlier, hit by scandal, the economy has not been good. Ken Blackwell, the secretary of state, that some Democrats blame for tilting Ohio unfairly to Kerry a few years ago was the Republican candidate for governor. He is being replaced by Ted Strickland and we're going to have to watch to see whether the ripple effect, depending on how big Strickland's margin is, knocks off a bunch of Republican House members.
BLITZER: Let's walk over to the Senate, your so-called smart board over here. Robert Byrd re-elected. That was fully anticipated. Doesn't necessarily change the balance of power.
GREENFIELD: If I'm not mistaken, Robert Byrd is the longest serving senator in the Senate now that Strom Thurmond retired after approximately two centuries. I think, if the Democrats take the Senate, Robert Byrd would become president pro tem, only three heartbeats from the White House.
But as you can see, we long ago assigned that seat in West Virginia to Robert Byrd. It wasn't really a contest. Raese tried to raise the age issue. Robert Byrd has probably brought enough bacon or pork to West Virginia to sink the state. He is one of the great deliverers of federal largess and he wins another term.
BLITZER: And so far the balance of power in the Senate hasn't changed. The senators that have been re-elected, the incumbents, Bernie Sanders elected in Vermont replacing an Independent. He's an Independent. They caucus with the Democrats. And in Indiana, Richard Lugar and now in West Virginia, no change in the balance of power. The Democrats still need six Republican seats in order to be the majority in the Senate.
GREENFIELD: I think it's safe to say that the drama of the Senate is yet to unfold. I think pretty much the fact that for instance Richard Lugar had no Democratic opponent, was a pretty confident way of saying he was going to be re-elected.
BLITZER: We're getting some videotape in. I want to show it to our viewers right now, from Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington.
Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives and Rahm Emanuel. You see them in the middle, Steny Hoyer, to Rahm Emanuel's left. They're watching this very closely, to see what's going on.
And fortunately, you can see they're watching Jeff Greenfield on this videotape here. They've got CNN up there, which is encouraging that people are watching over there in Washington, D.C.
There's no doubt that Nancy Pelosi and Rahm Emanuel have a huge, huge stake in what's going on in the U.S. House of Representatives. Rahm Emanuel, the congressman from Illinois, he's been in charge of that congressional campaign committee that's been trying to get Democrats elected. And he's been, over the past couple of years, aggressively recruiting Democratic candidates that he and his colleagues thought could win. And we'll see if that recruitment effort, Lou Dobbs, worked out well. DOBBS: Well it certainly, they say Rahm Emanuel was absolutely exhausted two days ago. So let's see what the situation is in Democratic headquarters where we have Dana Bash awaiting the outcome of this election like everybody else. Dana, what's the mood?
DANA BASH, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, I don't think I have ever seen Rahm Emanuel exhausted, but this could be the test. You know, we saw pictures a short while ago, of Democrats watching the returns. The person who is in charge of this, Rahm Emanuel, saying I would be rather be us than them. That has been their message all day long really, over the past several weeks and months.
Especially, you know, there is sort of a game that politicians play, we call it the expectations game. They usually try to lower expectations, especially on a day like today, Election Day. But they haven't been doing that at all. As a matter of fact, they have been bubbling with optimism.
Upstairs from where I am right there at a hotel on Capitol Hill, the Senate minority leader, Harry Reid and the senator in charge of getting Democrats getting elected on the Senate side, Chuck Schumer, they're watching returns. We're going to be able to go up and watch them soon. A very different kind of approach to election night from the Democratic side compared than the Republican side. We're with the Democrats because the Republicans aren't having any kind of event at all for the media, and that sort of says a lot about where the Democrats think they're going to go tonight versus where the Republicans are. But obviously, we'll see how that turns out.
DOBBS: Dana, thank you very much.
Anderson, over to you.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Thanks very much. The race in Ohio for governor. Were you surprised?
KING: Not surprised because Ohio is a cesspool this year. The current governor, the Republican incumbent Bob Taft has pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor. That's where Bob Ney, the congressman has pleaded guilty to corruption charges.
COOPER: Bob Taft was term limited though, so he had to ...
KING: ... Right, he couldn't but the whole environment of the state is just horrible, anti-Republican. And it is a place, as Jeff noted, where Republicans have tried to build a party organization.
George Voinovich, who's the mayor of Cleveland, went on to become the governor of Ohio, Mike DeWine, who is in a very tough race tonight, many believe he will lose that race -- hasn't done anything to put himself out of step in Ohio except for the war, maybe.
But it's just an awful environment in the state right now. But this is key to Democrats trying. In 1994, when the Republicans won big, they won all the big state governorships too, and that was the key to Republican dominance of the debate, not just in Congress, but across the country in the '90s. Welfare reform, issues like that, balanced budget. The Democrats are trying to do that again. They have the Michigan governor, they want the Ohio governor, they have the Pennsylvania governorship now. That is how the Democrats looking ahead on how to build from 2006 into 2008, they want those big jobs.
COOPER: In the Senate race in Ohio, it has been very contentious. Sherrod Brown, Mike DeWine.
CROWLEY: It has been very hard -- just as John said, it's just a tough road to hoe for Mike DeWine, who is not all that disliked in the state. This isn't somebody that they -- this is just a pure message thing. He is the wrong guy in the wrong place. We talked to some people out there in terms of the think tank and the politicians out there who say look, at some level, everybody in Ohio knows that Mike DeWine isn't responsible for the war in Iraq. It's not his to conduct. On the other hand, they want to say something here. This is a state full of angry voters, and this is as close as they can get to George Bush.
COOPER: Do you agree with that?
MABRY: Absolutely. I think it's going to be interesting. I think one not really funny thing in Blackwell certainly is the fact that he was at the center as secretary of state, in the last presidential election, of a lot of controversial things that happened on election night, especially you know, kids like college where kids had to wait in line all night in the rain until midnight, some still didn't get to vote in lots of African-American districts, and he is an African-American himself. People weren't able to vote at all because of mishaps, because of broken machines, because of a lot of ballots. So I think a lot of people are feeling a little shock before tonight.
COOPER: The other race that we're following very closely of course in Virginia between George Allen and Jim Webb. We are starting to get some raw votes from that race in. We're going to have that right after this short break. We're now 22 minutes or some 23 minutes away from polls closing in some key races in Missouri, Tennessee and Maryland. We'll be covering all of that ahead as our election coverage continues. Stay tuned.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BLITZER: We're only about 19 minutes away from top of the hour. And look at this, 16 states at 8:00 p.m. Eastern will be closing. The voting in 16 states, including some states that have major, major Senate contests that could determine the balance of power in the United States Senate, including in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. We're going to be watching all of those races very, very closely. Maryland, specifically, as well.
Connecticut, Joe Lieberman had been way head in the polls. We'll be seeing how he does. Once these states close their polling in only about 18 -- or 19 minutes or so from now.
I want to show our viewers the actual vote that is coming in right now from Virginia. Only a small percentage, six percent of the precincts reporting -- only six percent reporting George Allen, the incumbent, with 57 percent to Jim Webb with 42 percent.
But remember, it's still a very, very small percentage of the vote. And we don't know -- and this is very important to remember -- we don't know where these votes are coming in, whether they're coming in from the northern parts of the state, the suburban, northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., which is pretty much Democratic, as opposed to the southern part of the state in Norfolk and Virginia Beach, other places in the southern part of Virginia, where the state is largely Republican.
So once again, with seven percent now of the precincts reporting, Allen is ahead. But it's still, very, very early in this critical contest.
Anderson, if the Democrats hope to become the majority in the United States Senate, Virginia could be key.
COOPER: It certainly could. Seven percent of precincts reporting, though. We should keep that in mind as we check out those numbers.
Let's talk to some of our analysts. James Carville's gone walkabout, I think. But we'll start with Bill Bennett.
What are you looking for in Virginia tonight?
BENNETT: Well, obviously, a very close race, razor, razor thin. So we'll see what happens. But I'm looking to see what the exit polls say, what the voters say, how it breaks on the war, whether they believe Jim Webb was a credible guy or not.
I think Allen was coming on at the end. He had a terrible campaign, a lot of it self-inflicted. But I think he was coming on stronger at the end.
Webb's a very interesting Democrat candidate, given the background, Marine, worked for the Reagan administration. So it's a different look. But I recommend the look. It's smarter look for the Democrats.
COOPER: Famously, he was wearing his son's combat boots all throughout the campaign.
BENNETT: Yes, that's right. But I think some questions about Webb were raised and the question of his consistency on issues, I think, is a doubt in peoples' minds. That's what I heard from some independents in Virginia.
COOPER: And George Allen trying to hammer that home, especially in those last days, saying that Webb is basically a grab bag, and you don't really know where he stands, sort of echoing the flip-flop of John Kerry.
BENNETT: Yes, and the good reviews that Allen got, pretty much by partisan way as a governor. Good for Virginia, knows Virginia. Yes, he was hitting all of the points, said he wanted to give a quiz to Webb about Virginia places in the last few days, but Webb wasn't buying.
COOPER: J.C., was the fact that in Virginia this ballot initiative banning same-second marriage has passed, is that going to help George Allen?
WATTS: Well, you would think it would. But I think the thing that helped Senator Allen more than anything, I think was his organization, you know. In the rural communities, you know, that's where his vote is, outside in northern Virginia. That's where the strength of his vote is. He's been very well organized in those areas.
I understand Webb has been less organized in those areas. That could be the difference.
COOPER: Paul?
BEGALA: Yes, you know, it's these single dopiest cliche on election night, right? It's all about turnout.
It's not really all about turnout, it's about who turns out where, what Virginia votes, right?
Will it be that rural Virginia that J.C. just talked about, which is very conservative. And maybe they'll be inspired to vote by this anti-gay Constitutional amendment.
Or will it be northern Virginia, the prosperous suburbs there outside of Washington, D.C., which delivered the last two Democrats to the governorship in Richmond.
And it looks like -- I mean, I live there and I vote there now. And I was surprised in my, you know, upper-income McLean suburb, the line was very long to vote today, much longer than it usually is in a midterm. That's a good sign for a guy like Webb who's a Democrat. He needs that northern Virginia suburban vote to win.
COOPER: James?
CARVILLE: I think for our viewers to know is is that if Webb does not win, the math becomes awfully difficult for the Democrats to take the Senate back. So this is absolutely essential. As you watch in this race tonight, if Webb loses to Allen, the math is just really hard for the Democrats.
COOPER: Because -- I mean, they need six...
CARVILLE: They need six total. And assume that they pick up the big four: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Rhode Island and Montana. They have to win two out of three in Missouri, Tennessee and Virginia. You lose Virginia, the math starts working against you bad. So Virginia's very critical.
COOPER: You all agree with that?
Bill Bennett?
BENNETT: Absolutely. And I think Tennessee is probably gone. We don't know, we don't have any numbers. It looked that way. SO they pretty much have to take Virginia and...
CARVILLE: Missouri.
BENNETT: ... Missouri.
COOPER: All right.
CARVILLE: That is absolutely critical. Watch this one all night.
COOPER: We will. We will.
Let's go back to Wolf.
BLITZER: Anderson, thanks.
I want to update our viewers on some actual numbers, actual votes that are being tallied in these key states. Republican -- by and large, Republican incumbents that could be endangered.
We'll start off, Jeff, with Kentucky. The Second District in Kentucky, we see a very close race there with nine percent of the precincts reporting.
GREENFIELD: Right. And that one is way too early to project. That's indeed our most -- if I may, I'd like to bring you over to Kentucky Four, because this is a race where Ken Lucas, who retired. He's a Democrat, retired a couple of years ago, Jeff Davis took the seat.
Ken Lucas boasts on web site -- he's a Democrat -- that he was one of the most conservative members of the House. He's one of those people who's not sure he's going to vote for Nancy Pelosi if the Democrats do take the majority. That's one race we're going to be keeping an eye on.
BLITZER: Only one percent of the precincts reporting there, so it's still way too early.
But in Kentucky Three, this is one that's been going back and forth. If you take a look, with 74 percent of the precincts reporting. Anne Northup with 48 percent, Johnny Yarmuth with 51 percent. Once again, that's almost three quarters of the vote in.
GREENFIELD: If memory serves, that's exactly the percentage by which Kerry beat Bush in that district in 2004. And it's one of the reasons why Democrats were hopeful about that district.
You can also see down on Indiana Eight, as I mentioned earlier, one of the most vulnerable Republican seats in the entire country, Brad Ellsworth, the county sheriff, with 23 percent of the vote in that -- it's obviously too early to project, still holding a substantial lead over John Hostettler.
BLITZER: These are all basically Republican incumbents that you see, all of these race, here, that the Democrats have targeted.
And if we go to Indiana Nine, for example. Take a look at the Mike Sodrel's race right there with 21 percent of precincts reporting.
GREENFIELD: This is a seat that simply cannot make up its mind. I think we should call this the Hamlet of Congressional districts. Sodrel won that seat by about 1,500 or 1,600 votes two years ago. Hill (ph) won it two years before. I think this may be -- if we live to be 100, they'll still be running against each other to try to figure out who should take that seat.
BLITZER: Let's hope we both live to be 100.
In Indiana Two, I want to take a look at Chris Chocola's race. He's the incumbent Republican in Indiana. Seven percent of the precincts reporting. It's about as close as it gets, 51-49 percent. But way, way early.
GREENFIELD: Right, and I think -- you know, we're going to wait obviously awhile. Once these votes come in, I really think we're going to have some picture about whether the Republicans were able to withstand some of this wave or whether they fell to it. Because -- and Chris Chocola, is the seat that a lot of Republicans and Democrats have pointed to to say, watch that seat and you may know something about national trends.
BLITZER: If there's a early trend, we might -- in these eight seats right here, there's an early trend for or against the Republicans or the Democrats, we might be able to get that information fairly soon.
I want to bring in the numbers that we're getting now from Virginia. Take a look and see about this actual contest between George Allen and Jim Webb. Now, ten percent of the vote is now in. We don't know which precincts are reporting, whether the northern part of the state, the southern part of the state.
But right now with ten percent of the vote in, George Allen has 55 percent to Jim Webb's 44 percent. And obviously, still a long way to go, 90 percent of the precincts haven't yet reported.
We're going to continue to watch Virginia, Indiana, Kentucky, all of these states. A lot more of our coverage coming up right after this short break.
We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DOBBS: We're back with about seven and a half minutes remaining before about 16 states -- 16 states set to close their polls. And we're looking forward to that, and Jack Cafferty is looking forward to the results and has a few questions about what happens next.
CAFFERTY: Where do we go from here? Miles to go before we sleep and it's much too early to begin to decide who's going to win this thing, but if we get up tomorrow and the Democrats are in charge of either one or both houses of Congress, what's the plan? Where are they going to take us? And are they going to be able to get there?
A lot of people wonder whether there is a plan. The first thing that a lot of people would hope that they would do would be to address the lack of checks and balances in the federal government. We haven't had a lot of that in the last five or six years.
The war in Iraq, of course, looming very large, one of the most important issues in the exit polling today with a lot of the voters today. And they would like that addressed. A lot of people want the troops pulled out of Iraq or at least some sort of plan for a partial, if not a complete, drawdown.
As far as domestic issues, there are tons and tons of those. The open borders, immigration reform, all the stuff that this last Congress failed to get around to -- education, Social Security, Medicare, health insurance, the deficits. The list just goes on and on and on. Arguably, the least productive and one of the worst Congresses we've had in our 200-plus year history. Fortunately, they're adjournment right now and waiting to see if some of them will be unemployed by tomorrow morning.
And of course, the other big, big possibility in all of this is if the Democrats feel frisky and have enough political muscle to do so, they can launch a series of formal investigations into some of the shenanigans, if you will, that the Bush administration has pulled off in the name of the war on terror.
So the question becomes this -- "If the Democrats get control of the Congress, what should their priorities be?" You can email your thoughts to caffertyfile@cnn.com or go to cnn.com/caffertyfile. Lots of options.
DOBBS: A lot of options. It will be interesting to see what people have to say. I guess you're operating on the principle that no one of us is smart as all of us here.
CAFFERTY: Well, I suppose that's a safe place too, to take safe harbor in these times.
You know, it's discouraging. Already, we're hearing problems with the voting machines, judges getting involved in this stuff. We're 230-some-odd years old, and here we go again. And it's just so sad, you know, that we can't seem to figure out how to vote our people in to run the country.
DOBBS: Well, we certainly can't seem to figure out how to count them accurately and fairly in all jurisdictions.
I was talking to Warren Stewart of Voter Trust USA earlier, who's an expert in this, an activist on e-voting machines, and he thinks that we're going to see more problems tonight rather than fewer. I'm sort of holding on to the thought that things are going to work better over the course of the evening rather worse.
CAFFERTY: What do you think after, going all the way back to 2000 and the hanging chads, and here it is, 200 -- almost 2007 that we could have figured some of this stuff out? There are flies out there in the jars of ointment that haven't been addressed.
DOBBS: Sometimes it just -- that little old paper ballot might have worked just pretty well, despite all the fancy technology.
But I also happen to think if all the folks across the country, whether they were in Ohio, or they were in Maryland, laughing at those poor folks down in Volusia County, Florida in 2000 and Palm Beach County...
CAFFERTY: They were the laughing stock of the country, remember?
DOBBS: You don't hear so many chuckles anymore.
CAFFERTY: No, they're getting it done, or at least so far.
DOBBS: OK. Thank you very much. And can't wait to see what folks have to say.
CAFFERTY: We'll have the e-mail answers in a bit.
DOBBS: Looking forward to it. Anderson, over to you.
COOPER: Lou, we're just four minutes away from the 8:00 poll closings. A number of states. And one of the main reasons we've been looking at it where the polls closed at 7:00 of course is in Virginia. George Allen against Jim Webb.
Candy, we were talking about, you know, some 12 or 13 percent of the presents have only reported in Virginia, so the numbers -- you have to look at them with that eye. Big problem is, though, we don't know where those precincts are.
CROWLEY: Exactly. We know, for instance, where Webb should be strong, and that's in that Northern Virginia area, NOVA area, as they call it. It's a suburb of Washington, really. And we've been talking about the affluent Democratic voters, Paul was talking about.
So if, for instance, they -- the votes that we're seeing now include a lot of those votes -- well, I can tell you that Allen is in big trouble, but we just don't know where those votes are coming from, the real votes.
So when you see something that is -- sort of looks like this big a gap, you have to sort of look at it and realize that we just don't know where they're coming from.
COOPER: What Candy is talking about right there is the vote board, 53 percent for Allen, 46 percent for Webb. But again, look at the bottom right hand corner of the screen -- 16 percent of the precincts reporting, and as Candy was repeatedly saying, we don't know exactly where those precincts are.
Two minutes, 45 seconds away from the 8:00 poll closings. Huge Senate races to talk about -- New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Missouri, Maryland. A lot could be determined in this next hour.
KING: Missouri and Tennessee, two of the races the Democrats probably need if they are to take control. Maryland, one of the states where Republicans thought, hey, can we take a seat? That's held by the retiring Paul Sarbanes. Ben Cardin, a congressman, is running for it. Michael Steele, the African-American lieutenant governor, he was close; he ran a very good, a very great race. The most interesting ads maybe of the whole campaign. Republicans are hoping very much for that one.
COOPER: Michael Steele really positioning himself as an outsider, as an anti -- hoping that the vote was anti-incumbent as much as it might have been anti-Bush.
MABRY: Absolutely. The amazing thing about Michael Steele, and you'll hear this from Republicans on our expert panel behind us, but the amazing thing about this candidate, is the Republicans have high hopes for this candidate. If he's successful -- and he actually has received the endorsement of some Democratic officials from Prince George's County, African-American Democrats, if he's successful at reaching black voters, then Ken Mehlman's dream of a truly big tent Republican Party is alive and well, despite what happened in Katrina and the loss of faith from African-Americans.
COOPER: Ironic, though, a lot of folks in the White House have high hopes for Michael Steele, and yet when asked is he a proud Bush Republican, he said he's a proud Republican, not using Bush's name.
Let's go to a check of the board with Wolf.
BLITZER: All right, Anderson, 16 states about to close their polling -- actually, 15; Pennsylvania's going to wait for an hour. But Jeff Greenfield, he's got four questions that we want to look at as we approach 8:00 on the East Coast.
GREENFIELD: Yes, I do. As we just heard, how did race play? Is it going to hurt Harold Ford, Jr. in Tennessee? Might it help Michael Steele in Maryland?
Question two -- have Democrats found a social values issue? Embryonic stem cell research is on the ballot in that tight Senate race in Missouri. Gay marriage hurt them on the ballot in '04. Maybe the embryonic stem cells help them.
Question three -- the Lieberman factor. Is an independent going to win? Are the netroots, the bloggers who pushed Ned Lamont and helped him win that Democratic primary going to be happy or disappointed?
And the final question, will reverse coat tails doom the Pennsylvania GOP? Their Republican candidate for governor is running far, far behind. There are endangered Republican House members in the Pennsylvania, just as there are in Ohio. We'll find out.
BLITZER: And they've decided to keep the polls in Pennsylvania open for an extra hour in two counties, and -- not in all of the state, in two counties where there some problems. As a result, we're not going to project any winner in Pennsylvania until 9:00 p.m. on the East Coast at the earliest, because we don't want to interfere with the voting in those two counties in Pennsylvania where there were some earlier problems requiring them to go ahead and keep the polls open for an extra hour.
We're ready, though, to take a look at the board over here and make some projections.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.voxant.com
