Fox just called the Maryland Governor's race for O'Malley, even though only 6% of precincts are in and Erlich is up 54-45. What are they using to make these ridiculously early calls, given that Barone says they aren't using the exit polling "data" to do so?

Latest polls have the D's up 18 in the House, 3 in the Senate, for a "hung" Congress next year. I basically got the "core" GOP score right (215), but Shaw and Bass also lost, dropping that to 213. Throw in at least one GA pickup to get to 214--exactly 18 less than the 232 they have now!

In the Senate, my base was 48, with Allen, Talent and Corker "leading" for a total of 51. A Burns win in MT would raise this to 52. Either way, the D's cannot control the Senate!

So we have a draw.

My major goof was in the Tossup category for the House. Bush's 43% rating on 11/6-7 did not help him there because too many seats were beset by personal scandal. This brings me to a very contrarian point: The races were not nationalized enough! The generic November "bounce" for the House R's failed to materialize due to people in there too long (Shaw-FL, Johnson-CT) or retirements (Kolbe of AZ, Delay of TX--not yet convicted of a thing) or scandal (Foley-FL, Weldon-PA, and Sherwood-PA seats). These 7 seats normally would have stayed GOP for a 221-214 majority which is what I thought would happen. Too bad. I hope the RNCC people have learned their lesson.

As for the Senate, Talent, Corker, Steele (who came very close to a pickup!), and probably Burns ran excellent campaigns; 3 out of 4 should win here. Meanwhile, Kean, Santorum, and to some extent Chafee (and far leftist Lamont-CT) ran awful races and all of them LOST.

As one of Miss Nancy's 1980s predecessors said, "All politics is local."

I can't help but feel incredibly, terribly sorry for the blacks in MD that voted for Steele and especially the black community leaders that openly asked people to support him...boy, if they thought the Democrats ignored them before, just wait until they see how the blacks are treated by the Democratic party there now. What a shame, they really seemed to sense change was possible.