Check out what counties are left to report. Probably a narrow win for Merkley, once Multnomah and Lane finally get their act together. Good looks!

Have Lane and Multnomah Co. not reported yet?

Where are we?? How many counted so far??

What Bill said, which counties are reporting?

ARRGGGHHHH!!! Way too close... Like a few votes from those counties still need to be counted, a lot? I need some fodder for greater hope...

Lower turnout in Multnomah and Merkley not over 70%? Ouch. At least the margin in Washington County is making up for that a little. This one is going down to the wire.

Speculate on "lower turnout in Multnomah"?

There are lots of votes still to be counted in Lane County. According to the Lane County Elections Department web site, they've only counted about 21% of the votes there. Many of the votes still to be counted are from the Eugene area.

It looks pretty good for Merkley. He's got a slight lead, and most of the uncounted ballots are in Multnomah, Washington, Clackamas, Marion and Lane counties. He's leading in all of them but Marion, and has a huge lead in Multnomah County.

It's saying 79% turn out in multnomah county, that doesn't sound low to me (nationally, that's quite high)... What's the historical turn-out for Multnomah county?

It's 10:52. I'm not listening to reports.

I bet the issues will be experience and whether Merkeley made himself into an authentic voice for Oregon. I suspect the independants want someone who can stand up for Oregon's interests. I suspect the question about Smith was whether he has been such a voice. It seems he did not make himself independent enough from the Bush debacle.

You're kidding me right? They're going to go home and resume counting the Merkley/Smith race in the morning?

SUCK IT UP!!!! We're talking one night every two, four or six years and you can't work longer than three and a half hours? Give me a break.

Kate Brown, you've got to get on this, JOB 1.

They're going home??? For real??? When was that announced? I must have missed it.

what is clear is that many Dems were not willing to hold their nose and vote for Merkely. He is under-performing among Democrats in several more rural counties. Turnout is not meeting our hopes either, so this one will be closer than it should have been.

Ok, I'm confused now. This toy is now showing Multnomah at 100% with 128,000 total votes. There were 365,000 votes in Multnomah in 2004.

So that 100% is wrong, right?

Multnomah and Lane counties still have only a third of their ballots counted. Anything that looks close now won't be once Multnomah county is added in.

Thanks, Jenni. Now I can get some sleep!

Have they stopped counting in Multnomah for the night?

I expect Multnomah to add at least 80K more votes to Merkley.

There is a note on the SOS website stating there will be no more updates until 9 a.m. tomorrow. Lame! Who needs sleep?

Thanks for that info Jenni and Ron. I'll go to bed then.

This,along with the MN senate race are driving me NUTS! These 2 seats are crucial.

I think it goes without saying, at this stage, that we should have gone with Novick. The only reason that Merkley and his anemic campaign got to parity, yet with Smith winning (and likely to win), is because of the wind at the back of Democrats.

"I think it goes without saying, at this stage, that we should have gone with Novick. The only reason that Merkley and his anemic campaign got to parity, yet with Smith winning (and likely to win), is because of the wind at the back of Democrats."

I won't say that Smith is likely to win until I hear more about this strange issue with the Portland votes. It would appear that less than a half of those votes have been included in the officially reported totals, and yet cnn.com claims that 100% of the precincts have reported. That makes no sense. Besides, even without Portland, Merkley still has lots of votes from Eugene yet to come.

As for the Novick versus Merkley issue, that's really ancient history. Merkley won, Steve didn't. People need to move on from that. However, that does bring up an important point -- will Oregon realize that they have an amazing candidate in their midst (Novick) or will it blindly forget that? Rather than worrying about the past, Oregonians should take steps to elevate Novick ASAP. I'm sure that Jeff Merkley would wholeheartedly agree with that principle. Let's just hope that he has some clout to do something for Novick. In other words, before we worry about elevating Novick (which is a must), let's keep hope alive for Merkley.

I do hope you are right, Sal. Why does Ore. with its much vaunted election system have such failings in Lane and Mult. Co.?

"wind at the back". o no... another hallmark sentiment makes its appearance. Just asking you to use your own words - it makes the blog more interesting all of you/us appear to be more than True Believers - are there other phrases and also other REASONS for Dems being brought into office? Besides a campaign speech line that caught on?

It will be tense waiting for that Smith/Merkley decision - that one is so very important to us. Call it the Exception to the Wind Effect if that makes it easier to discuss..... eh.

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10 minutes to go....Hopefully some good news!

Its NOT OVER!!

Multnomah is reporting 100% in error!

Multnomah had 83% turnout, with more than 400k votes cast in the county. The AP feed is listing 100% reported with only 30% turnout, about 120k cast. That would be a 70% undervote for Senate.

Multnomah counting stopped for the night. There are still a few hundred thousand to count in Multnomah.

Yep,

Hopefully Measure 64 turns around as well.

Good thing we didn't have Measure 65 in effect for this election, or Smith would have won easily. Look at the size of that spoiler effect!

@ Joel: Indeed -- although it's interesting to see that 538 says that GA Senate race will go to a runoff -- http://is.gd/i4h. While I prefer that to a Chambliss reelection, it sure illustrates what a dumb system for reaching a majority winner top-two is (as opposed to instant runoff voting).

I hope the M65 backers will regroup and discard the solution in search of a problem and instead take a serious look at real election reforms that have been widely endorsed throughout the discussion by people on both sides of M65: fusion and instant runoff voting. Oregon's constitution already expressly provides for using preference voting (instant runoff voting) --- so what are we waiting for?

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