Democrats to control Senate - news expected by Christmas

...hopefully earlier than that!

Making the somewhat dangerous assumption of a Democrat victory in Montana (where the Democrat is ahead by nearly 2% or 5,277 votes after 85% of the precincts have been counted) it will all come down to the recount in Virginia which can be invoked by the apparent loser as the margin between the candidates is less than 1%.

Don't hold your breath.

Last year in Virginia there was a very similar recount situation for the post of State Attorney General involving roughly the same number of votes and the same sort of margin between the candidates.

That recount took until December 22nd!

So, we should hope for the Republican who is trailing, George Allen, to concede and not request a recount. Otherwise, we will have to wait until Christmas.

The other interesting point about that recount is that the Democrat, who was behind in that situation, only picked up 27 votes in the recount process (that's out of a total of about 2 million votes).

According to CNN, after 99% of the votes counted in Virginia, the Democrat, James Webb, is ahead by 7,847.

I am not going to make any predictions because I am nervous of being proved wrong after Gore/Bush 2000. But, you work it out!