My guess: Carter by 4.5...

p.s. I'm still pissed about Lamont... Lieberman is such a schmuck!!!

I'll predict Carter by 7

Tim

I'll grudgingly predict Jefferson by 4 (52-48, just like when he was first elected in 1990).

But hey, I'm deliberately pessimistic. I also said Democrats had a 50/50 shot at winning the House.

Hey, why does it say she has 6 votes in Orleans Parish, and that's 38%?

WTF?

Why is this race so close?

Didn't the crook get only 23% in the primary?

Carter should be crushing him! This is ridiculous, why would people vote for this crook?! This is insane!

Does anyone know who the Republicans are supporting.  I remember with the Mayoral race, the Republicans/business community went for Nagin.

Ouch - 75% Jefferson, 25% Carter.

Sure, it's like one precinct, but still.

Great so far, with Carter leading by 16% with 15 of 492 precincts reporting.

Jefferson has an early lead....

67 of 492 Precincts  14%

William Jefferson (I)    3,995    53%
Karen Carter     3,567     47%

Updated at 08:17 pm

At this time it looks about even if barely jefferson in (Orleans Parish Returns) and at least 15 points carter in (Jefferson Parish Returns) for a solid carter lead.

Karen Carter got 8% there in November and Jefferson's percentage was almost 3 times larger.

Karen finished 5th in Jefferson Parish.

So maybe enough people will switch from Shepard and others to her for her to win.

   I thought Carter was supposed to do well in Orleans parish and poorly in Jefferson parish.  The results show the opposite right now.

regarding http://www.nola.com/elections/1209_retur ns.ssf:

1) right now, about 50 precincts have reported and there are only about 4000 votes.  Does 80 votes per parish sound right?

and 2) the number of precincts reporting is wrong.  if you add orleans parish precincts reporting and jefferson parish precincts reporting you don't get the number at the top.

The results page is wonky.  It's saying Carter has more total votes, but a lower percentage.

They must have a faith-based mathematician doing the counting at NOLA.com.

8:34 Central results

Carter    2119 48% (really 64%)
Jefferson 1169 52% (really 35%)

total votes 3288

Carter now leading by 194 votes with 72 precincts in.

big jump for carter! Up 52-48 now

I hope that the Orleans precincts that haven't reported yet are a lot more pro carter or she will go down

Her lead is down to 45 with 87 precincts in.

Is there any sense of where these are coming from there, were two early crazed percients  a 75% to 25% for Jefferson and an 83-17 for Carter, are their similiar places in the future.

Louisiana Secretary of State page: http://www.sos.louisiana.gov:8090/cgibin /?rqstyp=elcms2&rqsdta=120906

It's not been updated yet, but it has parish results.

This sucks.

With the caveat that nola.com's been weird all night, it appears Jefferson's opened up by 2,000+ votes in the past couple of minutes:

U.S. REP., 2nd DISTRICT     103 of 492 precincts
Candidate    Number of votes    Percentage of votes
Karen Carter (D)    3390    38%
William Jefferson (D)    5481    62%

From the Times-Picayune:

Jefferson  60%
Carter     40%

with 9,000 votes counted.

Jefferson opened up a huge lead in Jefferson Parish.

Some people will apparently vote for the crook, if he talks about values enough.

Jefferson  56%
Carter  44%

 only 20% of Orleans parishes reported
  33% of Jefferson parishes in.  

Carter shuld be stronger in Orleans; jefferson in Jeff.

he'll be expelled and Carter can replace him then..otherwise, he should be done away with by other means (and no I don't mean that way...!)

Gretna results

Primary

1536 votes total

372 for Jefferson, 118 for Carter, 165 for Troy Carter, 180 for Lavigne, 689 for Shepard.

And in this election:

724 to 196 Jefferson.

But then again, Gretna bigwigs aren't pleased by people like Carter who mention Some things

The cluelessness of the American electorate cannot be overstimated.  When I see Democrats voting for the likes of Joe Lieberman and Bill Jefferson, I have to wonder if there is much hope for a progressive agenda.  I hate being a downer, but jesus h. christ, a guy gets caught with wads of cash in a refrigerator and gets re-elected?

I wonder what they are thinking about us in civilized countries?

The Polling doesn't make the winners in New Orleans. But, the side that can GOTV will win.

And by GOTV, that means any votes, no matter it's legality.

Considering that this was a battle against some entrenched people who could get a van and fill it with voters who'd go in and vote Jefferson, don't get too worried if you lost.

But Louisiana has closed party primaries in 2008. So Jefferson is done by 2009.

When he is indicted, he'll be expelled and someone not named Carter can replace him then. Would Karen Carter really run again after getting (apparently) hammered this time?

One of the more interesting threads I gleaned from local bloggers when I was trying to figure out this race earlier this week (not that I spent as much time as some of you on it, not by a long shot) was this: local elected officials who aren't running have zero incentive to help Carter in what would have been a difficult race anyway, and every reason to want to see Dollar Bill win, because when he gets expelled, there's an open seat (in a very safe Dem district).

Why don't we just not seat him? A al Vern Buchanan?

The Democratic leadership in Congress had two chances recently to step up and do the right thing, and they failed miserably on both occasions.  The Lamont race in CT, and this NOLA race were opportunities for the Democrats to show some integrity and backbone and help push the good candidate over the top.  Instead they kept their hands clean, and now they will have to suffer the embarrasment of Jefferson getting booted out of his seat for corruption.  Does anyone think that just maybe the Republicans will make hay of this?

Oy.

The turnout in my precinct (I voted 10 minutes before the polls closed) was 25%.

Pelosi could have done the right thing by accepting Jefferson's compromise (giving his ways and means committee seat to fellow Louisiana Democrat Charlie Melancon), but she punished him, and thus punished Louisiana.  Also, find one word about Katrina or Levees or the Gulf Coast on her "first 100 hours".

nola.com hasn't updated in a while. it's been at 143 precincts reporting for quite a few minutes.

any thoughts?

just saw an interview on WWL from the Carter HQ. doesn't sound hopeful :(http://www.wwltv.com/sharedcontent/Video Player/videoPlayer.php?vidId=57429&l ive=yes

well, it reinforces what we already knew, beating incumbents is hard. Doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, just that it often takes several bites at the apple.

This is really sad.  I cannot believe NO sent a crook back to congress.  what are these people thinking?  why would they vote for a crook and send him back?????

What. The. Fuck.

Honestly, I'm at a loss for words.

I thought this was an auto-win election for us, and we were just paying attention to it because there's not really much too important electoral-wise that we can devote our attention to. Something we can cap off November with to make ourselves feel good, tossing the bastards out whichever party they might fall in.

How did this happen? How could anyone in the right mind vote for him? I'd honestly choose the Republican over him if I were voting, but we had a bona fide Democrat! It really disheartens me a great deal and puts a damper on the holidays.

Just... what the fuck...

We really need campaign finance reform. What we have at the moment is an incumbency protection racket. Beating an incumbent like Jefferson or Lieberman is hard enough; imagine an ordinary citizen trying to challenge Hilary Clinton.  She has tons of name recognition and $30 million in the bank. To run for her seat in Congress, you would have to either be independently wealthy, or be a whore for the special interests. It would be nearly impossible to raise enough money for a serious campaign against her, and in the unlikely event that a challenger could raise that kind of money, they would have to sell their soul to the corporate devil.

What amazes me is that some people think we ought to be exporting our democracy to places like Iraq, when we don't even have a functional democracy here

Jefferson got 70% of the vote in Jefferson Parish. The efforts of Sheriff Harry Lee really sank Carter in Jefferson Parish.

With 66% of the votes in...

William Jefferson (I) 23,211  58%

Karen Carter 16,696   42%

Can't tell if I'm more Disappointed or Disgusted.AArrgghh.

William Jefferson is the new Marion Barry.

I want to congratulate Tim Tagaris for the great job he did in covering the LA-2 race on the ground for MyDD.

Sounds like they cooked the internals polls to me, Tim.

The Corrupt GUY WON! YAY!

At least that is what they are saying around DC....the DC insiders won and a bunch of internetties lost...they got a disgusting piece of shit re-elected and made true that whole arguement that party don't matter - they'reALL shitheads!

whether they are or not is not important.....seriously someone need s to take this corrupt fucktard into the woodshed, blast his brains out with a shotgun, then say DumbAss made the mistake of cleaning his gun with his brain material!!!!!!!!!

TTagaris did do a great job covering this race. It's utterly wicked that the suburbs voted for Jefferson. This is totally whack. Unreal.