A Democratic takeover of the United States Senate rested on Wednesday on a few thousand votes as two races were too close to call and risked throwing an American election once again into extra time.
Senate races in Montana and Virginia were agonisingly tight but appeared to be trending towards the Democrats, who had already swept up four of the six seats they need to grab a majority in the powerful upper chamber.
Democratic challenger Jim Webb, a decorated former marine and secretary of the Navy, claimed victory in Virginia, where he maintained a lead of just more than 8 000 votes with more than 99% of precincts reporting.
”We’re going to win, we’re going to win,” Webb told supporters, who clearly believed their man was the next junior senator from Virginia. ”We have looked at where the votes are that have yet to be counted, and it looks very, very good for our side. It’s going to take a while to count all these votes.”
His Republican opponent, George Allen, declined to concede after the race veered back and forth as votes were counted all night, and the possibility of an automatic recount loomed.
”I know the counting will continue through the night. It will continue tomorrow [Thursday],” Allen told glum supporters at his campaign headquarters.
”I want to thank you all because I know you’re like a bunch of eagles and hawks watching how every one of the votes are accurately counted,” he said.
In the western state of Montana, Democrat Jon Tester held a 2 500-vote lead over incumbent Republican Senator Conrad Burns with 90% of precincts reporting, but a final result was being delayed by voting-machine problems.
Should Democrats grab both seats, they would add control of the Senate to their earlier triumph of seizing the House of Representatives for the first time since 1994 and compound the misery for President George Bush’s Republicans.
The possibility also remained, however, especially in Virginia, of the kind of drawn-out recount and wrangling over ballots that dragged the 2000 presidential election a month over time. Bush was eventually declared the winner over Al Gore.
However, analysts said Allen could also wake up on Wednesday morning and decide that even with a recount, and some extra ballots being counted, the numbers did not add up for him and he couldn’t win.
A similar morning-after realisation hit Democratic presidential nominee Senator John Kerry after the 2004 election, and he wound up a challenge to results in Ohio, concluding he was too far behind Bush for it to make a difference.
In Senate races declared earlier, Democratic challenger Claire McCaskill toppled Republican incumbent Senator Jim Talent in Missouri.
Republicans clung on to a hotly contested Senate seat in Tennessee after a campaign that enflamed racial tensions. Republican Bob Corker was declared the winner in that race over Democrat Harold Ford, an African-American.
But conservative Senator Rick Santorum lost in Pennsylvania, and fellow Republicans Mike DeWine and Lincoln Chafee lost in Ohio and Rhode Island respectively.
Democrats retained hotly disputed seats in New Jersey and Maryland to leave the party poised to retake the Senate pending the results from Montana and Virginia. — Sapa-AFP