President-elect Barack Obama added to his electoral-vote victory by winning North Carolina, and Democrats picked up a US Senate seat in Oregon for a net gain of six.
North Carolina’s 15 electoral votes gave Obama a total of 364 to Republican Senator John McCain’s 163. The Associated Press (AP) declared the Democrat the winner in the state by 14,053 votes out of more than 4.3 million cast. Missouri, where McCain leads by more than 5,800 votes out of 2.8 million cast, was the only other state where the presidential race has yet to be called.
Obama, 47, was the first Democratic presidential candidate since 1976 to carry North Carolina because of a “bigger turnout among African Americans combined with support from migrants” from the north, said Merle Black, a political scientist at Emory University in Atlanta. Similar voting patterns helped Obama win Virginia and Florida as well, he said.
Obama benefited from an 8.4 percent increase in Democratic turnout in North Carolina, the second highest of any state, according to Curtis Gans, who directs the Center for the Study of the American Electorate at American University in Washington.
Democrats added to their Senate majority as AP declared that Jeff Merkley defeated Republican Senator Gordon Smith in Oregon. Democrats have a 51 to 49 majority in the current Senate, including two independents who usually vote with them.
Including Merkley and the two independents, Democrats will have at least 57 seats when the next session of Congress convenes in January.
Senate races in Alaska, Minnesota and Georgia are still undecided.
In Oregon, Merkely had 775,211 votes to 735,936 for Smith with 82 percent of precincts counted, AP said.
In Alaska, Republican Senator Ted Stevens has a 3,353-vote lead over Democrat Mark Begich out of 220,751 ballots cast, according to the AP.
The election was held one week after Stevens was convicted in federal court of making false statements by failing to report more than US$250,000 in housing renovations and gifts paid for by an Alaskan oil-services company.
There are still 60,000 uncounted absentee ballots, and the race may not be decided until next week, Begich said at a press conference yesterday.
In Minnesota, Republican Senator Norm Coleman had initially been declared the winner over Democrat Al Franken until the race tightened to within less than 500 votes out of more than 2.8 million cast, according to the AP. Under Minnesota law, the race is automatically designated for a recount.
In Georgia, Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss faces a runoff against Democrat Jim Martin after neither was able to garner more than 50 percent of the vote in a three-way race that included Libertarian Allen Buckley.
With 99 percent of Georgia precincts reporting, Chambliss had 1,841,454 votes, 113,828 more than Martin Buckley, who received 126,328 votes, did not qualify for the Dec. 2 runoff.
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