Polls have just closed in Oregon's 1st Congressional District, where voters are choosing between Democrat Suzanne Bonamici and Republican Rob Cornilles to replace ex-Rep. David Wu, who resigned last year in disgrace following revelations about erratic behavior and a brewing sex scandal. In this all-mail election, all ballots had to be received by 8pm local time in order to be counted.
In a break with the past, Oregon election officials are now permitted to count ballots received before election day on election day, rather than having to wait until polls close before beginning the tally. This means that, with any lucky, the vast majority of all votes will have been counted by 8pm, which should also hopefully mean we'll find out most of the results immediately. We'll see!
Results: AP | Oregonian
8:05 PM PT (David Jarman): We don't have anything from the AP, but (big h/t to marcvstranivs in comments) local TV station KPTV already has results... and they've already called it! Bonamici 57, Cornilles 37, with around 100K votes tallied already.
8:07 PM PT (David Jarman): Fastest liveblog ever. (Here's the KPTV link, and now we're hearing that the SoS office has confirming numbers up at their site.
8:09 PM PT (David Jarman): Well, the SoS office is calling it 100% reporting. They say:
Suzanne Bonamici 79,386 (56%)
Rob Cornilles 53,215 (38%)
Steven Reynolds 4,473 (3%)
James Foster 4,413 (3%)
Thanks for coming everyone! You've been a great audience!
8:12 PM PT (David Jarman): If you're following the individual counties, it's Bonamici at 53% in Washington (the big enchilada), 75% in Multnomah, 56% in Clatsop, and 50% in Columbia. We haven't gotten any numbers from Yamhil, yet though, which ought to move things a percent or two closer overall once they report (they're the only GOP-leaning county in the district).
8:14 PM PT (David Jarman): The AP says 54% is reporting, so we aren't actually that close to being done; they say 57-37, though they have lower totals than the Sec. of State's office.
8:18 PM PT (David Jarman): AP has it at a slightly closer 54-39 now. But they've also called the race. So too has Portland's local paper, the Oregonian. Congratulations to Suzanne Bonamici, the House's newest member!
8:42 PM PT (David Jarman): The SoS office is saying 54-39 now too (with 3 each for the minor players), with rural Yamhill County finally having reported (where Cornilles won narrowly, not that that helps him much). 89,055 for Bonamici, 64,121 for Cornilles.
10:20 PM PT (David Jarman): Well, it's much later, and very little more has happened. The AP has moved the needle up to 71% reporting; the SoS office has bumped the total up to 93.5K for Bonamici and 67.6K for Cornilles, still good for a 54-39 Bonamici lead.
PPP and SurveyUSA acquitted themselves well; both picked an 11-point margin for Bonamici, not far from the actual 15. On the other hand, local Republican pollster Moore Information gets the gong, portraying it as a 4-point race; still, that may have head-faked the NRCC into spending five figures on a last-minute coordinated expenditure, so, really, kudos to Moore Information too.
Then there's the case of the DCCC, who along with Dem allies pumped more than a million dollars into this race to pump up the margins. On the one hand, while Bonamici might have won without any outside expenditures at all, a dominant win here avoids any Beltway media "Dems in disarray!!1!!" narrative setting that might hurt future fundraising or recruitment in the coming months; on the other hand, they might find themselves in late October wishing they had that extra million dollars sitting around ready to deploy. We'll have to accept that the jury is still out on their decision to go big on this race.