Incumbent Senator Saxby Chambliss (R) won handily in Georgia's run-off election, besting challenger Jim Martins (D) by an approximate margin of 15 percent.  Today's NY Times:

With 96 percent of the state’s precincts reporting in the runoff election, Mr. Chambliss had 57.5 percent of the vote, and his Democratic challenger, Jim Martin, 42.5 percent. The margin was far greater than the three percentage points that separated the two men in the Nov. 4 election, when neither won the required 50 percent. Many of the Democrats who turned out last month in enthusiastic support of Barack Obama apparently did not show up at the polls on Tuesday.

Notably, neither did Senator Obama show up.  Many Democrats saw Georgia's run-off as an opportunity to pick up a 59th vote in the Senate.  As a result, in the past few weeks, former President Clinton, former Vice President Al Gore, and rapper Ludacris turned out to campaign for Mr. Martin.  Yet the President-Elect simply recorded a robo-call.  Perhaps he didn't appreciate the significance of gaining one more step toward breaking the moderating impact of the filibuster. as did many Georgia voters:

Democratic voters said they had seen Mr. Martin’s campaign as an opportunity to support President-elect Obama. “I want the Democrats to not have to deal with a filibuster,” said Charles Bedell, a social worker in Atlanta who supported Mr. Martin. “It’s important to me to have a Democratic senator.”

Or.......perhaps he did, and stayed clear of the state anyway.  Intriguing tea-leaves, indeed.

In any event, before speculating about the voting conduct of folks like Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) or Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) on any particular issue, the presumptive tally is now 58 votes in the Democratic Caucus, and 41 for the GOP.

The occupant of the final seat will be determined by the conclusion of the proceedings in Minnesota.  By this Friday, it is expected that all of the votes cast will have been recounted.  Currently, challenger Al Franken (D) claims to be leading by 22 votes.  Senator Coleman's (R) campaign, the Secretary of State and the Minneapolis Star Tribune, on the other hand, all report that Coleman leads by 303 votes.  Some 6,000 challenged ballots remain to be addressed, and the Franken campaign has already threatened to litigate and/or submit the dispute to the Senate for resolution.  This could take a while.....