Coakley concedes

The Boston Globe reports that Democrat Martha Coakley has called her Republican opponent, Scott Brown, and congratulated him on his victory.

If the reported returns so far are accurate, it looks like Brown about 52%, Coakley about 47%. If that's true, then it's a pretty sad commentary on Massachusetts. Whodathunk that in the birthplace of the American Revolution, only 1 in 100 voters would support the only candidate who in any way stands for that Revolution's values?

Update on the oddsmaker angle: Tuesday morning, I swagged the outcome as Brown 49%, Coakley 46%, Kennedy 5%. The actual outcome seems to have been Brown 52.2%, Coakley 46.8%, Kennedy 1%.

Recent polls had Kennedy at the 5% I predicted. I should have guessed that "wasted vote syndrome" would bring that way down, but I was unduly optimistic in this case -- the "major party" candidates were just so godawful that I thought Kennedy's vote would stick because it had no other even nominally worthwhile candidate to go to.

I'd be interested to know where that 4% did go to. Rasmussen had Coakley as the second choice of Kennedy supporters by a 2-1 margin. If that is how the fallaway from Kennedy broke, then Brown was doing better, and Coakley worse, than I thought before they picked up their respective last-minute-poltroon votes.