Very few people went into tonight thinking Bill Halter would win. The big question was whether or not Lincoln could get over 50%.

Well, it looks pretty clear that that’s not going to happen. And this is going to go to a run-off on June 8th. But look at the numbers right now. With a little under half the precincts reporting Lincoln’s only ahead by 2 points. That’s a pretty thin margin, certainly a lot closer than I expected or the polls suggested.

Now the wild card here is the also-ran candidate Morrison. He was running very much on the right. Since Halter’s running to Lincoln’s left, simple math might suggest that Morrison’s votes break to Lincoln. But I don’t think it’s that clear. Morrison is running so strongly against the national Democratic party that I really don’t think you can say with any real confidence which way Morrison’s voters break or frankly if they’ll even show up for a Halter-Lincoln contest at all.

This looks like it’s going to be a real race. And I have to imagine the netroots, the unions and the progressive wing of the Democratic party are going to recommit to this race in a big way.

It’s looking like Bill Halter might actually end up ahead of Blanche Lincoln tonight, though it’s of course a run-off either way. But Lincoln is speaking right now. And I must say, she’s got the sound of a loser in this speech. She seems kind of shell-shocked. She started off saying that she’d been written off and now is back. But I mean, that’s not true. The consensus was that she’d win tonight with a good margin and quite possibly win outright and avoid a run-off. Now she’s got a real fight on her hands.

If you’re watching this speech, I’d be curious to hear your take.

Late Update: Votes are coming in now in Pulaski County and it’s looking more likely that Lincoln will squeak out a plurity. But it’s still extremely close.

It’s looks pretty clear now that Blanche Lincoln will win a plurality in Arkansas tonight. But she’s got a hell of a race cut out for her going forward to June 8th. And here’s the thing to watch: Senate Dems took the preliminary steps this evening to strip her very aggressive derivatives amendment out the financial reform bill.

I think that’s going to be very easy for Halter to use as a political cudgel against her over the next three weeks. He’ll argue that it was all a ploy on her part and that as soon as the polls closed her allies in the Senate got ready to strip it out. Whether that’s completely fair or not, who knows? But that could be a punishing issue against Lincoln. I suspect we’ll hear more about this tomorrow.

It is quite an understatement to say that I am not Rand Paul’s target audience. Still, I couldn’t help notice something about his brief acceptance speech and I’m curious to hear whether any of you had a similar take. I don’t think I’d ever seen Paul speak at any length. Or if I did I don’t have a clear recollection of it. And he came off to me as arrogant, bellicose and even a little messianic in his demeanor. To put it baldly, he sounded like a jerk.

When I watched it on replay later it didn’t sound quite as jarring to me. But maybe that’s because my impression from the first viewing was so negative that a second look couldn’t live up to my first impression. (see some video highlights here.)

In any case, that’s actually quite different from his father. I find Ron Paul’s politics awful and he’s a classic ideologue. But as a person he comes off as pretty humble and even unassuming, which I’ve always thought is the reason he manages to have a certain degree of crossover popularity despite his draconian and often ugly politics.

Now does any of that matter? Not necessarily, I guess. And when I mentioned this in the newsroom this evening a couple members of our team pointed out, rightly, that that sort of attitude is part and parcel of the Tea Party movement and really any anti-establishment movement for that matter. But even in a conservative state like Kentucky some measure of pivoting is necessary in a general election. And I wondered after seeing Paul whether he’s constitutionally capable of it.

Howard Dean hails a “big sweep” for progressives.

Rendell calls Sestak’s chances against Toomey “at best a tossup.”

Rep. John Spratt (D-SC) says his recently diagnosed Parkinson’s disease is the “sly, underhanded” target of a National Republican Congressional Committee email that repeatedly refers to his alleged forgetfulness and throws in a reference to clumsiness for good measure.

In case you missed all the fun, we’ve got last night’s results posted here.

In the first poll of the Connecticut U.S. Senate race since the NYT expose on his fibbin’, Democratic Attorney General Richard Blumenthal’s big double digit lead against pro-wrestling magnate Linda McMahon (R) has vanished. McMahon’s campaign took credit for tipping off the paper to Blumenthal’s Vietnam fudging.

During the rush of the election results last night, Brian Beutler, our reporter on the Hill, kept checking in with me on the machinations on financial reform going on in the Senate, which continued to do business through the evening even as one of their colleagues went down to defeat and another was forced into a runoff. I couldn’t help but think that as the most of the political world was focused on the election results that the real political power struggle was taking place on the Hill.

Wall Street and its Senate allies are desperately trying to beat back changes to the financial bill that would make it a whole lot stronger and thus less favorable to the vested business interests. The fact that their efforts were taking place against the backdrop of an electorate that was in the process up uprooting some of the vested political interests made the battle more striking. But that has been the backdrop to the financial reform debate for the past several weeks, albeit not as starkly, and it’s precisely why the bill continues to move more or less in a progressive direction (even as progressives decry it as weak and insufficient to prevent another financial crisis).

For all the election drama of last night, the financial reform debate is in many ways more dramatic and almost certainly more significant. Brian gets us up to speed this morning on where things stand and what to expect today.

The general election for U.S. Senate in Kentucky between Rand Paul and Democratic Attorney General Jack Conway is shaping up as one of those races where the voters will have a real choice: tea partier or bona fide progressive? Evan McMorris-Santoro previews the race.