McCaskill will end night up by 23,000

McCaskill has a 13,000 vote lead as of 1:23am ET.  Based on partial county returns, and assuming that the late precincts in those counties come in at the same proportion as the early results, she should get 40,284 additional votes in those partial counties.

That leaves 5 counties that are reporting no results:

- Clay

- Jasper

- Maries

- Pemiscot

- Polk.

I used the WP site to see how votes in those counties split for Bush/Kerry in 2004.  In those 5 counties, Bush beat Kerry by 31,600 votes.  Presumably, turnout will be lower this year (no presidential race), and Bush wouldn't fare as well in 2006 as he did in 2004.  So I think we can reasonably assume that as long as the demographics didn't change hugely, that we're looking at less than 30,000 shift to Talent in these 5 counties.

With those assumptions, I think McCaskill leads going into the recount by roughly 23,000 votes.