A few final thoughts as we chew this one over. First off, Siena's final poll had 13% of Republicans and 10% of Democrats voting for Jack Davis; PPP had it 16R, 8D. Regardless of which numbers you might think were more accurate, it's fallacious to assume that you can add Davis's election night totals to Corwin's and find something resembling a GOP majority. It just didn't happen that way.

Another thing: The GOP spent an absolute fortune on this race. Not counting outside money, Corwin alone spent about $2.6 million of her own money to get about 40,000 votes. That comes out to $68/vote. By contrast, Meg Whitman spent approximately $144 million out of her own pocket — a record — to net about 4 million votes in last year's gubernatorial race in California. That comes out to roughly $35/vote. Kathy Hochul raised very well, but she was most certainly outspent.

As for outside money, the main spenders for Corwin were $700K by Karl Rove's American Crossroads, $100K by the American Action Network, and $425K by the NRCC (totaling about $1.2 million). For Hochul, it wound up as $371K from the House Majority PAC, $111K from the Communications Workers of America, $75K from 1199 SEIU 1199, and $267K from the DCCC (totalling $824K). Hochul herself raised around a million bucks.

I don't want to sound cocky. Jack Davis certainly did have some effect on this race, and we're not likely to ever see anyone like him again — and certainly not in 2012. But the Medicare message definitely resonated. If you don't think it did, then why did Scott Brown twist himself into contortions about the Ryan budget over the last couple of weeks, until finally coming down against it? Why have other Republicans like Olympia Snowe (who's up for re-election this year) also said they'd vote no? Because they're belatedly realizing how wretched Ryan's Curse is for them. Tonight's result is only going to further that realization.

But even if you believe none of this, even if you think that this was a truly sui generis race that must stand on its own, there's still one fact that cannot be disputed: Democrats are now one seat closer to re-taking the House. No matter what lessons you want to draw from NY-26, that is cold, hard reality. And right now, tonight, that's what matters.