For those who care, after three rounds of voting, it seems to be a two man race between current RNC chairman Mike Duncan and former Maryland Lt. Governor Michael Steele. Steele is gaining while Duncan is falling after leading the first ballot.

One thing that was odd was the only candidate to bring up "change" was Mike Duncan. I guess it's better to say that than bring up how much he sucked the past election cycle.

UPDATE (2:34pm): Mike Duncan has dropped out of the race. More to come later.

UPDATE (2:48pm): Katon Dawson, the South Carolina state Party's chair, is in the lead with 62 votes to Steele's sixty. Eighty-five are needed to win. Blackwell has 15 strategic votes. If he drops out, his votes will probably go to Dawson.

UPDATE (4:35pm): So I was texting Bill this whole time to update the blog post, but unfortunately he did not put them up here. Prior to the fourth vote, Ken Blackwell announced he was dropping out and putting his full support behind Michael Steele. This was pretty shocking as Blackwell had criticized Steele for being too moderate. The crowd in attendance let out a pretty good cheer, the crowd was mostly Duncan and Steele supporters. However, this did not mean that all the Blackwell votes automatically went to Steele. In fact, even if they all did, Steele would not have had enough votes to put him over the top. The fourth vote came with Steele needing only 6 votes to wrap it up. Prior to the fifth vote, the last remaining laggard, Saul Anuzis (head of Michigan committee), dropped out leaving the fifth ballot as the final ballot. In the end, Michael Steele came out on top with 91 votes. He gave a pretty good speech, talked a lot about engagement and getting the party excited again. All in all, it actually had a lot more drama than I thought it would have.