While the news networks still haven’t made their decisions, one upstart election monitoring outfit has already made up its mind about what many are saying may be an unexpectedly competitive race: The new Ace of Spades Decision Desk is saying that Republican Ed Gillespie’s attempt to unseat Senator Mark Warner of Virginia is doomed.

Gillespie’s campaign says its internal polls were very close, the campaign holds a big lead in the raw returns so far (16 points), and it has a lead based on the New York Times’ adjusted real-time results. But Ace of Spades HQ, which aims to use more rapid reporting of local election returns to make predictions before the news networks and the Associated Press, is laying a marker down here — albeit not an incredibly risky one, as most would have rated Gillespie’s chances this morning at pretty low, too.

More on Ace of Spades’ project here.