UPDATE: Final count (w/o absentees or military) has it at 65 vote lead for Murphy (D) out of 155,000 cast.
Thanks to Elrod for update
UPDATE: As of now the race is very close with pretty much all the votes in it looks to be a dead even tie.
Absentee ballots still pending, some reports say as many as 6,000
Looks like this one could take a while to resolve
Recounts, court fights, etc are on the way folks…..
Again, regardless of outcome it’s not that big a deal. Dems could argue a win is a plus since it is a GOP leaning district but GOP could argue that it was a Dem seat already. Reverse the language for a GOP win.
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Tonight is the special election in the NY-20 to replace Kirsten Gillibrand who was appointed to replace Secretary of State Clinton. This is seen as a tossup seat, having been traditionally Republican but held for 2 terms by Democrat Gillibrand.
Probably not very significant in national terms since it basically comes down to turnout but as the first special in the Obama administration it is worth watching (and just to answer some on the left, I’ll say that regardless of who wins this one).
Republican Jim Tedisco had been seen as ahead during the early days of the race but late polls had suggested Democrat Scott Murphy would win this one.
The latest results seem to bare out this toss up analysis. With 505/610 precincts reporting, Tedisco holds a lead of roughly 1,000 votes over Murphy.
Tedisco: 63,923
Murphy: 62,811
It looks like there are two major areas with significant votes still out:
Columbia County has 20/58 reporting and has given Murphy a 12 point lead. This would mean he can probably count on a gain of about 1,000 votes or so from that county (assuming the rest of the county follows the votes so far)
Saratoga County has 145/188 reporting and has given Tedisco a 10 point lead. Again assuming that the rest of the county follows suit he would gain about 1,200 votes or so.
The rest of the counties are pretty small and would seem to balance each other out.
This would result in a net win for Tedisco of around 1,200 votes out of around 130,000 cast. This would be a lead of around 1% so it would not result in a recount. However we do not yet know about absentees so I would expect it to take a little time to be finalized.