As the re-canvass of votes continues in New York’s 20th congressional district, Politicker NY reports that errors are being found and corrected and they are all heading in one direction. Jim Tedisco now seems to hold a 12 vote lead over Democrat Scott Murphy, though Murphy was declared to hold a roughly sixty vote lead on election night.

Now it’s Tedisco by 12!

As voting machines are re-canvassed, Assembly Minority Leader Jim Tedisco has picked up 37 votes, evaporating Democrat Scott Murphy’s lead in the race to replace Kirsten Gillibrand in Congress, according to county election officials who are conducting a recanvass.

Tedisco now has 77,236; Murphy has 77,224.

While Republicans may take heart at this shift, a 12 vote margin is still essentially a tie. The real answer will come when the thousands upon thousands of absentee ballots are opened. Currently sealed, that process will begin on Tuesday with military ballots coming in on the 13th. So how will those sealed votes tip the scales? Nobody knows for sure until they are all opened and counted, but Jennifer Rubin of Commentary Magazine has examined the party breakdown of ballots currently in storage and feels that things will continue to go in the GOP’s direction.

According to absentee-ballot numbers I received last night: in Warren, Republicans returned 569 of 764 ballots while Democrats returned only 316 of 437, with 113 of 205 “other” ballots returned.

Likewise in Washington, where the Democrats’ projection is a pick up of 70 votes, Tedisco has an advantage of 315 vs. 187 in returned absentee ballots (62% vs. 37%).

But the real kicker is in Saratoga. The latest figures there were 1,731 ballots returned, 922 of which were Republican and 502 Democratic (53% vs. 29%), with the remainder “other .” That is a very big chunk of the absentees, about one third. Tedisco won that county by a 54-46% margin.

I’ve done some radio segments with Jennifer and can tell you that she’s a smart, thoughtful political analyst. The numbers she quotes still don’t give us a definitive answer, but are of interest anyway. The uncertainty factor comes from the fact that not all of those “Republican” ballots will necessarily go for Tedisco. The district as a whole still has a 70,000 registration advantage for Republicans, but Kirsten Gillibrand carried it twice and President Obama carried it as well. They haven’t been voting straight party line for a few years.

But as she notes, this special election did show some of these high participation areas swinging Tedisco’s way in general, so the absentee ballots may still follow that pattern. If her predictions hold true, Tedisco’s 12 vote lead of today will matter little, but if Tuesday brings him an additional lead in three digits this thing may be over far sooner than I thought 48 hours ago.