When Republicans are in danger of losing a tight race, they love to sow confusion, to somehow cast the whole process into doubt. This helps create a situation where their guy can potentially do an end run and sneak through.
We can't let that happen in CT-Gov. What's happening here is actually pretty clear.
The AP has apparently reported some bad numbers for one of the state's largest cities. Tonight, this made them "uncall" their earlier declaration that Democrat Dan Malloy had won - with their tallies now showing him behind Tom Foley by about 8,400 votes with 98.5% of precincts reporting.
The city in question? New Haven - home to a university you might have heard of and some of the best pizza in the world. It's also decidedly Democratic.
Let's take a quick look.
(h/t to Taniel at Swing State Project for a lot of the info here)
According to the AP, with all precincts reporting, a little more than 9,000 people voted for Governor from New Haven, a city of 125,000.
Just 9,000.
Guess how many people voted for Senate from New Haven this year? Roughly 25,500.
And how about the number of people who cast ballots for Governor in New Haven four years ago? About 25,000.
One of these numbers does not look like the others.
Making the case for AP sloppiness even more compelling is that another source - the New Haven Independent - reports that there were almost 26,000 votes cast in the city for Governor just two days ago.
That's about 17,000 votes more than the AP has reported. And to say it was a landslide is an understatement:
Malloy beat Tom Foley by 22,298 to 3,685 votes, a ratio of 6 to 1 in New Haven, counting absentee ballots.
That’s a far bigger margin than the 16,589 to 8,274 vote by which New Haven’s own Mayor John DeStefano prevailed in town when he ran for governor in 2006. DeStefano beat Gov. M. Jodi Rell by only 8,315 votes that year.
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So what does this all mean for the election? Currently, the AP shows Malloy with a deficit of about 8,400.
The numbers reported by the New Haven Independent show Malloy getting a bigger New Haven margin than the AP reported by about 12,750.
Give that to Malloy, and he jumps into the lead by over 4,000 votes - even before the outstanding precincts are considered. These come almost entirely from another city down the road: Democratic-rich Bridgeport, where President Obama stumped with Malloy and a few of our other candidates in a high-energy, well-attended rally the weekend before the election.
So, in short, I'm pretty sure we've got this. Any margin under 2,000 votes triggers a recount, but my sense is we'll be well above that when all is said and done.
Susan Bysiewicz, our Secretary of State, is set to report numbers later today.
Update:
Team Malloy issued a statement hinting at these very issues. I found it in this CBS New York article.
The Malloy camp, however, issued a statement late Wednesday night refusing to back down from its declaration of victory.
"We are aware what the AP is reporting, and we’re confident they’re wrong. Their numbers for New Haven are wrong, and they’re leaving out a significant number of votes in Bridgeport. We remain confident that we are ahead by more than enough votes to avoid a recount," Malloy campaign manager Dan Kelly said.
Notice the dismissive tone of the article. You'd think they might have actually tried to confirm or deny the claims. But that might require, like, you know, actual reporting.