So, OK, I know that it looks bad. Mary Jo Kilroy, who lost by 1000 votes in 2006, is down by 300 today.
But not only will she make that up, she's gonna end up winning fairly decisively when they finally call this race. There might not even be a recount.
Here's why...
Outstanding votes:
-Paper Ballots cast at polling places
-Monday's Early Vote
-Provisional Ballots
-Timely but not yet received mail in absentee ballots
-Absentee Ballots with mistakes
Lets go through the list.
Paper Ballots Cast at Polling Places: The Board of Elections gives voters a choice to vote on a paper ballot instead of the touch screens when the line gets longer than 20 people. I can think of no reason to think that these ballots wont be identical to the machine ballots in their makeup.
Monday's Early Vote: Monday it appears about 2500 people voted in this district. Those votes remain uncounted. These votes, if they reflect the other early voting, will skew Democratic. +500.
Provisional Ballots: Democrats suck at voting correctly. What are you gonna do - in the end those provisional ballots are ours. In 2006 Kilroy made up 2000 votes from provisional ballots plus...
Late Absentee Ballots Between these two categories, +2000 votes.
5000 Absentee Ballots with Correctable Mistakes: I tend to believe that these will skew Democratic (again, we suck at voting properly). These will only count if the mistakes are corrected. Even if these skew in an identical proportion to the absentee vote, thats about +3% Democratic over all. + >50.
So I expect Kilroy to pick up about 2550-3000 votes. She only needs like 350. If she wins by more than 2500 or so, there's no recount, and we'll know between Nov 14 and 18. If not, a recount would likely take until December.
Mary Jo was down by 3000 votes this day 2 years ago. She made up 2000. If she does just a quarter of that this year she wins.
Yes She Can!