The internet tubes are all abuzz this morning with the news that a recanvassing of the special election in New York's 23rd Congressional District revealed a closer race than was apparent on election night:
A recanvassing in the 11-county district shows that Owens’ lead has narrowed to 3,026 votes over Hoffman, 66,698 to 63,672, according to the latest unofficial results from the state Board of Elections.
In Oswego County, where Hoffman was reported to lead by only 500 votes with 93 percent of the vote counted election night, inspectors found Hoffman actually won by 1,748 votes -- 12,748 to 11,000.
The new vote totals mean the race will be decided by absentee ballots, of which about 10,200 were distributed, said John Conklin, communications director for the state Board of Elections.
This has led some jubilant Republicans and some nervous Democrats to conclude that Hoffman will snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
The math seems to make that a very unlikely proposition.
Bear in mind, for example, that 10,000 absentee ballots being sent out does not necessarily translate to 10,000 absentee ballots being returned. The actual number of ballots will certainly be less. As an example, in Fort Drum's Jefferson County, only 1300 ballots have been returned out of the 2300 issued. With every ballot that is unreturned, Hoffman's window of opportunity grows considerably smaller.
There is ample reason, therefore, to ease up on the panic, as Mark Blumenthal makes clear:
While the re-canvass narrows the race from a 4.1 percentage point Owens margin (49.3% to 45.2%) on election night to a slightly better than 2 point margin now, it is still very unlikely that Hoffman can overtake Owens on the absentee votes. Hoffman would need to defeat Owens by a margin of at least 2:1 among absentee voters, assuming that most of the 10,200 ballots were returned and that Scozzafava's vote is 10% or less. Not even the ill-fated PPP poll had Hoffman ahead by 2:1 districtwide. And Hoffman's margin would need to be larger if Scozzafava's vote is bigger or if the number of returned ballots is smaller.
What's more, Blumenthal updated his piece recently to point out that the Watertown Daily Times says that a county-by-county accounting of the votes gives Owens a slightly larger lead (3176), and says that the number of absentee ballots yet to count is actually in the neighborhood of 5400 ballots. Presumably, The Daily Times is counting returned ballots, rather than issued ballots.
Bear in mind, also, that even if Team Hoffman calls for a recount, that recounts rarely alter the outcome of elections, and almost without exception only do so when the margin of victory is in the range of 300 votes or less.
This margin, at present, is more than ten times larger than that particular threshold.