I know most people want to forget about the election on November 2, but some races are still undecided. There remain seven undecided House races and one gubernatorial race, which seems certain to go to a recount.
First, the news, and it's good. Jim Costa has pulled ahead in the California 20 House race. He stopped just short of claiming victory yesterday after vaulting ahead of Republican Andy Vidak by 1300 votes. Also in California, Jerry McNerney has pulled ahead by 2500 in the 11th CD.
Now for my quick and dirty educated guesses on the outstanding races. As mentioned above, it is going well for incumbents Costa and McNerney in late vote tallying. I rate them both at 95% to be declared the winners of their races. The bulk of remaining votes is in CD 20 is coming from Costa-friendly territory and he has finally overcome Vidak's early lead. McNerney's lead has slowly built after being in a virtual dead heat on Election Night. Ben Chandler will be declared the winner in Kentucky 6 unless there was a computation error. He, too, is a virtual lock to return to Washington.
Now for the uphill climbs. Tim Bishop is now trailing by 383 votes in Congressional District 1 in New York. Bishop was thought to have won a close vote but computation errors were apparently made and he now trails by that tiny margin. A rather large number of absentee and affadavit ballots remain (10,000) and they probably will tell the tale as to who represents the district in 2011. I rate Bishop's chance at 40%. There may well be a recount here and it should be very close. Upstate, Congressman Dan Maffei trails Ann Marie Buerkle by over 600 votes. There again are ample absentee and affadavit ballots to make up the difference, but more of them are from Republican-friendly counties than blue counties. I make Maffei's chance at about 15%.
The other two races in doubt are Melissa Bean vs. Joe Walsh in Illinois-8 and Congressman Solomon Ortiz vs. Republican Blake Farenthold in Texas-27. Bean has crawled to within 344 votes, but there are only about 1500 absentee ballots left to count, most from counties carried by Walsh. As they say, the fundamentals favor the leader. Only because the race is so close, I give Bean a 10% chance of prevailing. Ortiz trails by 800 in a district where only 100,000 voted. He wants a recount, but I can't see him winning. I give Ortiz a 5% chance of returning to Washington.
UPDATE: Both Costa and McNerney have declared victory, while there opponents are not yet conceding. I have checked out NY-25 a bit closer and while a majority of ballots are from Onandaga County (Syracuse), Maffei must overperform by about 10% on absentee and affadavit ballots. Still an uphill climb