You may have missed this very close race, because ABC/CNN screwed up their numbers on election night. They were mistakenly reporting this as a 6-point margin for Democrat Anthony Brindisi, and ABC even called the election for Brindisi that night.
It was, in fact, a 0.6-point margin. At the end of the night, Brindisi was leading the Republican (Claudia Tenney) by less than 1500 votes, later revised down to a mere 1298 votes. We were facing as many as 17000 absentee and military ballots , and Tenney would keep her seat if she took those ballots 54-46.
Would that be unlikely? Not at all: the 50-50 split on election night was made from counties that swung 56-44 for Brindisi (Broome) or 44-56 for Tenney (Chenango), and one county, Oswego, was 38-62 for Tenney. Depending on the specific population in those absentee/military ballots, you could have a big swing one way or the other. It’s not easy to predict how they will swing.
As of Friday, however, all but three counties are in, and Brindisi has padded his margin to over 3000 votes. Tenney will need to win the remaining 3 counties by 78-22. This is unlikely to the point of nigh-impossibility (or as the linked article puts it, Tenney now needs a miracle to keep her seat.) That’s because the remaining counties are:
- Tioga, which voted Tenney 56-44 and has about 200 absentee ballots;
- Chenango, which voted Tenney 56-44 and has about 1200 absentee ballots;
- Oneida, which voted Brindisi 50.6-49.4, and has about 4200 absentee ballots.
It is not mathematically possible for Tenney to win if Oneida’s ballots are anything less than 66-34 in her favor. Such a swing is implausible enough, and Brindisi is doing well enough in absentee ballots so far, that 538 has now decided to call the race for Brindisi.
That being said, we haven’t even passed the deadline for accepting military ballots. Those must be postmarked by election day, but will be accepted if they arrive as late as Monday, Nov 19th.