As we go into Thursday morning without a winner (despite the WaPo election page), the CT Gov race remains a cliffhanger. Note that the winner trails the loser with 99% of the vote in.
From Rick Green's Hartford Courant blog:
It seems like Malloy probably won, judging by what I hear out of Bridgeport. While everything fell apart there in very confusing fashion when they ran out of ballots on election day, in the end Malloy appears to have won -- adding a critical 19,148 votes to his statewide total.
"We are preparing here for a recount,'' state Republican Chair Chris Murphy said. "How in Sam Hill can the chief election officer of this state, who is supposed to be impartial, make a broad brush claim that Dan Malloy has been elected the 88th governor of Connecticut when she has not certified that fact or provided the documents to prove it."
"She is trying to give the impression that Dan Malloy is governor ... so that if we bring up any issues, it's we are trying to steal the election."
It's likely that vote-rich Bridgeport will win in for Malloy AND Jim Himes in CT-04 (his R opponent has conceded, even though he is ahead in the hinky AP numbers, which have to be considered unreliable at this time due to late ballot counting.) And that can be attributed to the President's pre-election visit, which did more good for the D's than WWE did for the R's.
In any case, it sounds like we won't know anything about the official winner for a few days at least. But as Green's post notes, we have learned a lot from FL 2000.
Both Dan Malloy and Tom Foley are claiming victory in Tuesday's elections, each man lawyering up and declaring they have their own personal vote count in lieu of an official number.
Foley -- who claims a lead of more than 1 and less than 2,000 -- put out a press release saying he was naming a transition team stating that he was "not going to wait" until his lead is confirmed "before preparing to take office."
Malloy wasn't going to let this stop him. He said his lead is at least 11,000 votes. He called his own press conference at the capitol, which was crowded with reporters and supporters, to introduce his chief-of-staff and Lt. Governor Nancy Wyman. They will coordinate his own transition team.
"I've got to move forward,'' Malloy said Wednesday afternoon. "The people of Connecticut last night hired me to do just that."
Act like a winner or you are a sure loser.
Added:
[Secretary of the State] Bysiewicz said that she now has complete New Haven results which show Democrat Dannel Malloy winning about 21,000 votes to Republican Tom Foley's approximate 3,500.
Those totals could push Malloy to a victory outside the recount margin of 2,000 votes.
We will know when we know.
UPDATE 1: CT Post:
Sources with knowledge of the totals said Thursday morning that a discrepancy in reports from The Associated Press undercounted Malloy's margin of victory in New Haven. Bysiewicz, who on Wednesday said Malloy had won by about 3,100 votes, will release the updated but still unofficial results showing that Malloy's margin is above the threshold for a recount.
Bysiewicz had planned a noon news conference on Thursday. But late in the morning her staff announced that it had been postponed until "later this afternoon."
