The latest official numbers from NY-20 now show that Democrat Scott Murphy is currently ahead by 35 votes, as he picks up votes in the absentees that have so far made up for his 68-vote deficit in the Election Day machine counts.
Here’s where it gets fun: In Warren County, a Murphy stronghold that overall went 55.8%-44.2% for him on Election Night, Tedisco has technically picked up four votes, 34-30, with six out of 70 precincts’ absentees counted. However, as county Democratic Party chairman Bill Montfort (who is also a county election official) told me, the Tedisco campaign has challenged about 20 ballots, out of around 25 total challenges, keeping those votes out of the count for now.
“I would just think that once it’s decided that these should be counted,” said Montfort, “then Murphy is gonna pick up 20.”
In these individual precincts, Murphy won by 51.5%-48.5% on Election Night, compared to a Tedisco edge of 53.1%-46.9% in the ballots so far. But if we added 20 votes to Murphy and five to Tedisco, we get a Murphy edge of 50-39, or 56.2%-43.8%, ahead of the curve for these precincts.
As I reported today, the ballot challenges going on here — and thus far, significantly more of them have come from the Republicans, trying to keep Dem votes out — could be seriously distorting the final result, if most of the challenges are ultimately withdrawn or overruled.
As for the other absentee votes that are actually in the can, we’re generally seeing a continuation of the trend yesterday, with Murphy doing mostly better in the absentees relative to the home counties’ and precincts’ Election Night returns.
The newest precincts in Columbia County gave Murphy 54.3%-45.7 on Election Night, but the absentees are a 44-29 margin, or 60.3%-39.7% (The county overall was 56.3%-42.7% on Election Night, and 70.2%-29.8% in all the absentees tallied so far, with a whole lot of challenges from the GOP). Rensselaer County voted 51.5%-48.5% for Tedisco on Election Night, but the absentees have come in 221-211 for Murphy, or 51.2%-48.8%. Dutchess County was 51.5%-48.5% for Murphy on Election Night, while the absentees so far are 139-119 for Murphy, or 53.9%-46.1%, with more Republican-launched challenges than Dem challenges.
The one genuine exception so far is Otsego County, which only cast less than two percent of the total ballots in the race. They were for Tedisco 51.2%-48.8% on Election Night, but the absentees have come in at 54.1%-45.9%. And the challenges here weren’t that much more from Tedisco than from Murphy, either.
Again, some of these counties aren’t finished, and the military and overseas votes could shift these margins (though so far only about 400 have been returned, out of about 1,900 originally sent out, and the deadline for them to arrive is this Monday). And of course we’re still waiting on the Tedisco stronghold of Saratoga County and the Murphy strongholds of Washington County, which haven’t reported anything, plus more results from Warren.
