Murphy Leads By 168 Votes, As Absentees Come In Strong

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The latest absentee ballot count in the NY-20 special election is looking very good for Democratic candidate Scott Murphy, with his lead now at 168 votes as new results have come in from the pro-Murphy counties of Columbia, Dutchess and Warren, compared to a 47-vote lead at the close of business yesterday.

We’re seeing a continuation of the trend of Murphy doing even better in the percentage of the absentee vote in a given county, compared to the Election Night vote. Some examples of what I mean: Murphy won Dutchess County with 51.5% on Election Night, but in the portion of absentees counted so far he has 54.0%. And although Murphy got only 44.4% of the Election Night vote in Greene County, he’s at 48.3% in their absentees, ahead of the baseline.

Only one county, Otsego, has proven to be an exception to this rule. But it only cast about two percent of the total absentees, and is more than outweighed by the trend in other counties.

Another thing to keep in mind is that Murphy is cleaning up on absentees even with the heavy number of ballot-envelope challenges being lodged by the Tedisco campaign. For example, Murphy in Columbia County leads among absentees by a raw-vote margin of 250-127, or 66.4%-33.6% — and that’s with 194 ballots having been challenged by Tedisco, compared to 19 by Murphy, and one of them challenged by both. (And let’s just say it again: One of those 194 Tedisco challenges in this county is against U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s ballot.)

If any decent-sized portion of those ballots are allowed into the count, that would provide Murphy a solid boost. After all, no campaign would ever seek to kick a ballot out unless they thought, rightly or wrongly, that it was a vote for the other guy.

What we’re still missing here are any absentee numbers from the Tedisco stronghold of Saratoga County and the smaller but still significant pro-Murphy area of Washington County, and some of the counties that have reported are still only partially done. But for Tedisco to win, with the data we now have, he would need to really make a splash among the remaining absentees and win on almost all the ballot challenges — a tough order, to say the least, though admittedly not impossible.

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