10:52 PM: This sounds key.
Lamb (D) should expect a pretty healthy boost from uncounted absentees. Why? 1) They've historically skewed Dem 2) More than half of them are from Allegheny Co. (despite Allegheny only being ~43% of #PA18). pic.twitter.com/SAth8WtnY0
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) March 14, 2018
10:39 PM: The final point seems to be this. There are estimated to be 6k or 7k absentee ballots that are being counted. Wasserman, who I flagged below, says these tend toward Democrats in this district. Those could be more decisive than the remaining outstanding election day votes. Also, two of the counties in the district won’t count their absentee votes until tomorrow. It sounds like there’s a decent chance we’ll *largely* know the outcome by about midnight eastern. But it’s possible we won’t really know until tomorrow. Sad.
10:31 PM: This is from Cook Report/538’s Dave Wasserman. Could be key. “It’s been reported that there were about 6-7k absentees cast in #PA18. In the past, absentees have run slightly more Dem than the overall vote and I don’t believe they’ve been counted yet. They may matter here.”
10:24 PM: Lamb is up by just 500 +/- votes with 97% precincts reporting.
10:14 PM: We are now at 96% of precincts reporting. Connor Lamb, the Democrat, has a lead of about 900 points. The remaining votes pretty clearly favor Saccone. But it’s not clear that it’s enough to put him into the lead. There just aren’t many votes left. I’m not sure there’s any way to get a clearer prediction than that. I will note a few key caveats about this entire race. This district won’t exist in November. It will be replaced by a more Democrat-friendly district. There’s already been a huge shift in the Democrats’ favor since 2016. For tonight, though, a win is a win is a win. But we don’t know who the winner is.
9:46 PM: Damn, this is close. And the late numbers are pushing Saccone toward a tie. Most number counters don’t seem to have the precinct granular data to know where we’re really at.
9:37 PM: We’re at just past 9:30. It’s exceedingly close with an ever so slight advantage – maybe – for Democrat Connor Lamb. The Times “needle”, which I mentioned below, is the night’s first casualty. It was struggling. Then one county stopped reporting precinct data. At that point the whole enterprise is flying blind. So they shut it down. Honestly, I feel their pain (in the web production/publishing sense). So where is this? Lamb seems to have the inside track. It’s very close but Saccone isn’t quite at the margins he needs to be. There are enough votes outstanding, though, that he can expand those margins. You’d rather be Lamb than Saccone. But it’s close. Real close.
This is from almost a half hour ago. It was from when things were leaning a bit against Republican Saccone but not by much. This is Jason Miller, longtime Trumper who may return to the White House soon. He was on CNN as the designated Trump. It’s a good illustration of how it works in Trump world. It’s never about Trump. If you lose you were barely even a Republican and certainly not remotely associated with Trump.
Jason Miller, the Trump guy on CNN, already bailing out on Saccone while it's neck and neck. pic.twitter.com/EUicJszxQ2
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) March 14, 2018
9:11 PM: One possible explanation for the uncertainty and conflicting signals is that Lamb is over-performing in many key areas but Saccone seems to be over-performing in his own state legislative district. In other words, a couple or more than a couple conflicting trends.
9:05 PM: So I follow the NYT “needle” very closely. It’s a great widget and is often very predictive. It’s sort of an automated version of the way an experienced election watcher can look beneath the total results and tell you where things are going by look at individual precincts. That “needle” has swung heavily in Saccone’s favor in the last 20 minutes or so. But the numbers crunchers I watch aren’t convinced things have moved that far in Saccone’s favor. Unclear. Less bullish for Lamb than it looked a half hour ago. But we need to see more.
8:58 PM: The tide seems to have shifted in Saccone, the GOPers, favor. Still early. But more uncertain now than it was.
8:45 PM: We’re at a quarter to nine. The top line current results show an overwhelming lead for Lamb, the Democrat. But that’s meaningless. The early results are from counties that favor Dems. What’s not meaningless is that Lamb seems to be exceeding the margins he needs in key precincts. It’s not by big margins but by meaningful ones. And that pattern seems to be showing up in a lot of places. Cautious optimism warranted for Dems. Of course, still need to see more.
8:39 PM: We’re only seeing fragmentary bits of data. But these aren’t necessarily tiny in given precincts and counties where we have historical benchmarks. And Lamb seems to be running a bit ahead of the margins he needs. Could easily go either way. And it almost certainly will be close either way. But room for some very cautious and early optimism for Dems.
8:30 PM: Finally some results. Only a thousand votes though. Meaningless 4 point margin for Lamb. More notably: a single precinct in Allegheny County and it’s a 20% swing in the Dems favor.
8:14 PM: I’m watching an Applebee’s commercial with Melissa Ethridge’s ‘Come to My Window’ and it’s really tragic.
8:09 PM: Quick Josh cheat sheet. PA Secretary of State election results website. The state always collects and reports results at a slightly different pace than AP (the source of almost everyone else’s data. Not better or worse. But different pace and order. Good to watch. Here’s my list of election numbers crunchers I watch on Twitter.
8:06 PM: Okay, let’s do this. Okay, we still have no results.
7:31 PM: We’re a half hour out. What’s your prediction?
Historians assess his historic awfulness for TPM Prime subscribers.
One last glimpse at the racially tinged amateur hour that Kris Kobach seems to have put on in defending his strict voter registration law:
ACLU lawyer Dale Ho cross-examined Jesse Richman, a witness for Kobach, about the methodology in a controversial study Richman produced showing significant rates of non-citizen voting. In the study, Richman coded certain respondents who had “foreign”-sounding names, for weighting purposes.
Tierney Sneed reports:
After going over some of the names Richman coded as foreign — two respondents with the last name Lopez were coded as foreign, and three Lopezes were not — Ho asked Richman how he would code the name “Carlos Murguia.” Richman said he’d probably code the name as “foreign.” Ho pointed out that Murguia is a federal judge in the same courthouse in which the trial is taking place. Richman admitted he wasn’t aware of that.
Last Friday I mentioned that 60 Minutes might find the Stormy Daniels interview they recorded last week more embarrassing for the President than they have a stomach for. Yesterday I noted, based on my own reporting, that Daniels apparently claimed in her interview with Anderson Cooper that the President sometimes liked to be treated in a humiliating or denigrating fashion by Daniels during their sexual encounters. I’m told there’s also a matter of details. Now comes more evidence that CBS seems to be slow-rolling the interview. Read More
We have an unfolding dispute over just how Rex Tillerson was fired and what warning or explanation he was given. The AP reports that John Kelly told Tillerson over the weekend to expect a Trump tweet about him but not that it would be the announcement that he’d been fired. Other reports say Kelly told Tillerson over the weekend that he needed to resign of be fired. Meanwhile, Steven Goldstein, Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs put out word that Tillerson had received no explanation or notification about his termination. Goldstein himself was promptly fired by the White House after that statement.