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.
