It looks like Bloomberg is going to pull this out. With 80% of the votes in, he’s up 50% to 47% over Thompson. But a lot of people in New York City weren’t even thinking of this as a real race. A margin that slim is a major rebuke for Bloomberg.
10:53 PM: With 94% reporting it’s Bloomberg 50%, Thompson 46%. Still a big wake up call for Bloomberg.
We’re now at 38% reporting in Maine, and it’s dead even. 200 votes ahead for equality out of about 225,000.
There’s been some back and forth in NY-23 over the course of the evening. But it’s now at 2/3 of the vote in and Owens is up by a bit more than 3500 votes.
Plus there’s this: we’ve got this report from the Watertown Daily Times that there are four precincts in St. Lawrence County where the precincts had mechanical problems and results won’t be available tonight. Now we don’t know the political complexion of those precincts. But our Eric Kleefeld points out that Owens has won that county. So those are likely, though by no means certainly, disproportionately Owens votes.
Hoffman seems to be gaining on Owens in New York 23rd. And it’s looking like the number of absentee ballots will likely outnumber the margin between the two candidates by a substantial amount.
It’s starting to look like this might not be done tonight.
We’ve now got 76% of the vote in and Owens margin has increased a bit. Owens is now up by about 4,000.
Listening to Chris Christie’s acceptance speech, I’m only now realizing the pure depth of Jon Corzine’s unpopularity. This has to be the worst speech I’ve ever heard. This guy is seriously not ready for prime time. And yet, he just got elected.
So it’s looking like Bill Owens will end tonight with a few thousand vote margin on Doug Hoffman. But that may not be the end of the story. There are ten-thousand or so absentee ballots — which seem to come disproportionately from Owens counties. But on top of that there was apparently some sort of mechanical breakdown of voting machines in Fulton County, which leans Republican. And they started using paper ballots, which almost certainly won’t be counted tonight. So it looks good for Owens. But there are enough ballots floating around that we may not know the final result tonight.
Marriage equality is running about 4 points behind in Maine with about 2/3 of the vote in. But our number cruncher points out that a lot of the votes in the Portland area, which should be fertile ground for the pro-marriage equality forces, still haven’t come in. So this could flip.
We’re now at 85% reporting and more than a 4,000 margin for Owens. Looking like he’s probably the winner.