OH-15: It’s Really a 321-Vote Race

It seems like ohio_anon and DCal in comments have figured out the mystery in OH-15. You’ve probably noticed by now that sites which rely on data from the AP (such as CNN) are reporting results that look like this:

Steve Stivers (R): 48% (146,907)

Mary Jo Kilroy (D): 43% (134,492)

Yet the race hasn’t been called, and news accounts say Stivers has just a 321-vote lead. So why is the AP data screwed up? Well, ohio_anon points out that in Ohio, the board of elections for the county with the greatest number of people in any given congressional district is responsible for reporting for all the counties covered by that CD. This means that the data on the Franklin County website includes the votes for much smaller Madison and Union Counties.

So the AP appears to be counting Madison and Union twice – once on their own, and once folded into the combined results reported by Franklin. (Stivers did much better in the two smaller counties, while Kilroy ran ahead in Franklin, so that’s why his lead is inflated.) Indeed, the math works out perfectly, as DCal observes – double Madison and Union and add them to the “Franklin” results, and you get those phony numbers listed in the blockquote above.

The AP needs to get its act together, but the bottom line is that due to the closeness of this race, we probably won’t know the final results for ten days.

17 thoughts on “OH-15: It’s Really a 321-Vote Race”

  2. With thousands of provisions out we can win it.

    Also Burner is now behind 2,000 votes in WA-08 and is doing worse in Pearce now. However, great news from the PI:

    Officials in King County, where nearly 80 percent of the district’s 450,000 voters live, expected to count about half of the ballots from Tuesday’s election by late Wednesday. That count will include all the votes cast at polling places Tuesday but only a fraction of the mail ballots used by a majority of voters. Elections officials have said it will take them a week to count all, or nearly all, of the votes. The district stretches into eastern Pierce County, and vote counting there is proceeding at a similar pace.

    Looks like the count Burner is currently winning in King just includes mostly election day ballots. I’ve got to imagine she’ll increase her margins further with early ballots. Maybe she can win.

  5. Thank you, thank you, thank you, David as well as ohio_anon and DCal.  I feel better trying to hold onto hope now that the discrepancy has been identified and explained.  I do remember now from the 2006 races and from Paul Hackett’s race that the the county with the greatest number of people in a congressional district reported for the entire district.  But it’s the kind of local nuance one can easily forget when following 435 races in 50 states.

    This is why I rely on Swing State Project so much.  Not just the great posts by David and James but also the input from regulars and readers who add local flavor as well as expertise and experience.  

  6. Let’s win this one as well!

    This will hopefully mean that Kilroy takes the lead on Nov 14th and then the recount holds that.

    I’m really hoping all the close races go our ways, this, VA-05, WA-08 and hopefully MN-Sen and AK-Sen.

    Also, if we donate money to Martin will he be able to use it for the runoff? Beacuse if he can what are we waiting for! That’s a critical seat we need to win.

  7. It could be more than 10 days before the final result.

    From the final lines of  the article that was linked to in the post:

    Pryce held a lead of more than 3,000 votes on the day after the 2006 election, but her margin decreased when provisional ballots were counted. That race fell within the 0.5-percent margin to trigger a mandatory recount.

    That recount wasn’t finished until almost mid-December.

    So will OH-15 follow the same path in 2008 as in 2006?

  8. The real takeaway answer: Nothing has been decided. AND nothing will be decided for:

    Pick one: A) a couple of weeks or B) a couple of months.

    Last night at 7:36 PM, (seven and a half hours AFTER the “deadline” to release a preliminary tally), Franklin county issued a NEW set of numbers for those precincts in Franklin county that are within OH-15. It now looks as if the total SO FAR has narrowed to less than 150 votes!

    HOWEVER that STILL does not include overseas absentee ballots (small number– likely to go against us) OR the THOUSANDS of provisionals (which I hope will go strongly for Kilroy)

    For the first two hours in the morning on Tuesday, many tens of thousands of voters were INCORRECTLY “flagged” in the precinct poll books and forced to vote UNNEEDED provo ballots. At 9:30 the SoS ordered the Franklin County BoE to robocall every precinct and tell them to knock it off and to allow those who had been “flagged” to vote regular ballots.

    Some things to know about Ohio:

    1. The GOP  created this mess with malice aforethought.

    2. All of the GOP local voting officials and MANY of the Democrats are just complete hacks. For example, in Lucas County (Toledo) the Dems are the worst DINOs on the planet and (until recently) the Dem voting officials SUCK just as bad as their GOP counterparts. Incredibly this is also true to a greater or lesser degree in Cuyahoga (Cleveland) Montgomery (Dayton) and Franklin (Columbus.)

    So, in any dispute between Judge Brunner and any local official:

    GO WITH JENNIFER!

    Who the GOP are already trying to knock off…

    Anyone in the ‘sphere who cares about Truth, Justice and the American Way should get behind her. Her reelection in 2010 will be perhaps THE most important state election in the friggin’ country.

    Good news: Notice that the GOP is “zip for the whole enchilada” in court against her… and with Rich Cordray as our new AG, the GOPers are screwed up against people so competent that they don’t have a chance…

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