It’s a battle of inches:
After Altschuler took the lead by some 15 votes as of mid-morning Monday, the total swung back in favor of Bishop by early afternoon. Altschuler’s campaign said, by its count, Bishop leads by just 16 votes.
The two are also battling over challenged absentee ballots, a fight which could end up in court before the end of the week.
Keep in mind, though, that Randy Altschuler has challenged at least 212 more ballots than Bishop has — and those votes aren’t yet reflected in the totals above.
UPDATES: Bishop now leads by 69 votes. (Hat-tip to some eagle-eyed Swingnuts in the comments!)
There’s the potential for endless court challenges and delays and who-knows-what-else with this. Especially when I lived in southern Indiana, some of the folks who had been around politics for a bit would still tell stories about the 8th district and the 1984 election, in which Frank McCloskey ended up being declared the winner six months later by the House of Representatives by 4 votes.
Bishop is now up 69 votes, Altschuler has now challenged 262 more ballots than Bishop. 3,683 ballots remain to be counted, the GOP has a 2.88% registration advantage in those ballots, but that advantage is slightly less than the advantage they had with the overall absentee count (about 3.45%)
http://www.newsday.com/long-is…
http://mobile.newsday.com/inf/…
Tim Bishop’s lead up to 137 over Randy Altschuler in #ny01 absentee ballot count. 2,907 absentee ballots left to count and 1,588 contested.
27east.com is now reporting that Bishop’s lead has grown to 164 votes, with slightly less than 2700 votes left to count.
http://www.27east.com/news/art…
Bishop is now up 206 votes. 1,912 absentee ballots from 125 districts remain to be counted (no word on the party breakout). Altschuler continues to challenge more ballots 1,051-714
http://www.newsday.com/long-is…
Since the remaining vote is more “D” than the overall sample, I think Bishop is going to win. That there are more than 200 challenges more from the Altschuler camp cements my opinion that Bishop will prevail. Also, Bishop has overperformed significantly in absentee ballots–winning so far by over 500–after trailing in the non-absentee vote by 383. From what I know (according to my wife, not much) all indicators are pointing to an extrmely narrow victory for Biship in NY-1.
Bishop ended the day up 206, but Altschuler’s camp is claiming all of the remaining votes are in Altschuler strongholds.
First #ny01 update of day: Bishop now leads Altschuler by 224, per Altschuler spox.
Only 1900 ballots to go. I would think they could get that done and post the updated count today. Then the lawyers could take over!
According to Reid Epstein’s twitter, Bishop’s spokesman says he is up 235 votes with counting finished.
He pretty much has his seat thanks to Doug Hoffman, but:
http://content.usatoday.com/co…
Rep. Bill Owens told a local newspaper in upstate New York that it is “quite possible” he might vote for Boehner for the House’s top job or abstain.
Why would he say something like this? Idle noise? Publicity?