Balderson is claiming victory? Really?

[spanone]

Has anyone called it for him?

[Kaleva]

1. Still too close to call as far as I know.

[spanone]

2. That's what Brian Williams is reporting...too close to call

[question everything]

3. I think that they are waiting for absentee, or something like that

provisional? And may not come tonight.

[No Vested Interest]

10. There are likely more provisional votes in Franklin County than in the other

counties.
The other votes still to be counted are military votes, which must be postmarked as of today. There are likely very few of those.

Since these two men are matched against one another in November for the full 2-year term, college-age voters and returning staff to local colleges need to be identified, registered if necessary, and courted for that election.

[lapfog_1]

13. 3560 provisionals

they have to break like 75% D to make up the difference.

and that only gets to an automatic recount.

possible... but unlikely.

[LisaL]

20. There are 8,500 ballots still to be tallied.

Less than 2,000 difference.
So it isn't over.

[customerserviceguy]

17. And that's the crazy thing about this election

It was for a term of a few months. When I think about the resources that were poured into this race that could have been used for the November contest for a full two years, I shake my head in amazement.

[marylandblue]

4. Not official, but he's far enough ahead that provisionals likely won't matter

[bettyellen]

8. The issue is if theyre enough to get him under +.5%. That could happen.

[LandOfHopeAndDreams]

11. Then He Still Has To Ovecome That 0.5% In Recount

Sure, not impossible. Was it over the when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?

Just unlikely.

[bettyellen]

14. Yeah. But the provisionals gotta be counted either way. And they should narrow the lead.

It was always a long shot and still bodes well for November. Lots of more flippable seats for us to work on.

[Blue_true]

15. The Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Yikes, when?

[0rganism]

19. 1978, i think

"germans?"
"forget it, he's rolling."

[Blue_true]

22. LOL, I forgot about that one. nt

[PoliticAverse]

5. You calling Balderdash? n/t

[unblock]

7. ...

[Garrett78]

6. Here's the latest from 538:

NATE SILVER11:04 PM
"So, O’Connor needs to win the absentee/provisional ballots by 21 percentage points to win the state if all of those ballots are counted, which they presumably won’t be. So let’s round up a bit and say he’d have to win them by 25 points. Provisionals tend to be very Democratic leaning, and so it wouldn’t be crazy to think he could get there if all of the uncounted votes were provisionals. However, the majority of them are actually absentees, and those won’t necessarily be Democratic. So it’s something of a long shot, but there are enough votes there that I wouldn’t want to “call” the race, unless I knew more about the nature of who tends to vote absentee in the district."

Which was a response to this:

Link to tweet

?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1027025172656738307&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ffivethirtyeight.com%2Flive-blog%2Faugust-7-election-results%2F

[spanone]

12. thanks!

[Hoyt]

9. Very little chance current results will change, but it's not official.

[budkin]

16. We would have done the same in this position

It's just what you do.

[spanone]

21. still too close to call

[roamer65]

18. I honestly believe O' Connor will win it in November.

This was a good test run for him and they will now focus on getting out the Dem vote in Franklin County.