Conor Lamb gets positraction
by Tom Sullivan
With 100 percent of precincts reporting in yesterday’s congressional special election south and west of Pittsburgh, Democrat Conor Lamb holds a 579 vote edge over Republican state representative Rick Saccone. As of this writing, no comment from the president’s Twitter account. Donald Trump won the district by 20 points just 16 months ago.
Absentee and provisional votes have yet to be counted in PA-18. The number of absentee ballots remaining late last night in Allegheny County in the Pittsburgh suburbs were expected to favor Lamb, where the Democrat held an advantage. An unknown number of provisional ballots could take a week to count.
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
But Lamb declared victory just after midnight, Introduced to his supporters “Congressman-elect Conor Lamb,” Lamb declared, “It took a little longer than we thought, but we did it.” The results are not official.
If anyone knows every vote matters besides Lamb and Saccone, it is Daily Kos writer Adam Bonin of Philadelphia. Bonin spun out a “super-nerdy” series of tweets last night noting that with much of the vote done via touch screen machines, a recount won’t change much. Absentee and provisional ballots could.
6. If you've come this far and need the bio info, I've lawyered three PA races in the past four years which were decided by zero-1 votes. Yes, two of them were ties and my client won the drawing of lots. So I've been deep in the weeds on this stuff.— Adam Bonin (@adambonin) March 14, 2018
11. This is seriously weird for me. As my wife just said, this is my moment of being Marissa Tomei and being the only person on Twitter who knows a lot about which cars have positraction.— Adam Bonin (@adambonin) March 14, 2018
In a very tough district for Democrats, one considered “Trump country,” Democrats erased a 20-point Republican advantage and may win this race, even if by a hair. Perhaps the biggest takeaway from the PA-18 is that, as Alex Seitz-Wald observed, there are many more out there that, in theory, could be an easier lift for Democrats in November.
Perspective: There are 114 GOP-held seats more competitive than #pa18 based on Cook PVI, per Dem strategist.— Alex Seitz-Wald (@aseitzwald) March 14, 2018
Democrats need 24 seats to reclaim the House.
As for Saccone, if declared the loser by the Board of Elections (if not by the president), Bonin writes:
Ok, one more: If you're Rick Saccone, how the hell can you now motivate people to gather the 1000 valid signatures you need (i.e., get 2000-3000, minimum) by next Tuesday to get on the PA-14 primary ballot?— Adam Bonin (@adambonin) March 14, 2018
The motivation, momentum, and “positraction” are with the Democrats’.
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