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I don’t expect any significant updates in #NY22 today. Instead, I’m gonna drop a thread below with a little bit of math, a little bit of the journey it’s taken to get here, and most importantly a little bit of where this race might be headed 1/
As it stands, @claudiatenney has received 148,284 votes. @RepBrindisi has received 138,952 votes. This puts Tenney in the lead by 9,332 votes, with by my estimation 35k absentees already counted, but I’ll get further into that later 2/
I was at the Tenney watch party in Vernon on Election Night. People were pumped, as President Trump had just won the “swing” states of Florida and Ohio, and Tenney was up more than 10 points on Brindisi 3/
At a Q&A with reporters after her speech, I asked her if she would declare outright victory. The numbers certainly favored her, but she stopped short of saying she won. While she acknowledged it would take Brindisi to win a huge split of the absentees, she said it wasn’t over 4/
This brings me to this past week, when our attention shifted to the absentee ballots. We had seen elsewhere in the country that Democrats were winning absentees by a large margin, but had no real basis to go off for how that would play out in #NY22 5/
While some counties started counting on Tuesday, the first meaningful results I saw came out of Broome County Thursday, with the first 4400 votes splitting 75-18 for Brindisi. Now Broome is by far the largest D stronghold in #NY22, but it was the pace he needed to stay alive 6/
What interested me about those numbers was they came from the Town of Union, whose elected officials are largely Republicans, but overall is fairly bipartisan. Within Broome County, the largest pockets of Ds are in the City of Binghamton and Vestal, results we got Friday 7/
Brindisi received the Binghamton absentees by an almost 80-18 split, better than elsewhere but truthfully not as high as I thought it could be. He carried Vestal absentees by roughly the same margin we saw elsewhere in Broome, 75-19. At this point, we had seen ~14k absentees 8/
It was on Friday that we started to see results trickle in from outside of Broome County as well. In conjunction with @wktv, we tracked down election officials in 4 of the other 7 counties. These were the first numbers I was able to report 9/
Soon after we got a large dump from Madison and Oneida: 1992 votes in Madison, a 71.2% split for Brindisi, and 5305 votes in Oneida, a 79.5% split for the incumbent. Sprinkle in a couple thousand votes from Tioga and Oswego Counties on Saturday, this is where we are now 10/
I’ve seen many absentee #’s, but this is what I’ve been able to confirm with election officials: 15,706 in Broome, 1,082 in Tioga, 4,983 in Madison, 5,020 in Cortland, 3,134 in Oswego, 7,077 in Oneida and 0 in Chenango/Herkimer. That’s a grand total of 37,002 absentees so far 11/
A few notes about these numbers: some of them are only two-way splits, meaning they don’t include third party votes, so the real number of absentees counted is a little higher, but not significantly. Cortland, Oswego and Tioga are pretty close to finishing their total count 12/
Here is where the math gets interesting: Brindisi is averaging a 75.9% split in Broome, a 78.3% two-way split in Oneida, and a 69.5% combined split in the other four counties we have data for. I’ll explain why I’ve broken it up this way below 13/
Broome is the most liberal county in #NY22. I’d expect its numbers to be reflective of that. Oneida is slightly larger, but includes the cities of Rome and Utica. I don’t know where the votes counted in Oneida have come from, but my guess is some city votes have been counted 14/
Outside of those population centers, the rest of the district is fairly rural, and very Republican. Even with the city of Cortland included, it makes sense to me Tenney would be winning a larger share of these absentee votes 15/
So where do we go from here? Without knowing the number of returned ballots in each county, plus an unknown quantity of provisional/overseas/military, it’s tough to say. However, I’ll try to make as much sense of it as I can 16/
The Broome County Board of Elections has told me there were 19,500 absentees returned, as well as ~1.5k provisionals/overseas. This means we have about 4K absentees on top of the provisionals left in Broome, where Brindisi is averaging that 75-18 split 17/
Outside of Broome, almost nothing is certain. I have no concrete numbers on ballots returned or the # of provisionals remaining. Some counties are almost done, but on the other hand some haven’t even started counting. If NY was a swing state it would be a disaster every year 18/
I’ve heard from election officials and campaigns on both sides, and the consensus is that 55-60k absentee ballots were returned. I wish there were concrete #’s but there’s not. Considering there have been ~37k counted so far, I imagine there’s between 18-23k absentees left 19/
On top of those 18-23k absentees, we have the provisional/overseas/military, or POM. The only data I have is from Broome, where there’s 1500. If we extrapolate this relative to Broome, I’d estimate there are 4K of these votes out there, for a total of 22-27k votes remaining 20/
Now where are these votes? Well we know for sure there are a little over 5k absentees/POM in Broome. We know Chenango and Herkimer haven’t even started; I expect their numbers to reflect Tioga/Oswego. And there is an unknown quantity still in Madison/Oneida 21/
If you’ve made it this far (bless you), it’s because you care about the final total. The math that will tell you which candidate will win. I’m no @Redistrict, but I’ve seen enough to tell me it will be close, with both candidates having a decent shot at winning. Here’s why: 22/
There are 4K absentees left in Broome. While the rest of the county is slightly more rural than the results we have so far, I still expect Brindisi to win 70-75%, picking up between 2, 2.5k absentees more than Tenney. That drops the lead to roughly 7k, with 18-23k left 23/
From here, it’s all estimations. Based on similarities in politics/population in #NY22 between Tioga/Oswego and Chenango/Herkimer, I’d expect roughly the same results. This means ~4,4.5k absentees at a roughly 67-30 split. This makes up about 1.5k votes, leaving 14-19k left 24/
Removing the 4K POM, this means there are 10-15k absentees in Madison, Oneida and the remnants of Cortland/Tioga/Oswego. Because of the population size of Oneida, most of these votes will likely come from there. No idea exactly how many or from where 25/
Even without exact math, it’s very easy to see the gap between Tenney and Brindisi will be less than 4000 votes after absentees. This means the POM votes will likely decide the winner here in #NY22. This is both good news and bad news 26/
This is good news for democracy!! It’s been an incredibly slow process, but the process is working. I’ve seen some challenged ballots out there, and everyone is fully engaged. Voter turnout is up across the district, and honestly this makes me proud to say I live in #NY22 27/
It’s bad news if you want to know the winner this week. Most of the other absentees will be counted tomorrow, but Chenango isn’t expect to start until Tuesday. It’s my understanding POM votes aren’t counted until after absentees are done in a county, pushing it back further 28/
Once we do start to see the POMs counted, don’t be surprised if the margin is less than 2k out of 300k votes. Talk about a close race!! From there, challenged ballots will be counted, and a recount is pretty likely as well. 29/
All this to say, I don’t know who is going to win. It’s going to be extremely close, closer than their first race in 2018. But if you’ve made it this far with me, I hope you’ll continue to stick with me and see the #NY22 race to the end. 30/30
