Thursday, November 09, 2006

"New Burner-Reichert Numbers"

The Stranger (Slog):

New numbers, but the precentages are the same as before: 51 percent for Reichert, 49 percent for Burner.

About 152,500 ballots have now been counted, and the difference between the two candidates has widened slightly, to 2,736 votes.

A Democratic source tells me that there are believed to be about 80,000 to 100,000 ballots remaining to be counted. These are almost all mail-in ballots, except for some provisional ballots cast at the polls (those are always counted last).

Because the 8th District covers two different counties — King and Pierce — we’re dealing with two different batches of ballots. The ones from Pierce County (the rural southern parts of the district) are likely to favor Reichert, but there are also fewer of them left to count. The ones from King County (Bellevue, Mercer Island, Redmond, Kirkland) are likely to favor Burner heavily, and there are significantly more of them.

“Given the numbers tonight,” my Democratic source said, “we are continuing a steady uptick in King County. I expect that we’ll slowly but surely eat away at his lead and then we’ll be in a very narrow, narrow battle for the remaining ballots.”

We’ll see. New tallies will come at the end of each day until the count is finished, and my source tells me things should be much more clear by the end of the day Friday. If the race ends up being as close as my source thinks it will be (within about 1,000 votes) that could trigger an automatic recount.

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