Another day and night of counting ballots didn’t alter the contest between Democratic U.S. Sen. Patty Murray and Republican Dino Rossi.
It’s still close, she’s still ahead and both campaigns still claim victory will be theirs.
Murray led Rossi 50.8 percent to 49.2 percent Wednesday evening, almost the same margin that separated the two on Election Night. (Click here for the latest from the Secretary of State’s office.)
He leads in 30 of 39 counties. But she is trouncing him in King County, where the biggest bloc of Democratic votes will be cast. She also is winning in Snohomish County and held a 27,000-vote advantage out of 1.62 million counted statewide as of 8 p.m. Wednesday.
“We don’t see any trends concerning us, and we are confident once all the votes are in we will have an impressive victory,” said Alex Glass, Murray’s deputy campaign manager.
Murray, 60, is seeking a fourth term in the Senate while Rossi, 51, is hoping to become the first Republican to represent Washington in the chamber in a decade.
Their battle emerged as one of the marquee Senate contests in the country, attracting the third-most spending by outside groups, behind Senate races in Colorado and Pennsylvania. That was on top of the nearly $23 million the candidates collectively raised for the campaign.
Murray spent Wednesday with family on Whidbey Island, while Rossi’s whereabouts were not disclosed by his campaign. Neither candidate spoke to reporters in Washington.
But their campaign managers did. In dueling memos, they set out to show how their candidate would wind up the winner when all the ballots are counted.
It’s not clear how many are left to be tallied.
David Ammons, spokesman for Secretary of State Sam Reed, estimated it could be 800,000. That figure, added to the 1.62 million already counted, would achieve the 66 percent turnout predicted by Reed.
“There are so many ballots that are still out and not counted, and that number is essentially unknowable,” he said.
Jeff Bjornstad, Murray’s campaign manager, said in an e-mail that the trend favors the incumbent because most of the uncounted ballots are where she is strongest.
“In fact, of the 40 percent of ballots yet to be counted statewide, about 55 percent are in counties where Murray is ahead or even — King, Snohomish, Whatcom, Jefferson, Grays Harbor, Thurston and Pacific,” he wrote to reporters. “In counties where Murray leads, there are approximately 523,000 ballots to be counted based on projected turnout vs. 440,000 ballots to be counted in areas where Mr. Rossi leads.”
Bjornstad tried to further bolster his argument by citing two analyses of how many votes the candidates will receive in each county in the coming days. Those predictions from Matt Barretto of the University of Washington and Nate Silver of The New York Times both conclude Murray will win by roughly 1.5 percent.
But Pat Shortridge, Rossi’s campaign manager, cautioned in a memo against embracing those extrapolations.
“The returns indicate this election is as close as many predicted, in that it is too close to call,” he wrote.
He asserted that Republican candidates improve their percentages in counts of later-arriving ballots. And he sought to downplay King County’s decisive role by noting that the reported number of uncounted ballots there is only 26.7 percent of the statewide total.
“Again, we will know more over the next several days as ballots continue to come in and counties continue to count. We are confident that the margins we are seeing throughout Washington state, combined with the state legislative victories, will put Dino Rossi ahead by an overwhelming margin,” he concluded.
Ammons didn’t want to get dragged into the fray of political intrepretations.
“Their theories are plausible,” said Ammons, Reed’s spokesman. “We think with the gap at 1 percent, we’re willing to sit and watch some more votes to be counted before we think it’s a done deal.”
Jerry Cornfield: 360-352-8623; jcornfield@heraldnet.com.
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