Thursday, November 4, 2010

Welcome to the Finish Line

Last minute phone calls being made on behalf of the candidates

It appears that Patty Murray has won the 2010 Washington Senate race, but there are still hundreds of thousands of ballots that must be counted. "It’s still close, she’s still ahead and both campaigns still claim victory will be theirs." (heraldnet.com) As of Wednesday night, Murray was ahead with 50.8 percent of the votes while Rossi held 49.2 percent.

Though Rossi leads in 30 of the 39 counties, Murray is clearly winning in King County where most of the democratic votes will come from and Snohomish County. Murray holds "a 27,000-vote advantage out of 1.62 million counted statewide as of 8 p.m. Wednesday." (heraldnet.com)

This election would be Murray' fourth term in the Senate or would make Rossi the first Republican to represent Washington in decades. Much was resting on this campaign which contributed to the large amount of spending from both parties. They raised nearly $23 million collectively and were ranked third in the nation for outside groups contributing money.

Though both candidates have not spoken to people in Washington, their campaign managers sent out a plan of how they would win. Because there are so many ballots not counted yet, Rossi's managers believe he has a fighting chance, however, representatives for Murray pointed out that the majority of uncounted ballots are from counties where either Murray has already clearly won or she is definitely favored. Through predictions of the uncounted ballots, it is reported that Murray will win by 1.5 percent. Rossi's representatives fired back with the fact that this race is too close to call just yet. Pat Shortridge said "that Republican candidates improve their percentages in counts of later-arriving ballots." (heraldnet.com)

As the ballots continue to come in and the votes continue to be counted, will it be enough to put Rossi in the lead or will Murray take her place back in Congress? “'Their theories are plausible,'” said David Ammons, spokesman for Secretary of State Sam Reed’s. “'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.'” (heraldnet.com)

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