10:55 PM EST: OH C’MON JUST CALL IT FOR SOMEONE GEEZ MAN!!
"The official was telling the crowd that they don't have the results yet, some precincts have not turned in. They are hoping to get these absentee ballots and the precincts not turned in counted tonight," Allegheny GOP chairman D. Raja said at Saccone HQ. https://t.co/EqdpkVG4Ji pic.twitter.com/hyMsEaNeqA
— CBS News (@CBSNews) March 14, 2018
Watch @SteveKornacki break down which absentee ballots will be counted tonight by midnight. #trackingkornacki pic.twitter.com/KVaxxLje8E
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) March 14, 2018
UGH. LAME.
10:03 PM EST: Wow they still haven’t called it yet.
.@matthewjdowd: "If Conor Lamb wins…and I would argue, even if he barely loses, it's double the number of competitive districts after tonight." #PA18
LIVE COVERAGE: https://t.co/3Ey0f4QoQH pic.twitter.com/kZdij0ZzdF
— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) March 14, 2018
Lamb up by only 703 votes with 94% of the vote in #PA18 pic.twitter.com/xmtuWVIWic
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) March 14, 2018
Original post below:
With early results in, the commie Democrat Conor Lamb is leading, much as most people thought he might.
LATEST: Conor Lamb has early edge in #PA18, powered by overperformance over Hillary Clinton’s 2016 numbers in Pittsburgh suburbs—but “there are lots of votes out there that Rick Saccone can catch up with,” @rickklein reports.
LIVE COVERAGE: https://t.co/3oW03BThWc pic.twitter.com/zyBgKriFl7
— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) March 14, 2018
Now why do I say it’s meaningless? Well the district is going to vanish soon. So this vote is mostly pointless. The media will make a big deal out of it because they want to be a bellwether for Trump’s impending defeat in the midterms – and maybe it is. But the election itself, is mostly meaningless.
This special election was triggered by the resignation of former Rep. Tim Murphy, who stepped down after it was revealed that he — an anti-abortion-rights congressman — had had an extramarital affair and pressured his mistress to terminate a possible pregnancy.
Because of court-ordered redistricting, the district as it is drawn now will cease to exist come Election Day 2018, and neither Saccone nor Lamb will even live in the rejiggered seat. So the fact that Republicans are spending so heavily to save what’s essentially a phantom district underscores what is on the line: They don’t want a loss in such a GOP stronghold to spur even more panic among their ranks that Trump is dragging them down.
Meanwhile, Democrats are salivating for an upset that will further galvanize their energetic base hoping for a blue wave in November. To this point, since Trump has been president, Republicans have underperformed in GOP-held House special elections but still won all five of them.
Here are some earlier results:
At 36%:
36% of the vote in #PA18 pic.twitter.com/Pb2b7Evc2u
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) March 14, 2018
At 30%:
With an estimated 30% of the vote reporting in #PA18 via @CNN:
— Ryan Struyk (@ryanstruyk) March 14, 2018
Conor Lamb 54%
Rick Saccone 46%
At 17%:
Only 19% of the vote in for #PA18 but going well for @ConorLambPA so far — pic.twitter.com/BbWLaOaNqB
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) March 14, 2018
Yeah that dude is losin’.
Update:
Nothing that happens from here on out matters in #PA18
— Josh Jordan (@NumbersMuncher) March 14, 2018
Democrats took a district that Trump won by 19.6% and completely wiped out that advantage in 18 months, following similar results in other special elections across the US.
There is no silver lining for Republicans tonight.
Yeah, kinda.