Bold predictions

The Congressional special election, minus 1/3 of the candidates, was held yesterday. With all the precincts counted, Democrat Scott Murphy led Republican Jim Tedisco by 25 votes out of almost 155,000.

Despite microscopic margin, bloggers are brazenly declaring that their guy is sure to triumph. Poststar.com's Will Doolittle confidently declared 'Murphy will win.' Planet Albany's Bob Conner was less categoric but more bold in predicting that Tedisco was 'likely to win a clear majority [emphasis mine] of the absentee ballots.'

Obviously, it's possible that either of them might be right. But in a race where special election day voting resulted in a margin of a mere 0.017 percent difference between the candidates, I'm not sure how anyone can be as confident as either commentator.

An elections' expert tells me that, barring the proverbial October Surprise, absentee voting generally mirrors the Election Day results. But the key word here is 'generally.' Given the microscopic margin, it would take only a tiny shift to change the final result.

Not accounting for write-ins, if Tedisco wins 50.1 percent of the absentee ballots, he loses the race.

If he wins 50.2 percent of the absentees, he wins... by two votes.