* Mark Brown has a very good column today about late-arriving absentee ballots and uncounted provisional ballots.
According to Brown, the Cook County Clerk received 213 mailed absentee ballots on Monday, DuPage got 5 and Lake got 2. Lake has a total of 302 GOP ballots yet to be counted (232 absentees and 70 provisionals), but not all those provisionals will make it to the final cut. Bill Brady did very poorly in Lake, getting just 5 percent of the vote. DuPage has 126 absentees not yet counted, about three-quarters of which are Republican, and 256 provisionals, but only a fraction of those will survive.
Cook County’s newly posted totals shaved 42 net votes off Brady’s lead, Brown writes. But there aren’t many GOP ballots left to count in Cook.
His conclusion…
While a recount is still a possibility in the Republican race, that would also seem unlikely if the Brady lead holds in the 400 range.
What was less apparent to me on election night than it is in the cold light of day is that even 400 votes is a significant margin in this era of technologically advanced voting equipment.
When I started covering elections, a victory margin of 5,000 votes in a statewide race was cause to seek a recount. Now, nobody is quite certain where the cutoff line is. Is it 500? Is it 200?
Nobody really knows.
* Meanwhile, the SJ-R takes a look at the numbers…
Geographically, much of Illinois was for Hynes. Hynes beat Quinn in 88 of Illinois’ 102 counties. Quinn won just 14 counties. Quinn won five others by fewer than 100 votes each – and three of those by fewer than 10 votes each.
They go on to dig into the actual number of Downstate counties won by each candidate - and that’s almost completely irrelevant. This isn’t like the US Senate, where tiny states get two Senators like the big states. Many of those Downstate counties have incredibly small numbers of voters. Better to look at regions than numbers.
Still, the overall Downstate results are very important when looking ahead to the general. Hynes’ message clearly worked Downstate. That gives us a good preview of what’s to come in the fall as more conservative voters weigh in.
This is also important…
Brady received only 5 percent support in Cook County.
And this…
Suburbs 6.5 percent [for Brady] 20.4 percent [for Dillard]
Brady’s totals in the all-important suburbs were just horrible. But that’s less to blame on his message than where he concentrated his message. He didn’t have the cash to compete in the Chicago media market.