Special Congressional Election in Pennsylvania Still Too Close to Call, Outcome Hangs on 3,200 Absentee Ballots

With all but two out of 593 precincts reporting, Democrat Conor Lamb clings to an 847 vote lead over Republican Rick Saccone in the special election in Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District.

Lamb has 111,875 votes to Saccone’s 111,028 votes, according to the Pennsylvania Secretary of State’s website as of 11:30 p.m. Tuesday.

Allegheny County’s absentee ballots are included in that count, but the absentee ballots in the three other counties in the district have yet to be counted: 1,195 in Washington County, 1,808 in Westmoreland County, and 203 in Greene County, for a total of 3,204 absentee ballots yet to be counted.

To pull out the victory, Saccone will need to get a little over 60 percent of these ballots.

The absentee ballots will be counted and reported in these three counties between 11:15 p.m. eastern and an undetermined time on Wednesday morning.

“It’s probably going to take us several hours,” to count, the election director in Washington County told CNN at 11:15 p.m. eastern.

The Westmoreland County election director told CNN their votes will be counted and reported around midnight.

“I would rather be in Conor Lamb’s shoes right now than Rick Saccone’s,” former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA), who once represented this district in the House of Representatives, told CNN.