This is a Congressional District, as weve been saying for days and weeks. President trump carried by nearly 20 points back in 2016. Thats why tonights race has been viewed as a bellweather for things to come, potentially in the midterm elections. If youve been watching our coverage, you know that Steve Kornacki has been manning the big board tonight. And steve, the takeaway from watching your coverage is that this may turn out to be an absentee race decided absentee votedecided ratece, correct . Heres where we are. 95 votes is the lead for conor lamb. 95 votes, i finally got it. It only took me three tries. Heres the deal right now where we stand. Every election day vote is in in Allegheny County. Thats the heart of conor lambs base there. Every election vote is in republican area. Every vote early on was in Greene County. What do we have left election day . We have two precincts left in westmoreland county. Heres the thing thats killing me right now. Every other one of these counties has been releasing their vote by precinct tonight. Westmoreland announced a few hours ago no precinct reporting. I cant tell you exactly what those precincts are like. I can tell you this is the most republican part of the district. This is donald trump won this thing in excess of 30 points. Saccone has been doing well here. You probably expect those are going to be saccone precincts, those two that are left. That makes it possible if they are republican precincts that saccone is going to erase that 95vote conor lamb lead. That would do it for the election vote. Drop about drama, the absentee ballots. Heres what we know about the absentee ballots and what is out there. Here in Allegheny County, 3500 absentee ballots were requested. In westmoreland county, that republican area we were talking about, 1800 absentee ballots were requested. In greene, not many people here in terms of the demographics, but 203 absentee ballots, and over here in washington, 1,140. What we can tell you about these absentee ballots that might be of interest to you is that you can see 18, 11, 203, more than half easily coming out of allegheny. Thats much more than the allegheny share of the election day vote. So the democratic area of the district overrepresented, you might say, in terms of the number of absentee ballots that are out there. That would be an encouraging piece of news for the Lamb Campaign. The other encouraging piece of news for the Lamb Campaign would be that the history in Allegheny County is that democrats do a little bit better on the absentee ballots than they do on the election day. Hillary clinton won the absentee ballots here by four points a couple years ago. She lost the election day by four. So there was a swing of eight points in the democrats favor. So what just happened . This might be it. They might have been democratic precincts. Look at this. Weve got conor lamb signatures here. His lead just went up. There are democratic counties there. You take 27 off the 47, 847 votes. Let me see if this is it for election day. Do we have word on that . These are votes en route by car . No, that was Washington County. Washington county we knew came in,al ganl allegheny we knew ca we were waiting on two in westmoreland. I say the other possibility here, and im trying to get word as fast as i can. The other possibility here is that westmoreland and allegheny are going to be counting their absentee vote. There is the possibility we just got something from the absentees but i think this might have been the last two precincts we were talking about. That might be the election day vote. If thats the election day vote, then what we were just talking about goes doubly because the lions share doing well in allegheny, the democrats doing especially well in the absentee ballots. I have to ask you graphically over your other shoulder the viewers can see, it says 98 in. Is that us . Will that automatically update, and is 98 kind of the dead top of election day . Are the others absentee . Yes, were looking at a total here, just some quick math, 53, 55 were looking at about 6,700 absentee ballots here. You look at that relative. That would get that number up there. Close to 7,000 absentee ballots are going to come in and be counted here. Youre getting close to 99 of all the vote. We add the absentees in, thats going to be pretty much what weve got. I got to say, we teased this possibility earlier. We have to check the decimal point. If it ends up within half a point. If the margin between lamb and saccone, if the margin were 0. 5 or less, then we go to a recount. Lamb would be less than half a percentage vote. If he got that up in the absentee ballots, then youre not counting recount anymore. If it stayed in that range, we would be talking recount. So if steve is correct and our computers are correct, and we will allow steve to correct both, this is very close to the Election Night total of votes cast. Whats outstanding and well know some of it but not all of it tonight, are the absentee ballots. Were going to keep steve. Hes 15 feet from me. Were going to keep him within shouting distance. We want to check in with kasie hunt who is at conor lamb headquarters tonight where its been something of a roller coaster. Casey, i got to tell you, watching cable news tonight, depending on whether it was a democrat talking or a republican, the democrats late in the evening started saying things like, well, this guy had a huge mountain to climb, donald trump took this district by 20. But i heard trump surrogates tonight just after the polls closed, trashed their candidate as weak thinking this thing was going down by them with a 3. 6 differential. Youre right, its been a totally wild night here at conor land hq. People are anxiously watching these results come in. I think the pundits on both sides are right here. This is a situation where the democrats should never have had a shot here. This is a place that voted overwhelmingly for trump, and frankly it voted overwhelmingly for romney before that. It was not as though trump was necessarily one fluke in an area that is reliably democratic kacie, i have to stop you. Steve kornacki has something in his mouth and hes playing with a hard paw. Im sorry, and i wouldnt do it. We have the absentee ballot count from Allegheny County. Here are the totals. Conor lamb gets 1,930 votes. These are the absentees in allegheny. Saccone gets 1,178. So thats the difference right there, 752. That is the difference. A margin of 752. So thats what just happened. When we were standing here and im like an idiot trying to figure out where they came from, thats where they came from. They counted the allegheny vote. Heres where we stand, basically. Allegheny, the election day vote is now in. No more votes. Now the absentee vote. The largest share of the absentee vote in the district, that is now in. It netted a 7200vote for conor lamb. Thats why hes sitting with 847 votes districtwide. He gets that courtesy of the absentees in allegheny. What is left . I think we still have two precincts sitting in westmoreland and then its the absentees. We have absentees in republican areas. The margin is 847. Lamb is now down with his base in allegheny. How many absentee ballots are left in the district . If 847 is the margin, were sitting here looking at 1,800 ballots. These were the ballots that were requested. If you keep in mind the number returned will probably be a little south of that. Thats what we just saw in allegheny. 1140 here in washington, 203 down here in greene, 3143. So 3,143 absentee ballots requested in these republican areas trying, rick saccone is, to make up a gap about 847 votes. What would he need to win that . You can do the math. Thats where we stand. The big headline now, allegheny all in. Steve kornacki, thank you. Im already getting comments from people about your hurt paw. Lets just put it this way. Steve came out on the winning end of a bicycle versus pavement contest here in new york. You should see the other guy. We appreciate him playing hurt. Now, to kasie hunt back at lamb headquarters. Please forgive the interruption. Ka sir ark kasie, continue. Of course i can forgive you. I, like the rest of the world, is rivet bid Steve Kornacki. Steve, thank you for playing with your hurt hand. This was never supposed to happen. They were never supposed to win a district where trump won by 22 points. The republicans never should have lost it. They were essentially sleeping when this candidate ended up running against conor lamb, and this is something weve seen in the past sometimes when, you know, there is a wave coming, and quite frankly, the party thats in power gets caught a little bit by surprise. Thats what happened here. Rick saccone never and republican operatives are right, he never really built a volunteer network, he never activated grassroots fundraising. All these committees had to come in from the outside. It costs much more money for an outside group to raise money for ads on behalf of a candidate than it costs for a campaign to do themselves, so conor relied on money he raised himself, and that gave him an advantage. Rick saccone was never able to do that. One thing we can take away from this race, no matter which way this nailbiting contest ends up is that conor lamb has given democrats a blueprint for potentially winning back the house. He took the enthusiasm of the democrats in this room, the Resistance Movement across the country that helped him fundraise and funded all those ads he was able to put on tv, but he stayed true to the swing voters in this district. And i spent yesterday talking to a couple, dan and elkie miller, and he was a coal miner for 30plus years, hes a registered democrat. They have been very active in the Steelworkers Union for all of those years, and they vote, you know, a lot of times the way the union votes, and they voted for trump in 2016 but theyre voting for conor lamb this time around. And thats the kind of voter that, you know, it doesnt make sense for conor lamb to go out there and say, i think the president is wrong on everything. He needs to try and not necessarily offend those voters while at the same time reassuring democrats that at the end of the day he is going to put their priorities first as well. Thats a careful line to walk, and it does take, you know sometimes we use the word talented to refer to a politician who doesnt make a lot of mistakes. Conor lamb has not made a lot of mistakes. I asked him today, for example, the news of the day was the secretary of state being fired, and conor lamb was in the marine corps, so i said, do you think the president is a stable commander in chief . Youre a veteran. He said, you know, i dont really have a comment, havent really thought about that particular question, and that was kind of the theme throughout this election. And instead he would say, but, you know, im going to work with the president where i can. Thats what my voters want me to do. So being that kind of a candidate who fits the district but still manages to capture and capitalize on the enthusiasm, i think, is going to be if democrats are going to win back the house, thats how theyre going to do it, brian. Kasie hunt at conor lamb headquarters where its turning out to be a long night as it is in our studio. If you saw the movie i beautiful mind, then the Steve Kornacki corner of your picture will look familiar to you. Steve, i keep wondering if youre looking for my attention. Pen, pen. There we go. Lets go to math class and try to figure this one out together. Heres what we know right now. The election day vote, there are two precincts left in the district that are going to report. They are both in westmoreland county. We believe they are republican counties, we believe that saccone is going to net some level of vote out of there. Lets do the math right here. Youre sitting at 847. Thats lambs lead right now. Okay, 847. Lets say, you know, 200 votes comes off that lead with whats left. Then we knock it down to 647. Lets say 650 so its easy. 650. Lets estimate that thats where were going to end up on election day. That then brings us to whats left of the absentee ballots. Whats left of the absentee ballots, heres whats interesting. We know most of them were cast in Allegheny County. Whats left is washington, westmoreland and greene. We know about 3200 ballots are out there. We also know not all of them are going to be returned. The rate in Allegheny County was about 90 . If we extrapolate that again, this is an if but if we extrapolate that, were sitting at 600 or so absentee ballots. If you have to make up 650 votes, we split that, now were 1300. We split the 650 in two, 1625. Youre probably going to get lets say you have to get 1625 out of 2600 okay, you probably need about 63 of the vote. Thats probably what saccone would need to get if these estimates are right. 63 . How did he do . Could he get 63 in these remaining absentees . 53 is what he got election day, 57 is what he got election day, 58. He would have to overperform what he got on election day in these absentees if that series of calculations i just went through is right, and keep in mind those are estimates. One more question, steve, while you retrieve your pen, about the automatic trigger of a recount. I suppose to know that, do we have to wait for the absentees, or is that a raw vote trigger . No, were going to need the absentees and thats the other thing that should be up there were not getting all the absentees tonight, so thats the other thing. We may not actually get to a boy, im just realizing this now, what a sad thing we may not get to a clear verdict tonight unless they do get these absentees counted, but the last time we checked, we are not going to get absentee ballots that are counted in these two counties tonight. Lets see if i have a note that tells me otherwise but thats where we stand right now. Steve, thank you. Literally wave if you need our attention because i want to go back out to southwestern pennsylvania. Vaughn hilliard is at Rick Saccones headquarters where i imagine, vaughn, its been the same kind of up and down. Their fortunes increased, got so much better as the night wore on. I can only hear, steve, but im visualizing whats going on in that studio right now. Over here, brian, this is a room that a lot of people coming in, as kacie was alluding to, republicans were not looking at this campaign happily. It was this concept that they put in an effort. The Democrat Conor Lamb was an exciting figure, right, the 33yearold former prosecutor, former marine, and this was a democratic race. Rick saccone didnt have much of an operation. There was no volunteer apparatus. They were relying on more than 10 million in outside groups. They were having paid doorknockers from the Congressional Leadership Fund which was the paul ryan superpac. I talked to a conor lamb official and i asked, did you have any scenarios where a race was close tonight . He said, to give you an idea, i have a trip booked to abu dhabi tomorrow. I was talking to a lot of these individuals, and of course these were some saccones closest friends, but kacie was talking about the miner they was talking to from Washington County. There were republicans that came out, voted for conor lamb, and could make a difference in this race. Morton and his wife eileen. He was a longtime mayor of pleasant hill, one of those suburbs just outside pittsburgh. He said he had voted for republican tim murphy, mccain, all the way back to reagan, all right . He said he voted for conor lamb because he needed a change in washington to kind of correct the course for the way his own vote for donald trump went. This is whats fun about this, brian, right . Being on the ground and that every vote matters, every voice matters. You talk about these issues. When you were talking about the coal miners pension fund, there is legislation that has held up in court where thousands of residents here are questioning their pensions that they thought they had obligated to them are going to be up in the air. These are issues that are very local, but ultimately it can change the outcome of a race like this when youre down to just 1,000 votes, brian. 435 Congressional Districts in this country. All of them fascinating, all of them unique. One of them is our focus tonight. I just got the high sign from Steve Kornacki. What do you have . A little more information in those calculations i was just running. I think that might be about where were heading in this because i think weve identified those two remaining precincts. Remember, westmoreland the republican county. We think we know trump won one of these things in 2016 by about 20, he won the other by 40. You have to keep in mind saccone has been running south of those numbers, so we would expect his margin to be a little bit short of that. But that is consistent with the calculation i was doing, that if those are the two outstanding precincts, then yeah, i think were going to probably trim about 200 votes from lambs margin. When you get all the election day vote counted, thats going to leave them at 650 and then youll just have absentees in washington, westmoreland an update there. We are now expected theyre counting the absentee ballots in both of these counties, so we do now think well get absentees out of these counties tonight. Greene, only about 200 absentees there. Basically what that means, if those indeed are the precincts, to make up 650 in those absentees, saccone has to pretty dramatically overperform what he did on election day in these republican areas. I like to tell people we live in the age of surprises. Maybe hell surprise us here, but it looks like hes got the tall order of the two candidates that are left. Steve, along wait the way we to teach folks about these counties. In Greene County you cant get any more south or any more west in the state of pennsylvania. In a way its like west virginia. Very rural and tends to be very, very red. Thats what i always tell people to try to understand pittsburgh. We lump it with philly. Pittsburgh is the capital of appalachian. Culturally, thats what it is. All right. Steve kornacki at the big board. Our own john heilman is going to be with us for much of the evening. Youve been taking this all in. Your reaction to where we stand right now at 11 21 eastern time. I think its obviously worth noting that this is a purely symbolic exercise. We have said this all night on television in the sense that