that s 1,754 votes ahead in a sdlact h district that has been in gop hands for three decades. the official outcome way not be known until other ballots are tallied and the race could be headed to a recount if the k candidates end up within 1% of each other once the votes are certified. this morning, balderson is claiming victory. o connor has not conceded. regardless, we ll see a rematch when they compete for full term in congress. welcome to morning joe. it is wednesday, august 8th. with joe, willie and me, we have associate editor of commentary magazine noah raufman. former treasury official and morning joe economic analyst steve rattner and national political correspondent for nbc news and msnbc news, is he still away, steve kornacki.
we expect those also break democratic enough to erase a 1754 lead? no, but could it be enough to cut into that 754 enough that balderson s advantage which is 0.9 right now over o connor if that ends up at 0.5 or less, state law says guess what, we got to have a a recount here. you could potentially, i wouldn t say it s the likeliest scenario but you could see that happening. there are also 5048 what they are calling uncounted absentee ballots, that were mailed out to voters in some cases weeks ago and they haven t been mailed back. a lot of them probably aren t going to be mailed back. some of them a small number probably military ballots maybe still making their way. some of them probably a small number are voters you had to have them postmarked yesterday. if they sent it out yesterday, it still comes in, that vote probably still going to be
when he got up there and spoke, it was like a victory speech. he was thanking a lot of people, including pence. but he did not thank john kasay who got a stronger approval rating in his state than the president does on a national level. yeah, it s fascinating the cultural divide in this district. first, i want to take folks through when we say too close to call. 1754, the margin for balderson. why don t we call it? what are we waiting on? it s this, two polls of votes still out there, provisional ballot, 3435 of them. 11 or 10 days from now, they will be counted. we expect them to break for democrats. are they going to break for democrats in numbers that will erase 1754? no, we expect it to put a dent in that 1754. other pool of voters, uncounted absentee ballots. holy smokes, 5,000. guess what, most of these are probably going to end up being ballots that were mailed out and
we don t have an official call yet here at nbc news, but he s declared victory saying when i decided to go to ohio for troy balderson, he was down. not good. after my speech saturday night, a big turn for the better. now troy wins a great victory during a difficult time for voting. he will win big in november. steve car knacky, cautalk about what happened yesterday. big republican state and president trump won it two years ago by 11 points. first of all, numbers here. is there a chance with balderson up by about 1,700 votes now with provisional ballots, mail-in ballots that that result changes, that o connor somehow comes out on top? the suspense is extra weird on this one, because you expect the provisional ballots to break towards the democrat. you don t expect them to actually erase 1,754 vote republican lead. however, if the margin were to cut that 1,754 in half, not