With 65 percent of “precincts reporting” (nearly all voting is done by mail), Sen. Patty Murray (D) and Dino Rossi (R) are neck and neck:
Murray: 721,742 (50 percent)
Rossi: 707,481 (50 percent)
The remainder of the ballots will be counted in the next several days, but there’s no telling how long it might be before we get an official result. State law mandates a recount if the margin between candidates is less than 2,000 votes.
According to the Secretary of State, there are more than 508,000 remaining ballots to be counted. Exit polling appears to favor Murray slightly; she trails Rossi among independent voters by just eight points, which is less than what a number of pre-election polls had shown. However, the Seattle-area of King County, where Murray draws most of her support, only has 27 percent of the remaining ballots to be counted, according to County Election reports, even though King County accounts for 31 percent of all registered voters in the state. This could bode well for Rossi, as he leads confortably in most other parts of the state.
So we wait…