| According to Capitol Confidential, the BOE will certify the final tally in the NY-20 race today: 80,833 to 80,107, Murphy winning by 726 votes. Less than 1%.
One of the things that I found most interesting was how the absentee votes did not trend toward Tedisco, who started the short campaign with far more name recognition. While the Tedisco campaign made a big deal of absentee ballots from in-state second home owners, most absentee voters were probably in Florida or Iraq during the campaign.
In terms of the military vote, I found this fascinating article: How Soldiers Really Vote, which sets us straight about the long-held conventional wisdom that the U.S. military overwhelmingly backs the GOP . Turns out that pollsters like the Military Times have a tendency to only ask the brass for opinions when they take polls. The officer corps trend to the GOP, but not so much the enlisted men:
only 32 percent of the Army's enlisted soldiers consider themselves conservative, while 23 percent identify as liberal and the remaining 45 percent are self-described moderates. These numbers closely mirror the ideological predilections of the civilian population. . . .
The political differences between officers and enlisted personnel can be partly explained by a demographic divide. Whereas officers are predominantly white, have at least a bachelor's degree, and draw incomes that place them in the middle or upper-middle class, the enlisted ranks have a higher proportion of minorities, make less money than officers, and typically enter service with only a high school diploma.
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