Politics

Contentious Pennsylvania Special Election Is Too Close To Call

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The Pennsylvania special House election race is too close to call after two precincts announced they would not be reporting their votes Tuesday night.

BREAKING: AP is not declaring a winner in Tuesday's special election for Pennsylvania's 18th congressional district because the race between Democrat Conor Lamb and Republican Rick Saccone is too close to call.

— The Associated Press (@AP) March 14, 2018

The polls closed in the 18th district at 8 p.m. in what is an extremely tight race. With 99 percent of the vote counted, Democratic candidate Conor Lamb leads by 95 votes. Both Greene and Washington counties announced they would not be reporting their absentee votes on the night of the election, The New York Times reported.

There are also a number of absentee ballots that still have not been counted, which could help Saccone, in the 18th congressional district, which President Donald Trump won by 20 percent in the 2016 presidential election.

Trump traveled to Pennsylvania to campaign for Rick Saccone, touting the former Air Force officer’s success in business and support for the steel industry. Saccone would replace former Republican Rep. Tim Murphy in Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District, who resigned in October 2017 amid a sex scandal.

Lamb, an attorney and Marine veteran, claimed to have a bipartisan agenda, but criticized Republicans for trying to repeal Obamacare and called the GOP tax reform legislation a “giveaway” to the rich. Trump said Lamb was “trying to act like a Republican” in order to win the election in a district Trump one by 20 percent, calling him “weak on Crime and Border.”

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The winner will serve until the new Congress begins in January 2019.

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