Burkle pulls ahead

Republican Anne Marie Buerkle now leads in the race for the 25th Congressional District seat against incumbent Dan Maffei.

by Carson Daniels (NCC News)
Nov, 4, 2010 7:30 p.m.

The game has changed since election night. Republican Anne Marie Buerkle now leads in the race for the 25th Congressional District seat against incumbent Dan Maffei by 659 votes. Buerkle originally trailed Maffei by 5,600 votes.

Buerkle's new lead comes from the addition of Wayne county's votes into the total. Wayne County was the last of four counties to report its results in the race. Buerkle won the county by 15,429 votes to Maffei's 9,191, according to returns Wayne County released Wednesday evening.

With the race too close to call, the election will be decided by absentee and military ballots. A large percentage of the absentee ballots were distributed in Onondaga County (8,154 ballots) where Maffei had the majority of the votes. Dan Maffei's Communications Manager Abagail Gardner remained hopeful about the results.

"The absentee ballots are mostly from Onondaga County which we won very handily, so there's every reason to believe that in the end we will still win."

Eleven-thousand absentee ballots have yet to be counted. Military ballots postmarked by Nov. 1 can be counted up until Nov. 24.