Haven't started recount yet. Still doing official canvassing. Lead is 900 votes on the official VBE website, but I've read that the official site is not accurate, that things are changing too quickly.
Estimate from McDonnell's side now is that they will be up between 500-1000 votes when the canvassing is complete.
It is amazing that we can have so many close votes like this in a row. I just want to have an election that is over on election night.
We also have a delegate race that had a 44-vote spread. That is actually bigger than the spread on the AG race because of the small number of voters for delegate.
My social-and-fiscal hard conservative delegate won by 14% over a well-financed opponent (who spent twice as much as the incumbent. All 4 of the republicans representing parts of Prince William County were re-elected, and we went for the two winning republicans.
Apparently, we couldn't find enough republicans willing to vote for Kilgore though, as Kaine beat him in our county.
I will say this -- I don't think there were a lot of new democrats. I think the republicans simply didn't show up. Republicans were already depressed with the national scene, and Kilgore was very negative and had little real message. Die-hards could show up anyway, but normal voters simply were turned off. Meanwhile, the democrats were very energized by their candidate (god knows why, he sounded like a republican).
I was worried about this recount, I still am, but I hear that the Republican candidate has good people working on it, and is well-prepared for the recount.
You have it right. I think the Kilgore campaign was ham-handed at best, and made several large blunders. Kaine's advertising was more nimble, and he struck a better balance between negative/positive. Overall, I was amazed at the negative tone of the race all the way down the ticket, on both sides.
Kilgore could have done a few simple things to get over the top. He should have firmly promised to finish eliminating the car tax, and put Kaine on the spot to do the same, and kept hitting this issue. He should have made a bigger issue of illegal immigration, and sooner. And, although risky, I believe he should have debated Kaine publicly more than he did. Nobody except the faithful few really knew who he was. Kaine may have out-debated him, but it would have been a chance to speak directly to the electorate.
Of course, amazingly there is a handy excuse for this loss: "It's Bush's fault"
NOT.