According to unofficial results emailed me by John Conklin at my request, Tuesday afternoon, November 10, 2009, but with note "As of 11/5/09 at bottom,
63,672 votes were cast for Douglas L. Hoffman as the Conservative Party candidate;
61,725 votes were cast for William L. Owens as the Democratic Party candidate.
However, some of the counties counted Working Families Party votes for candidate William L. Owens as for him as a Democratic Party candidates. The remaining counties added 4,973 votes for William L. Owens on the Working Families Party line. From these totals, as of then 66, 698 votes were counted for William L. Owens giving him the apparent plurality. In New York, a candidate can run on more than one party line. Dede Scozzafava has run previously on the Working Families Party line. This time she ran on the Republican Party line; 5,565 votes were counted for her on the Republican Party line, which includes Independence Party line votes from two counties; the other counties added 920 Independence Party votes to her total.
I find these results interesting, especially considering all the words about the impossibility of a third party candidate's winning. Whatever the voter party registration records, the Conservative Party, at this point in the tally of the election results, was the Party receiving the largest number of votes, the Democratic Party, the second, and the Republican Party the third. Here the Republican Party was truly the third party. The fourth party, the Working Families Party, a party with which Dede Scozzafava has been associated, has thus far apparently provided the victory for the Democratic candidate. Had more Republican leaders, both local and national, earlier urged voting for Hoffman, and pointed out that voting for Scozzafava would likely help the Democrat and end up supporting offensive and burdensome Democratic policies, we might already have had a different result in New York's Congressional District 23, and in Congress on Saturday, November 7. Scozzafava's leanings were clearly revealed in her late "withdrawal" and endorsement of the Democratic candidate. She could hardly have done more to help him (and Speaker Pelosi) win.