Democrat Linda Newell appears to have won the Senate District 26 seat, held by Republicans for decades, by the thinnest of margins.
But the election is headed for a recount, so official results might not be ready until December. With all provisional votes counted, Newell today was leading Republican Lauri Clapp by 191 votes out of more than 60,000 cast, mostly in Arapahoe County. Newell said that her margin of victory was .36 percent, still low enough to trigger an automatic recount under state law.
“I still don’t know for sure,” Newell said, but based upon her current lead, “it’s a good sign that I can anticipate a victory speech in our future.”
Republican leaders admitted it was unlikely that Clapp would make up the difference in a recount.
“Obviously, we continue to hope that the election falls the other way, but almost always at this point, it’s extremely unusual for the results to change,” Penry said. “It was a classic headwind loss. (Barack) Obama won that district by a healthy margin, which, in the end, was the difference.”
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