CA-04: Down To 329 Votes

Huge news in the continued counting of Charlie Brown's race against Tom McClintock. The latest round of counting has Brown within 329 votes as the provisionals, which tend to favor Democrats, get counted in the larger counties in the district.

Charlie Brown (Dem) 170,168 49.9%
Tom McClintock (Rep) 170,497 50.1%

There are still tens of thousands of votes left to count, and there's a virtual assurance of at least a partial recount. Tom McClintock has been sending his list these smug reports of the day's counting, telling them how everything's looking great. I haven't seen an update from him in a couple days. Probably because this is shaping up as a replay of the 2002 State Controller race, when the late provisionals put Steve Westly over the top in his race against... Tom McClintock.

Extended races like this cost money to maintain staff and pay lawyers. You can help Charlie out at the Calitics ActBlue page.

...I guess a slew of votes came in from Placer County and widened McClintock's lead in a big way.

"We're not claiming victory, but we just think it's mathematically impossible for (Brown) to win," said Bill George, spokesman for McClintock.
George said the thousands of Placer County votes tallied Friday stretched McClintock's lead from barely 300 votes to 1,793, with only about 4,500 more votes to count in the nine-county district.

Brown spokesman Todd Stenhouse said Brown would not concede, noting that thousands more votes remain to be counted, most of which are provisional ballots that "have been breaking very, very strongly for Charlie."

"We remain committed to the same goals that we've been committed to all along and that is that every vote is counted in this historic election," Stenhouse said.