The count of absentee votes has made it pretty plain that Democrat Scott Murphy will be declared the winner and Republican James Tedisco the loser of the New York 20th congressional district special election, and rightly so. In my previous blogging at U.S. News & World Report, I expressed skepticism about both Democrats’ and Republicans’ claims that their side would come out ahead when the absentees were counted. It depended, I thought, on which side did a better job of organizing absentee ballot voting. Now we have the answer: the Democrats did.

In addition, I suggested that, whatever the outcome, there was more reason for satisfaction for Democrats than Republicans in the result. The 50%-50% result here (which is what you get if you round out to integers, whatever the final vote margin) is very close to Barack Obama’s 51%-48% margin over John McCain in the district.