Quinn Still Ahead With All Precincts In
UPDATED 11/4/10 10:03 a.m.
CHICAGO (CBS) - All the precincts are in, and Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn remains nearly 20,000 votes ahead of Republican challenger Bill Brady.
But there are still thousands of votes that haven't been counted.
As of Thursday morning, election returns indicated that all 11,209 Illinois precincts were reporting. Quinn finished with 1,721,208 votes, or 47 percent of the vote, compared with Brady's 1,701,647 votes, or 46 percent. The difference is 19,651 votes.
The remaining votes were split between Independent Scott Lee Cohen (4 percent), Green Party candidate Rich Whitney (3 percent), and Libertarian Lex Green (1 percent.)
Quinn is set to make an appearance at 12:30 p.m. at Manny's Deli, 1141 S. Jefferson St., where he plans to "thank voters for coming out on Election Day."
But he has not declared victory, and Brady has said he has no plans to concede.
Of the thousands of votes still to be counted, there are 13,000-plus provisional ballots in the city and county. They have to be counted and verified by Nov, 16, which is also the deadline for counting absentee ballots. There are about 14,000 of those that should be counted on Friday.
Both Quinn and Brady have said repeatedly that they think they can win the race.
Brady said Wednesday that the process of counting all the provisional, absentee and military ballots could take a whole month, but he would come out victorious.
"I believe we will win. Our campaign continues to wait for the results from the local officials. The people of Illinois have cast over 3.6 million votes in this election and as of right now, the difference is less than one vote per precinct," Brady said Wednesday morning.
Quinn's campaign disagreed with Brady's assessment of the results Wednesday.
"The ballots left to be counted appear mostly to come from Cook County, where the Governor held a large margin over Senator Brady. We expect to hold our lead, and may increase it. We do not see a path to victory for Bill Brady," Quinn's campaign said in a Wednesday statement.
