Both Tom Perriello and Virgil Goode, competitors for the Fifth District congressional seat who are—as of this minute—separated by 145 votes, said at press conferences this morning that they are confident that they will prevail. Goode currently has the lead, with 49.99 percent of the vote to Perriello’s 49.94 percent, though the numbers on the Virginia State Board of Elections website seem to change minute to minute.
“Right now, we’re going to take a deep breath,” said Tom Perriello, speaking to reporters at his Charlottesville office. “We think that based on what’s out there, provisional ballots and otherwise, that we’re going to pull ahead in this thing and win it at the end of the day, but we just have to make sure that every vote counts.”
Provisional ballots have still not been counted, though those numbers should come in from most localities by the end of the day. Perriello, a Democrat, said that he expected that provisional ballots would swing his direction by a 2 to 1 margin.
“We have to do the first count before we start talking about a recount,” said Perriello. “Again, we’re optimistic about what we’re looking at.”
Goode, a six term Republican incumbent facing his first close election, issued a similar statement during a conference call with reporters. “We’re ahead now, and we’re optimistic about being ahead in the end,” said Goode.
He also alluded to a glitch in the computers in Danville that temporarily showed Perriello with a 2,000 vote lead. “When he all the sudden got a spike of over 2,000,” said Goode, “one person in the office looked into it and found what he thought was too big of a discrepancy, and he contacted the Danville registrar’s office, and they gave him the correct numbers.”
“I was expecting a really close race,” said Goode, “and I’m just glad that we’re ahead at this point.”
