SALT LAKE CITY — One day after the polls closed and over 278,000 votes have yet to be counted.
“The counties have to process these by-mails ballots that came in, process the provisional ballots that came in at the polls,” said State Director of Elections Justin Lee.
The biggest pools of uncounted ballots are in Salt Lake County (116,093) and Utah County (88,910). A portion of both counties contribute to the District 4 congressional race between Republican incumbent Mia Love and her challenger, Democrat Ben McAdams, the current Salt Lake County Mayor. McAdams had a lead of 5,414 votes as of Wednesday night. For Love to have a chance to make up the gap, she’ll need many of those uncounted votes in Utah County to be part of her district.
“If those go according to the ballots already counted she is going to win about three votes to everyone to McAdams. She could catch up fairly quickly and close that gap,” Dan Harrie, the Politics and Government Editor at our partner news organization The Salt Lake Tribune, said.
McAdams does tend to win within Salt Lake County, but the gap is not nearly as wide as Love’s advantage in Utah County. In returns processed so far, McAdams has been winning 55 percent of the vote in Salt Lake County.
With so many votes left to count it will likely be several days before the race is called.
“If there’s a big turnout, there’s a lot of ballots still remaining, it can take up to two weeks after the election to have everything counted,” Lee said.
For a complete look at the number of uncounted ballots, click here.
