ultra strength from alka seltzer. enjoy the relief. welcome back. we're following the special election in pennsylvania's 18 accouth congressional district. conor lamb maintaining a significant lead. 16% of the vote is now in. conor lamb has 58.7%. rick saccone the republican has 40%. conor lamb ahead by more than 5,000 votes. let's go over to john king who is watching all these counties in pennsylvania very, very closely right now. the president as i lying to say, he was just there over the weekend campaigning for rick saccone. >> if you're in saccone headquarters, you're getting a bit nervous. you don't need to panic yet. 16% reporting. if you round that up to 41%, that is throughout the district about two-thirds of the vote

counted so far. the most democratic area of the district. in that county the piece of the county that's in the district stretches way up here. but in the slice of it that's in the 18th congressional district, conor lamb running up a pretty impressive margin. his campaign thinks if they keep that above 55 they're in play to win the district . so far he's doing what he needs to do. it's the biggest slice of the voters. if you're in the lamb campaign, that's your most important number. this if you're in the saccone campaign is troublesome. this should be red. now we're only at 8% in washington county. just for comparison go back to the presidential race. hillary clinton got 34%, 35 if you round it up. 35% for secretary clinton. conor lamb at the moment only 8%. at the moment in the lead. he's running competitive,over performing clinton if you will in a republican county. this is the big question mark. this is a republican county.

it's a republican county. this piece is about 34% of the registered voters in the district. we have nothing yet. t if you're in saccone, when they do come in, you need it to be red and you need your margin to be similar to the conor lamb margin here. he's at 60/40 if you round the numbers. rick saccone needs that here. as we count the votes, come back to the district. we're almost at 20% the bulk of what we have is in here. rick saccone is leading down here. we're at 45% already. very small. it's much less populated than the other counties in the district. this is a margin. again, even there for conor lamb it's about the margins. hillary clinton got 27%. conor lamb is getting more than ten points higher than that. if you're in the lamb campaign, you're satisfied. this is a surprise at the moment. if this stays blue, this race is

over. but only at 8% so far washington county. again, this is the biggest basket of votes. biggest basket of democratic votes. also suburban votes. a big drop here, 27%. rick saccone 54-45. he's leading here. that's good for him. but i just want to show you something. president trump 65% to 31%. if you look at the presidential race, turnout will be nowhere near the presidential race. this is a med term election. an off year special election. if you think about it, president trump won the district by 20 points by running up a very big margin here in westmoreland. at this point rick saccone well below. conor lamb with 58%. the most surprising part of this race, this district in 2016 was, again, in this slice of allegheny county that is part of the district, donald trump actually beat hillary clinton in this slight. she won the county but he won the part that's in the 18th

district by four points. as we continue to count the votes, we bring the district up full. we're up to 30%. conor lamb 53%. so if you're getting -- if you're in the lamb campaign, you like the margins and you're waiting to see more of the votes come in and if this stays blue. >> almost a third of the vote is in. let's go over to jake and dana. the president was just there campaigning. if the democrats do win this special election in pennsylvania tonight, they're going to be encouraged to believe, you know what, they might be able to win a whole bunch of other congressional seats in november and become the house majority. >> that's exactly right. of course republicans outspent the democrats by more than two to one for this congressional seat in a very republican district. one imagines even though the results are not fully in and we don't know who's going to win, so far it looks good for the democrat. i wonder if republicans are

worrying our senior congressional correspondent manu raju is tracking reaction. manu, what are you hearing? i've got to believe that republicans already kind of jittery and worrying about a so-called blue wave are not reassured by what they're seeing on their tv screens. >> no question about it. they're very nervous about this midterm environment. they're seeing trump's poor numbers. they're seeing what's happening here in pennsylvania. they're also nervous that they've not been able to effectively sell their new tax law because of the daily chaos that seems to be coming out of washington. tomorrow i'm hearing that behind closed doors republican leaders in the house will have a briefing with their members of the house republican conference to layout the real challenges and opportunities that present themselves ahead of the midterm elections. they'll take a lot of questions. the committee that oversees this effort, he's going to take questions from house republicans

about what went wrong here. assuming they do lose this seat tonight, as well as how they can keep their majority. republicans fear the prospects of them holding on to power can grow increasingly slim. one thing that we're going to be looking out for is any possible further retirements. that's one thing that's hobbling the republican chances of holding the majority. right now republican officials are not expecting a wave of retirements, but there could be a couple others and one reason why tomorrow is so important to make it clear they could still win, but they need to do things a little better and sell their message more effectively. >> dan of the things republicans have been talking a lot about, two weeks ago, three weeks ago was how much the president's tax cut bill was going to help rick saccone. but annethey stopped talking ab the tax cut and started talking about conor lamb. >> and started running ads on

it. i was communicating with a republican and he said the reason for that was because they realized it was too late to have an effective message on taxes because there were other issues conor lamb was winning on. unclear how much that played a role. but just to sort of bounce off of what manu was just reporting, the chairman of the republican -- the campaign arm that elects house candidates is going to talk to all house republicans tomorrow, my understanding is that the message he is going to send is campaigns matter and candidates matter. which seems so basic. if you're watching at home you say of course they do. but this is -- they hope on the republican side, assuming it goes the way they think it will which is they will lose this seat, a wakeup call for candidates to really start to focus more aggressively on their campaigns. because this democratic

resistance is real, and real enough for a district where donald trump won by 20 points to look like it's going to be to a democratic seat. >> and of course that message of course implicitly is an insult to the republican in the race, anderson cooper, but we already heard at the end of the last week that people close to president trump reported that he was bad mouthing rick saccone the republican likely an expectation of not such a great night for the republicans this evening. >> we're going to have more on that. let's check the numbers. 35% of the vote in. 5,694 conor lamb is ahead by. you were talking about this during the break that this isn't just about these two candidates. >> right. there is no doubt. as every republican we talked to, jason until he's blue in the face, this is all about one candidate and an underperforming candidate. that ignores the larger environment that we're in. and this will not be breaking news to any republican. they know they're in a tough environment. but we shouldn't lose sight that

this is part of that very tough environment. we didn't see five house special elections last year throughout the whole year with democratic overperformance like we did not see in years or ever in some of these places. obviously new jersey is a democratic state, but new jersey and virginia governor's race, the alabama special which had unique circumstances. you can put the caveat in wherever you want. but if you deny what this is part of, why republicans went all in for more than $10 million, it is because it is so indicative of that larger story of the head winds, massive head winds that republicans are facing. we shouldn't lot size ght of th as we talk about this individual race. >> that is why you see the president talking to others and understanding that this is an uphill battle privately distancing himself from the republican candidate because he does that if he thinks the guy's going to lose and he doesn't

want it to have anything to do with these anti-trump headwinds that david is talking about. he wants to make it a micromatter when in fact it's a macro matter. it's larger than that. you can look at the virginia gub -- g -- this is an issue for donald trump and we'll see it again and again. democrats are overperforming because of enthusiasm. >> phones were ringing across pennsylvania in the voter registration offices because there were so many ads, including ours, that people were calling up dumbfounded as to why their polling places weren't open. they didn't realize this was an election only in the 18th congressional district. the good news is those folks were not allowed to vote. the other observation that i

would make is that i think this vote is going to come quickly. maybe i'm mistaken. but remember, there's one thing on the ballot. there is one issue to count and that's it. i would expect that once this begins to really roll, perhaps within the next 45 minutes, we're going to see something decisive. famous last words. >> if you think about what david's talking about, the overarching narrative and chaos we see out of the white house and how that's affecting voters and you look at the data, trump is losing support among the groups we talked about. suburban white women. this is a district that's emblematic of that. we see that in virginia. we saw it in alabama. we'll see how saccone does with union voters. and you see independents. he did well with independents. he had the sort of outsider view, but it looks like he's losing some support among those key groups.

>> to joe's point, and i think this was your point, will we see tonight potentially that he's not only losing support with his voters but with his base. >> that's happening. >> that's key here. that's sort of the important thing you look at which is that he's not impenetrable. >> saccone has picked up. he could go ahead and win this by a point. the reality is this was a district trump won by 20 points. there are 23, 24 districts where hillary clinton won and there's a republican member. this isn't good for those people. there are a whole bunch of districts in this country that trump won by five points. if you're a republican, this isn't good for you in your running. >> hold on. you look at the u.s. senate. if the election were today, you would have five sitting democratic u.s. senators who would get bounced. the fact of the matter is the republicans in this special election house race are trying

to push a car uphill. >> and alabama won by 28 points and he lost that too. i'm not making any predictions for house or senate. i'm saying no matter how you look at it, even if saccone does go ahead and wins, it's really, really bad news. >> i agree with both of you. it's both. the reality is conor lamb, there are going to be a lot more conor lambs on the ballot because democrats are energized, more candidate are running. why? it's a med term presidential election. it's always a bad election for the party in power and we have a president that's a very polarizing president. that reminds me of 2010. democrats aren't going to condemn barack obama for being a bad president because he stood up for what he believed in, he was very controversial. so be it. but there are consequences. and the consequences are you get better candidates on the other side and you get more energy on

the other side and it makes these races tighter. rick saccone can still pull this race off. it's going to be tough, but he can still pull the race off. the bottom line it's candidates. >> it seems the percentage is jumping at 2%. it's at 40% now. 7,300 votes conor lamb in the lead. we're going to take a short break. we're watching votes come in from pennsylvania. the question is will democratic enthusiasm be enough to pull off an upset in a deep red district? more on that ahead.

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welcome back. we're covering the special election in pennsylvania's 18th congressional district. almost half of the vote has now been counted, about 47%. conor lamb, the democrat, maintaining his advantage over rick saccone, the republican, 53.8% to 45.6%. he's got a 7,600 lead right now, conor lamb, the democrat, over rick saccone. let's go over to john king at the magic wall. he's doing really wall, conor lamb, just south of pittsburgh in allegheny county, where almost half of the vote, projected vote resides. >> more than 40% of the vote will come out of here. depending on turnout that could go a little higher. district wide, it's 7,600 vote lead, almost up to half the vote. let's go through what we have as you mentioned. this is the most important slice of the district is right here. it's the pittsburgh suburbs. the southern part of allegheny county. 57% to 42% right now.

both campaigns will tell you conor lamb has to be above 55% or above in this district to compete. then the turnout could come into play. but right now, that's about -- >> and in allegheny county -- 68% of the vote has been counted. >> does conor lamb keep that margin, number one, stay above 55? and, number two, where's the turnout, more populated precincts? what's the math? he needs to run up the margin because you're starting to see rick saccone, this is more republican. this is the part of westmoreland county in the 18th district. 56-44. if you roundup, most people will tell you saccone probably has to hit 60 in this part of the district to get up. this has changed a bit. he's performing -- it's red and what should be red, i would argue, 53% as more comes in for saccone to tighten the race. he has to get that up, 57. >> a third of the vote is in westmoreland. >> a little more than 40% here. this is a big basket of

should-be republican votes. just to go back and show you again, presidential years are not midterm years in terms of turnout. hillary clinton got only 31% and some change in this county. conor lamb at the moment is getting 43%. in a close race, margins matter. he's overperforming the presidential candidate if you will. >> take a look at this. 53% of the vote is now in. >> that's in that county. now you're up to 56% in the district. the lead's gone down a little bit. the lead has gone down from 7,500 to 5,100 right here. we're getting more votes from these more rural, more republican counties. washington county here. they're splitting this county. again, if this holds up as we get the two-thirds that are missing, then conor lamb's going to win this race. rick saccone has to win the washington county part of this district by more than a few votes. so without a doubt. down here, green county, not to minimize it, but it's a small, much more rural, much less populated. if we're in a race an hour or now, it's 200 or 300 votes, then

the fact that conor lamb got over 40% if that holds could be significant in the end. >> only 2% of the vote. >> so if it's very close, we'll come down here. no offense to the people of greene county. this is what matters most. up to 72% now. so the most democratic part of the district, and the place where the lamb campaign thinks they can get suburban republicans who, as i mentioned earlier, places like new jersey, the alabama senate race, suburban republicans who cast an anti-trump vote if you will by voting for a democrat. this is where most of them are. conor lamb needs to stay above 55. we're up to 72% of the vote. i just want to check again. 53% here. rick saccone needs to boost that as the rest of that vote comes in. then over here again, 33% in washington county, which is 21, 22% of the vote in the district here. only a third of the vote in here. if it stays like this, at least conor lamb in a good position to iki eke out a victory.

just for hill bit of contrast here, president trump gets 61% in this county. the republican candidate right now is just at 50%. come over to this other big republican county, rick saccone's at 56% if you ronald that up. president trump was at 65%. so, again, you're not going to get the turnout numbers in a non-presidential year. but in terms of the percentages, rick saccone has to get pretty close to where the president was. if you're looking at it right now, 58%. votes are starting to come in quickly here. conor lamb holding on because of this, the lead in allegheny county, which is up to 72%. 10,000 votes. that's the different right now. >> i suspect we're going to get a lot more votes in the coming minutes. we're going to continue our special coverage on this important congressional special election right after this.

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we talked about president trump visiting. joe biden came to campaign for conor lamb as well. >> you know, it's interesting because, yes, joe kennedy iii and martin o'malley were in there early on as well. when you got to the end here, there was only one prominent national democrat that the lamb campaign thought would be a good idea to bring in. this goes to rick's point earlier tonight. you can't run in this district, i think you said, as a hillary clinton/barack obama democrat. you didn't mention joe biden when you were listing the democrats you can't run as. and conor lamb knew that. so this is going to become, if indeed he wins tonight -- by the way, we're looking at a six-point lead for the democrat in a district donald trump won by 20 points. so this is a pretty astonishing number we're looking at right now. joe biden is going to be part of this larger conversation about the path forward for the democratic party out of here of any potential lessons learned here. he's, if indeed he wants to put it all together and try to pursue the presidency in 2020, he's going to make the argument,

i'm the guy that can go to the places that donald trump had some success in and talk to those voters and try to bring them back into the democratic fold. and tonight's result may give him some evidence for that argument. >> senator santorum, you made the point early on that conor lamb, had he had a primary, he may not have been able to win, a democratic primary. >> i think the days of joe biden and the democratic party are over. you know, blue collar joe isn't going to win a primary with california, new york. i mean the votes aren't there. >> that argument is -- >> -- i think against republican candidates. think of governor castle and christine o'donnell. there are a whole host of folks that would win a general election, but they can't survive a republican primary. >> the democrats can get in their own way in this election cycle. we haven't had eventual primaries so far. we'll wait and see who gets through these democratic primaries. so could the democrats have a big sweep? yes. if they're really strategic and smart or we could have christine

o'donnells and sharon engels, and a whole bunch of others who get through, who are just too radical. >> do you think the age of joe biden democrat is over? >> like i said, i think we may find that out in 2020 if he decides to run for president. there are a lot of people in the party that would like to see him try that. i'm not taking sides in it, but i don't think his days are over at all. he again came to alabama and it was a big success for us in the state. i think the thing about these races in a midterm, particularly this cycle for democrats, is keep it local. the second the race becomes nationalized, people go back to their tribe. they become red voters or blue voters, and you can't win in a red district. >> and conor lamb really focused on that, keeping it local. >> because if you make this about red versus blue and you're in a red district, that's not going to work too well. >> and he never did cable news. >> again, regardless of whether conor lamb actually pulls this

out, which i think he might -- but if he doesn't, it's still the lesson. you have to run democrats that fit the district. >> 62% of the votes in. 7,600 ahead. >> this is joe biden's argument. it was his argument to hillary clinton, which wasn't listened to enough, he would argue, which is that there is a way. and that biden can appeal to working class democrats, some whom have been disaffected and went to vote for donald trump because they couldn't stand hillary clinton and that biden can speak to those working class voters. and that's why he was brought in this this state. and that's why he campaigned in those states for hillary clinton. and that's what he truly believes and thinks. and whether biden runs or not, it's a lesson the democrats need to learn from him. the problem is who's the messenger for that kind of a democrat other than joe biden? >> right. >> i mean it sort of speaks to what the democratic party is lacking right now, which would be somebody like joe biden who

maybe is not joe biden. >> but they have nancy pelosi. >> that's not it. >> conor lamb would say the same thing. >> that's always the case in a midterm with the out party. >> sure. >> that fight happens in the next presidential. 15, 16 people run like happened with the republicans in 2016. >> more than that. >> 53. then we see which one emerges as the leader of the party and pulls it together. no one would have predicted donald trump. >> biden helped obama that way. i would argue obama had that same kind of a problem, and that's where biden helped him out. >> but obama also expanded the party, right? the surge voters and african-american voters, and you wonder if joe biden -- he's obviously got some baggage. he's older. he's won before. never won, i don't think, a single primary when he actually ran for president or a caucus. so does he -- he might attract kind of working class white

voters, blue collar democrats. but does he also energize african-american voters, younger voters, latino voters, and women voters? that's still an open question. >> i want to go back to where i began the evening, which is i think margin matters even more so than conor lamb's victory. i'm not suggesting it's a play diagnose book th playbook that works across the country. this is a guy who wanted to be photographed with an ar-15 in his hands. it is a strategy that i think can work for democrats in some of those rust belt states that were responsible for putting donald trump over the top. >> i think it's also a message as well, i think, for republican candidates not named donald trump. you better give the voters something to be excited about. i was taking a look at rick saccone's closing message or one of his closing ads. he's out there. he's got the sweater on. he's saying, i've worked with republicans. i've worked with democrats. there is nothing that will make voters just change the channel than looking at something where they're talking like they're already part of washington. you need to talk about actually

what you believe in, how you're going to be tough on things, you're going to get things done. people are still mad at washington. even though trump is in the white house, there's a lot of dysfunction. >> one of the things that happens in these is you're worried -- there was a lot of concern in the party, can a conor lamb take advantage of the energized democrats while still reaching over and appealing to republicans? would there be sort of a -- you know, less energy on the democratic side? that's clearly not happening either. it didn't happen in alabama either. in fact, we had massive turnout on the democratic side. it's actually possible to have all this energy on the democratic side at the same time with the right messenger pull in enough republicans or at least scare the -- >> 65% of the vote in. conor lamb ahead.

still too close to call. the race is tightening. we're going to take a look at exactly where the votes have already come in and where they have yet to come in. obviously that's crucial. we'll continue our special coverage right after this. there's little rest for a single dad.

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welcome back to this special coverage of this election in the 18th district of pennsylvania. we've got another key race alert. it's tightened a bit. take a look at this right now. 71% of the vote is now in in this pennsylvania district. conor lamb, the democrat, ahead by 5,100 votes over rick saccone. 51.5% to 47.9%. let's go over to john king at the magic wall. i guess the key question right now, the outstanding votes. where are they? >> we're getting into crunch time. the biggest basket of outstanding votes is actually in the third largest of the four counties in this district, which is washington county. it's been stuck at 33% reporting for quite some time and it's a dead heat. saccone with a minor lead there, fewer than 100 votes. if that stays like this, this is the key to the race right now in

my view. washington county needs to stay red for rick saccone to win and he needs to win -- he's got to get that number closer to 60%. we'll see. there's two thirds of the vote out. we don't know what precincts they are. we don't know the answer to that question, at least i don't at this second. watch this. we expect when that changes, sometimes when you're stuck at 33% for a long time, we'll get a lot of votes quickly. for rick saccone, that margin needs to change in washington county. one of the reasons he tightened was because more votes came in in the part of westmoreland county that's in the district. we're up to 77% there. he needs to be closer to 60%. most of his campaign would tell you that. he has stretched it up a little bit. he needs to pull more votes out of westmoreland county, which is 34% of the district. this piece of the district here, as we get the final 23%, rick saccone needs to change that number because he needs the math. you see about 6,000 -- a little short of 6,000 votes there.

why does he need more? because of this. come over to allegheny county, and this has held consistent. we're up to 85%. if you're conor lamb, these are where your votes are coming from. most of them are in. still 15% out, though, and he's been in the ballpark of 13,000 votes there for a while. if he holds somewhere in 13,000 range in the allegheny county area, rick saccone has got to make it up out here. >> i want to go to gary tuchman in allegheny county. what are you seeing and hearing, gary? >> reporter: wolf, allegheny county is about 40% of the district vote, so this is the most important county. we're in a giant warehouse here in pittsburgh. this is actually the warehouse is not in the district but it is in allegheny county. this is where all the absentee ballots are arriving for this county. trucks and cars are pulling in and literally five minutes ago, the absentee ballots started arriving. they are being counted in this room behind me. with us now, this is the elections division manager here in allegheny county. how is the voting going?

>> everything is going very well. we are at about 82% as of ten minutes ago. >> i think it's a little higher than that we just heard in the last minute. the absentee ballots, do we know how many will be coming here total? >> there were approximately 4,100 issued. i would anticipate probably 3,700, 3,800 have been returned. that's how many will be coming here tonight to be scanned on our optical scan machines. >> we can take a look at the people counting them while i talk to you. how long will it take to count? >> i would think by midnight we should be finished. >> we watched everyone get sworn in. why do you swear people in? >> under the pennsylvania election code, we're required to take the constitutional oath of office when we begin tabulating votes on election night. >> when will the votes be added to the total? as soon as they're counted? >> at the final tabulation at the end of the night is when we -- >> oh, i see.

th you wait until you get all 4,000? >> that's right. they have to be downloaded on a disk and placed into the system. >> where is the outstanding vote in the county as far as the regular vote? we have 86%. >> i did not look. i can't answer. >> is there a specific pattern each election, or does it vary each time? >> i think generally, you know, the districts that are geographically further away from the reporting centers take longer to get there. >> good luck the rest of the night. we appreciate it. >> sure. >> we'll be around, jake and wolf, as the absentee ballots continue to come into this building. >> every vote counts. thanks very much. let's review right now, john. as we take a look at this 18th congressional district, 72% of the vote is now in. conor lamb, the democrat, he still maintains a 5,400 vote lead over rick saccone. >> three big pieces to this. >> the lead is because here, allegheny count, is a 13,000 vote here. 5,300 district-wide. 13,000 of it right here. as the final 15% comes in in

allegheny county, critical for conor lamb to keep this margin. why? because as more vote comes in, we're now up to 88% in westmoreland county. i said earlier saccone needs to get closer to 60%. president trump had 65% plus in this county. rick saccone, to off jet what conor lamb is doing, he's got to run up a better margin here. there's still more of the vote to come in. you're looking here shy of 10,000, a little short of that. it's hard to beat the margin here. we're still at 33% in washington county and they're running dead even. if it stays roughly even, conor lamb is going to win this district. if the vote is out is more republican, if this changes and starts to move saccone's way, still got two-thirds of the vote out here. it's about 22% of the district here in washington county. if it starts to come in and it starts to come in heavy republican, you're going to see the margin change. and then we'll be doing the late

count in allegheny. we're up to 97% right now. the key for the lamb campaign is have to be above 55. every inch you get above, now we're up to -- >> it's gotten tighter right now. the conor lamb lead over rick saccone is only about 3,500 votes. it's just gone back up a little bit. 4,174 votes. 78% of the vote is now in. 51% to 48.4%. conor lamb, the democrat is ahead of rick saccone. this is a district that donald trump carried in 2016 by almost 20 points. >> he carried it by 20 points and he won everywhere in the district, including this slice of allegheny county. hillary clinton won the county, but this slice in the 18th district donald trump carried, which is why this is so significant to conor lamb tonight, because he's running up the margin here. i just want to see. that's what i was waiting for. this was at 33% when we started this conversation. now we're up to 75%. it was even. rick saccone has taken a much healthier lead there, but i

would argue i'm not sure that's enough. you got to be closer to 60%. if conor lamb can stay at 57%, 58% in allegheny county and keep the big -- this is where you have more people, the suburbs here. keep the lead here. rick saccone has to offset it here, 2,000 votes. that's not a big enough lead, not big enough to offset it, to cut into it. in westmoreland county as the rest of the vote comes in here, 12%, he's got to boost this a little bit. 56%, 57%, that's a healthy win normally. but back to presidential performance, i just want to show you president trump at much higher than that. so we'll keep counting them. it is getting tighter. 2,500 votes right now. >> tighter even as we spoke rath now. we're going to stay on top of this. john, stick around. we're going to continue to count the votes in pennsylvania. conor lamb holds a small lead in the special congressional election. much more right after this. ♪ slap on some cologne ♪ i'm 85 and i wanna go home ♪

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another key race alert. look how tight it's getting right now. 87% of the vote is in. the democrat, conor lamb, he has a slight advantage over rick saccone, the republican, right now, by almost 2,500 votes. 50.4% more conor lamb. 459% for rick saccone. 13% of the vote still outstanding. let's go over to john king and a lot will depend where those outstanding votes are. the absentee ballots, as well. this could end up being a real nail biter. >> yeah, time to make some espresso. just show of 2,500-vote lead for the democrat, conor lamb. he has that lead because of this. a big lead so far in allegheny county. this is south of pittsburgh. not all of the counties in the district. this slice of the county is in the 18th congressional district. suburban voters, most of the democrats who live in the district registered democrats, more of them are here, more people here. 91% reporting. 57%, 58%, if you round that up

to 42%. this is where conor lamb's margin of victory is coming from, right up there so far. what he needs, as the rest of this vote comes in, he needs to keep the margins like this. because he needs more votes here, even though there's only 9% left, he needs more to offset what we've seen happen as the vote starts to come in, came in later from the rural areas. the piece of westmoreland county that's in the district, 57% to 42%. again, you see the lead there. saccone leading by just shy of 10,000 here. again, i would argue, we have 12% of this district out. when that comes in, he has to hope it's from more republican areas that boost that up a little bit. it's a healthy lead in this area. if conor lamb keeps his margin up here, might not be healthy enough. washington county, remember, was tide at 33%. we're up to 75% now. rick saccone has pulled away there, just shy of 2,000 votes, doing the rough math. again, it's impressive, but if you go back to presidential performance, 61% for the president trump, 52% for rick saccone. again, if this margin holds up

when the rest of allegheny county comes in, underperforming the president here, the third largest county in the state, and here, the second largest county in the district -- excuse me, not the state. could be the difference. there's one more county, more rural county. we'll come to it this way, down in the bottom half. a tiny slice, a little over 2% of the district compared to population. it's a much more rural area. 100% is in. rick saccone, he can't count for anymore votes out of this most republican area. and b, you've got 58% of the vote. normally you would think that's a pretty big win. if you compare it to presidential performance, not always fair. presidential is different from a midterm year, but if you're looking back at the trump coalition, does the president get his voters to come out after making the visit. rick saccone underperforming the president in this hour. i wish i could go back a couple of cycles and say how's he doing opposed to various republican candidates, but the last two cycles, the republican candidate ran unopposed. so i would just come back to the full district at 88%, 2,800-vote lead for conor lamb. he's at just 50.5% district

wide, 50.5. this is the difference, right here. suburbs south of spartanburg, the lower slice of allegheny county in this district, again, more democrats, more suburban, more people. conor lamb racking it up here by a healthy margin. rick saccone winning the other more republican counties, but not by as big a margin and there simply aren't as many people. >> if we go back to the 18th congressional district as a whole, there you see 91% of the vote is now in. and the lead has narrowed. only 15,049 evotes. it's very, very night. let's note forget, you make a good point. this has been a solidly republican congressional district for at least 15 years. >> it has been, to the point that the republican congressman who resigned in disgrace, but the last two times, the democrats didn't even field a candidate. you don't want to go back too far, the lines of the districts have changed, the demographics have changed. but the president carried it by

20 points. the previous republican didn't have an opponent the last two elections in a row. our panelists have been talking about how conor lamb has run a race for the district. when we get up to 91, they jumped from 88 to 90% here in washington county. and again, that's a lead in a republican county, but i would guess -- >> go back to the district as a whole. look at this now. the lead for conor lamb is now only 703 votes. 49.9% to 49.5%. look at how tight this race is with 94% of the vote in. >> and so let's look again. what went up? 97%, westmoreland county. the westmoreland county part, that jumped up. it's a republican area, so that's why. now you're just shy of 10,000 votes there for the lead there. i said earlier, probably needs to be at 60% in the part of westmoreland county that's in the district to win. these numbers have been inching up. might not be high enough, but they are moving up. that's where those votes came from. when this went up to 97%, i want to check over here, 90% in washington county. sto if the remaining 10% comes

in, rick saccone will get more votes out of here, that 53% might not be enough if that holds. and the key is to check here. we're up to 93%. and this margin has held pretty consistently. >> in allegheny county. >> and again, a fewer percentage of precincts still out, a smaller number there, but more people live here. so when they come in, if these margins hold, conor lamb will get some more votes when they come in. but to pull it back out, 703 votes at 94%, as i said, espresso time. >> they're going to be counting the absentee blots, about 3,700, in allegheny county itself. let's take another quick break. a very, very tight race in pennsylvania. our special coverage continues right after this. we're almost there. she's coming! stall. my video call's lagging. mom? surprise! surprise! hold up. hold up. we got a laggy video call here. you need verizon, the best network for streaming. try this new samsung galaxy s9 on verizon unlimited. the camera's a real game changer. okay, people, that's a reset. you want us to surprise her again? yeah, but like in a fun way. like this.

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and this is the very definition of a tight race. 95% of the votes are in. conor lamb still has a lead, but only by 928 votes. 49.9% to 49.5%. our gary tuchman is at a warehouse in allegheny county, where they are counting the absentee ballots. gary, explain what you're looking at and how this works. >> reporter: okay, anderson. allegheny county has 40% of the 18th district vote, incredibly

important. as we speak, absentee ballots are arriving in these white envelopes. these are the absentee ballots. what happens after the people get the absentee ballots, these machines, these great meesachin over here, those are the scanners, and those ballots are put inside the scanners and they immediately tabulate the vote if it's for the democrat or the republican. but you won't see those on our tote boards in the studio. they will wait until they tabulate every one and they're not all here. they gave out about 4,200 absentee ballots. there's no way to know how many they will get. right now hundreds of them have arrived, but they expect there are at least hundreds more to come. so we won't get the total number until they are all done. but as they go into these gray machines, they are immediately tabulated and we'll see the results a little bit later. anderson? >> and gary, i should just point out, still 95% of the vote, but a jump of about 200 votes for conor lamb, so it's now 50% to 49.4%. gary, do they have a sense of how long it's going to take