De Blasio Adds To Vote Total - Now At 40.3%

99% of the vote counted, De Blasio has 260,384 votes (good for 40.3%) while Bill Thompson has 169,423 votes (good for 26.2%).

De Blasio had 90,518 more votes than Thompson as of 7:15 AM.

He now has 90,961 more votes than Thompson as of 5:00 PM.

Where are these extra votes coming from?

It seems some of the minor candidates garnered higher vote totals than expected last night and some of those discrepancies are getting fixed.

Capital Tonight explains how this process is working:

Randy Credico, the New York City comic, activist and official comedian of Fred Dicker’s Talk-1300 radio show, received 1,001 votes in a single Election District in the Bronx.

That is a staggering number and it’s likely inaccurate, given the enrollment statistics of that district.
As The Atlantic Wire pointed out, Credico received the abnormally high vote tally in a small corner of the Bronx near the Bronx River Parkway, ED 80-079.

Citywide, Credico received 2 percent of the vote.

In that one Bronx district, the comedian tallied 90.8 percent of the vote, with Public Advocate Bill de Blasio receiving a mere 36 votes.

That’s really good for Credico. In fact, it’s probably too good.

Digging into the numbers a bit, the Board of Elections shows the total number of enrolled Democrats is 726 total. Sure, that’s as of April 2013, but the odds that so many more voters would actually register and then all cast their votes for Credico would be quite a feet of voter registration and GOTV.

And it’s the same story for Neil Vincent Grimaldi in Manhattan ED 72-051, where the little-known candidate netted 1,000 votes even. The state BOE shows only 717 registered Democrats in that district. Again, this could all be an amazing, targeted GOTV effort on the behalf of Credico and Grimaldi.

Or, it could be a series of elections foul ups that if fixed could help de Blasio’s overall total creep up above the needed 40 percent mark and avoid a runoff against second place finisher Bill Thompson.

Some of you out there are justifiably anxious that they'll bring in James Baker for the vote recount and suddenly Pat Buchanan will be winning precincts up in Riverdale.

I must admit, I share that concern.

And yet, so far the additional vote counts are helping de Blasio increase his lead.

It is quite possible that even before they conduct a recount, de Blasio could be at 40.5% or more by the time all the paper ballots and absentees get tallied.

Tisch made some sounds today like she's ready to pull the plug on Thompson if the vote count stays the way it is now.

Thompson says he's in all the way until the end (ah, if only he had shown such resolve in 2009!).

Last night, Weingarten and Mulgrew said essentially the same - they want to see all the votes counted before any decisions are made.

But I am going to make a prediction.

If the vote count for de Blasio is at 40.5% or higher on Monday, pressure will start to mount for Thompson to drop out.

Mulgrew said last night that he envisions all of labor coming together to back the Dem nominee.

On Monday, if de Blasio has 40.5% or higher I'm going to say that Weingarten and Mulgrew decide it's not worth it to go to the mattresses with Thompson and pull the plug on their support too.

UPDATE: In the nine minutes it took to write this post, de Blasio picked up another 50 votes.  He now leads Thompson by 91,011 votes.

As I wrote above, so far the additional vote counts are helping de Blasio.