Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin defeated Democratic challenger Nancy Goroff in the state’s 1st Congressional District after his opponent conceded Thursday following weeks of counting thousands of absentee ballots.
Zeldin led Goroff by 64,620 votes out of over 285,000 votes cast during early voting and on Election Day, but 89,803 mail-in votes had yet to be tabulated.
“Our campaign has always been rooted in science. Science follows the evidence and faces the facts, even when it’s not what we want to hear. It has been such a privilege to run this race, but after seeing the results of the absentee vote counts, we still came up short,” Goroff said in a statement Thursday.
Goroff shaved off around 25,000 votes from Zeldin’s initial lead on election night, leaving the New York Republican on Monday with a 40,000-vote lead over her. One Suffolk County official stated on Monday it was mathematically “certain” that Zeldin would be reelected to his eastern Long Island district seat.
“While it was evident to most people a few weeks ago, after counting many absentee ballots, today it became mathematically certain @leezeldin won re-election to Congress. Suffolk BOE expects to certify the race very soon– showing Congressman Zeldin won by 40k+ votes,” Suffolk County Board of Elections Commissioner Nick LaLota, a Republican who is part of the bipartisan board, tweeted Monday.
Goroff, however, did not concede the race and wanted all the absentee ballots to be counted. Zeldin, who declared victory on election night, routinely tweeted the enormous vote margin he led by and asked why his race was not called by the Associated Press.
Prior to the vote tally on Monday, Zeldin tweeted Saturday: “The NY-1 race still isn’t called & Nancy Goroff still hasn’t conceded. We are up by ~60k votes w/ ~60k ballots to be counted. While every legal ballot will count regardless, @AP wont call this race despite our massive lead & Goroff wont concede despite her insurmountable deficit.”
“Goroff would need to obtain more than 100% of the remaining absentee ballots to win (roughly 50,000). Zeldin was leading Goroff by 57,918 votes. There were 60,734. At that time she would have needed 98% of those absentees,” a spokesman for the Zeldin campaign told the Washington Examiner.
The New York State Board of Elections will meet on Monday to certify the results of all the races.
