(The Center Square) – As President-elect Donald Trump received a record-number of voters in North Carolina, Republicans also got substantial judicial wins.
Winning three more seats on the state’s Court of Appeals, Republicans are now in 12 of the court’s 15 seats.
Yet, while Republican Jefferson Griffin leads in the lone state Supreme Court race, it is likely headed to a recount. Incumbent Democrat Allison Riggs is within striking distance.
Riggs posted a statement on social media on Wednesday saying, “My race is too close to call. Our team is closely monitoring the count of remaining absentee ballots and provisional ballots, and we will have a clearer idea of our next steps within the next 24-36 hours.”
There has been no official update by either candidate since that post.
Riggs and Griffin are separated by less than 10,000 votes of each other. Griffin leads with 2,751, 358 votes, while Riggs has 2,743,223.
In North Carolina, recounts for statewide races are allowed if the difference between the candidates is either less than 10,000 votes or 0.5% of votes cast, whichever is less.
Even if a recount is officially declared, experts tell The Center Square that is likely to make little difference.
“As far as a recount in the state Supreme Court race, we will probably do it, and it probably won’t make a difference,” said Dr. Andy Jackson, director at the Civitas Center for Public Integrity at the John Locke Foundation.
A report from FairVote, a nonpartisan voting advocacy group, concurs with Jackson’s conclusion.
“Margins must be exceptionally close for a change in outcome to be plausible – even closer than the margin of 0.17% currently separating Democratic Justice Allison Riggs and Republican Jefferson Griffin,” said Yates Wilburn, FairVote’s state communications associate. “Recounts tend to lead to small vote gains for both sides, and typically widen the gap between the top two candidates instead of decreasing it.”
Even with other votes trickling in, Jackson doesn’t believe they’ll make much of a difference, either in the Supreme Court race, or in any other races.
“We’ve got provisional ballots. We’ve got ballots from some of the people in the western counties who were displaced by the hurricane,” Jackson said. “And we’ve got some military and overseas ballots still coming in. That’s not going to be a lot. They tend to evenly split, so I don’t expect too many races, if any, to be changed by those ballots.”
According to a report from the North Carolina State Board of Elections, 64,000 provisional ballots were cast across the state in early and Election Day voting. Nearly 5.7 million North Carolinians cast ballots in this election, which is a 73% turnout of the state’s 7.8 million registered voters.
