State Agriculture Commissioner Jamie Comer is asking for a re-canvass after he lost Tuesday's primary election to Louisville businessman Matt Bevin by only 83 votes. Al Cross, Director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues doesn't anticipate a re-canvass will change the outcome of the state GOP contest. Cross says there's little doubt about the vote count because it's almost entirely electronic. "In the old days it was much easier to transpose numbers, put them in different columns and so on, and lots of mistakes were uncovered," said Cross.
Cross says that's not likely to be the case today. He cites the 2010 central Kentucky congressional race in which a re-canvass changed Ben Chandler's margin of victory over Andy Barr from 648 to 647.
The political writer says Tuesday's turnout appears to be a key factor in Bevin's success. "The conventional wisdom was that because his voters were younger and appeared to be less interested in the race, that he wouldn't measure up to what he had scored in polls," said Cross. "But he did."
Cross expects a post primary bounce in the polls to show Bevin within the margin of error in the fall race against democrat Jack Conway. Still, he says the attorney general is the favorite. "Party identification in this state is slightly republican these days," Cross said. "But that doesn't mean that Bevin is the favorite. Conway is the favorite because people are still registered majority democratic, Conway's been in office for eight years, he's got a good record."
