by David Chapman
Staff Writer
The winner of the heated race between Alex Sink and Rick Scott to become Florida’s next governor couldn’t be determined election night. Votes are still being counted in a race that’s too close to call.
Figures from the Florida Division of Elections website showed Scott with 2,579,455 votes (48.98) to Sink’s 2,507,448 (47.61 percent), for just more than a 72,000-vote lead.
Votes in Palm Beach County still need to be counted and 38,000 ballots in Hillsborough County needed to be rerun because of earlier reading problems, according to The News Service of Florida. Both areas lean Democrat.
The elections website shows precincts incomplete in Broward, Lee and Palm Beach counties and absentee ballots incomplete in Broward, Duval, Hillsborough, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties.
“This is turning out, as we suspected, to be a nail-biter, a classic Florida election,” said Sink, according to the News Service.
Just after 2 a.m., Scott addressed his supporters in Fort Lauderdale with confidence in the outcome.
“I am absolutely confident I will be the next great governor of the state of Florida,” he said.
If Sink were to close the vote gap to around 27,000, one half of one percent of all votes counted, it would trigger the state’s automatic recount statute and further delay the results.
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