The winner? Not so fast.

So the first special election of the new year has come and gone and like so many elections nowadays, it’s too close to call. With all the regular votes counted across 10 upstate New York counties Democrat Scott Murphy leads Republican Jim Tedisco by 59 votes out of the almost 145 thousand cast. We should have a winner, with any luck, in a few weeks…or months.

In the meantime there are a few things we now know that we could only guess at before the voters spoke:

• In claiming that this would be a referendum on Obama and the Democrats, national Republicans failed to heed the warnings of local party members who argued this contest would be very close despite it being the most Republican House district in the state.
• As Get Real pointed out over the weekend, the 20th is not so much a Republican district any more as it is an increasingly independent one and that appeared to favor the non-politician — Murphy. Look where he won — in precisely the places we noted had influxes of younger, high-tech workers (Warren and Rensselaer Counties) and relocated New York City refugees (Dutchess and Columbia).
• Voters are still engaged. Turnout appears to be around 36% which is pretty amazing for a special election called just months after the longest Presidential campaign in history. By comparison 54% of registered voters turned out for the regular election in 2006 in which Kirsten Gillibrand took the seat for Democrats. Turnout in the teens is not unexpected in most special elections.
• Democrats can still win in conservative districts because they have not been blamed by a majority of voters for the economic mess and the attempts to fix it. In fact polls in the 20th showed very broad support for the stimulus package. The flip side of this is that Republicans have done themselves no favors by being the party of “no.” Recognizing this Tedisco refused to take a position on the stimulus until last week. The party is doing some of it’s members no favors.
• The Obama campaign machine continues to be a formidable beast. Voters in the 20th who’d linked to the Obama campaign through email or text messages last year got at least two last minute emails “from” Obama urging them to go to the polls.

While these facts won’t stop both sides from spinning the fact that their won’t be an official winner for awhile is likely to mute the DC brigades and force them to look for other talismans as to what voters are thinking.