The polls have been closed for nearly a week, but the race for North Carolina's 8th Congressional District is not over quite yet.
Preliminary results, including votes cast on Election Day and absentee ballots, gave four-term Republican incumbent Robin Hayes a 465-vote lead, out of 120,000 cast, over Democratic challenger Larry Kissell, The Associated Press reported Thursday.
The final results now hinge on approximately 1,500 provisional ballots that will be counted Friday.
"We're very confident," said Steve Hudson, spokesperson for the Kissell campaign. "We're learning to be patient right now."
If voters' names are not listed on the official voter registration rolls at a polling location but those voters say they are registered, they can cast a provisional ballot, said Gary Bartlett, executive director of the State Board of Elections. Bartlett added that this year, many voters who registered with the Department of Motor Vehicles did not appear on the rolls because of a delay with the DMV.
Election officials from each of the district's 10 counties will meet Friday to determine which provisional ballots will be counted, based on whether the individual should have been registered on Election Day, Bartlett said. Ballots deemed valid are then fed into machines to tally the remaining votes.
After the final tallies for each county are certified Friday, the losing candidate may request a recount within one business day, provided the margin of victory is less than 1 percent, the AP reported.
If all 1,492 provisional ballots are counted, Kissell would have to capture 66 percent, or 979, of those votes to overcome his current deficit, the AP reported.
The Hayes campaign could not be reached for comment.
"Statistically, I think that Larry Kissell probably has a better chance of getting struck by lightning than of getting the votes he needs to beat Congressman Hayes," a Hayes campaign spokesperson told the AP Thursday.
The Kissell campaign said they remain optimistic, explaining that their success so far has defied expectations.
"Lightning has been striking this campaign from day one. Only a scant few friends and family believed in my campaign during the early days of the primary," Kissell said in a statement. "In fact, a lot of political people in Washington joked that I would come in fourth place in a three-way primary.... Right now, this election is too close to call."
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