Rural district in New York votes Tue. for Congress

UPDATE, April 1: The race is too close to call, reports the Albany Times-Union.

There's a strong rural angle to Tuesday's special election in New York's 20th Congressional District, to fill the seat vacated by Democrat Kristen Gillibrand when Gov. David Paterson appointed her to the Senate. "The contest has undergone shifts in public opinion usually reserved for much longer campaigns, drawn national attention as an early test of Barack Obama’s economic stimulus program, involved prominent national political figures, and tested the conventional wisdom about the political makeup of the sprawling, ten-county congressional district," writes Don Moore of ccScoop, a news site for Columbia County. (NationalAtlas.gov map)

Republican Jim Tedisco, the state House minority leader, has been considered the favorite but "can’t quite seem to close the deal," Sean Reagan writes for The Back Forty, the blog of RuralVotes, a Democratic group. "Democrats have Tedisco on the defensive for not taking a stance on the stimulus bill in a district where President Obama and Gillibrand are very popular," writes Stu Rothenberg of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report. The Democrat is Scott Murphy of Glens Falls, manager of a small business investment firm. Libertarian is Eric Sundwall, chairman of his state party.

"The conventional wisdom about the 20th CD is that it is a majority Republican district," because Republicans outnumber Democrats more than 3 to 2, Moore writes. But the actual voter registration figures are "Republicans 41 percent, Democrats 26 percent, Independents 5 percent, Conservatives 2 percent, other minor parties and unaffiliated voters 26 percent." And Obama carried the district 53-47 in November. (Read more)

UPDATE, March 29: "The national Republican and Democratic parties have made it nothing less than a referendum on Obama's first two months in office, his economic agenda and his appeal," reports Keith Richburg of The Washington Post. "An opinion poll by Siena College's independent Siena Research Institute and the parties' internal polls show the contest a virtual toss-up. ... With turnout typically low for a special election, the outcome is likely to be determined by who can best get their supporters to the polls." (Read more)