Tuesday’s special election for the 20th Congressional District was too close to call.

It looks like the six-week campaign may not be decided for several more weeks. The State of New York has decided to count overseas absentee ballots until April 13, a deadline that was initially April 7^th, after the U.S. Department of Justice sued the state for not giving overseas absentee voters enough time to return ballots.

5,900 absentee ballots had been received as of Monday out of the original 10,055. This gives the Republican candidate Tedisco 4, 145 potential ballots to make up the current razor thin 65 vote deficit held by the Democrat Scott Murphy. The last official total of the night had Scott Murphy with 77,344 votes and Republican James Tedisco with 77,279.

“I understand that the absentees are two to one (in favor of Tedisco),” Kathleen Marchione Tedisco’s chairman chimed in, “he has an advantage with the military.”

Local election boards in New York’s 20^th Congressional district reported a lighter turnout than was expected, although when compared to the turnout to an average special election the numbers were well above average.

While Scott Murphy would have liked to have been able to declare victory tonight, he has to be thrilled to hold any lead over Tedisco considering the way the race started just six short weeks ago. When the campaign for this special election began in February, Tedisco led a then-unknown Murphy by 20 points in private polling. Murphy then saw a steady climb in his poll numbers with the support of Democratic leaders in the White House.

Much of the reason for the national attention received by this race was because Democrats and Republicans decided to make President Barack Obama’s recovery bill a centerpiece of the campaign. The recovery bill which passed in February, was supported by Murphy and condemned by Tedisco with Tedisco saying he would have voted against the bill, due to what he called “philosophical spending.” Murphy has said that he would have voted for the bill, and has staked his election on closely aligning with Obama and now Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. Obama won the district in November and Gillibrand is the reason for the special election after her appointment to Hillary Clinton’s old Senate seat left the district’s House seat vacant.

This race was on track to being the second-most expensive congressional special election of all time with both sides spending a grand total close of approximately $5 million.