With the city recovering from the Tuesday primary and most incumbents breathing a sigh of relief, the At-Large contest between Sekou Biddle and Councilmember Vincent Orange remains unsettled. Orange only emerged from Tuesday’s contest with a 543-vote margin of victory, and that’s without absentee, provisional, special, or curbside ballots having been counted.

According to the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics, 3,348 absentee ballots were sent out to Democrats, and 1,554 were returned by Tuesday. (According to the board, absentee ballots had to be postmarked by Tuesday and need to be received by April 13 to be counted.) The Post’s Mike DeBonis did some math, and figured out that Biddle could well pick up some 420 votes if all absentee ballots are returned and the Tuesday’s voting patterns hold:

By taking the vote percentages Biddle and Orange received in each precinct, then applying those to the number of Democratic absentee ballots sent to and received from each precinct, one can estimate what the absentee vote margin might be.

By my calculations — accounting for the rejected ballots and applying the same 3.02 percent blank-ballot rate seen in the Election Day results — Biddle can expect to close the margin with absentee votes, but not completely.

With the 1,554 votes already accepted by the board, Biddle can expect to improve his margin by about 84 votes. Should all 3,201 potential absentee votes be accepted, he can expect to pick up as many as 420 votes, given the geography of the ballots.

Of course, not every absentee ballot will be returned, and some that are might come in after April 13. (On WPFW today, board spokeswoman Alysoun McLaughlin said that over 1,800 Democratic absentee ballots had been received by today.)

Then there are the provisional ballots. The board sent us the ward-based tally yesterday—3,867 provisional votes were cast on Tuesday, plus 392 during early voting. Those provisional ballots are spread pretty evenly across the city, with only Ward 3 coming in on the low end (313) while ward 6 and 7 had the highest numbers (543 and 502, respectively).

On Tuesday night, Biddle said that he had no idea how things might play out once all the ballots are counted. “I really have no idea. I know we talked to people about early voting and absentee. I know a lot of people who voted absentee but I have no count on what number of people absentee balloted, what way that’s going to break in the election. It’s just more counting.”

If the margin between Orange and Biddle falls under the one percent mark, an automatic recount will be triggered.