It was almost an hour after the polls closed in Bloomington, and Roni Embry was still making calls.
She sat in the Monroe County Democrats Office, dialing numbers from a list of names up in Lake County, near Chicago. A live feed of CNN projected on the wall behind her.
"They're an hour behind, so they still have 15 minutes to vote," she said, putting her cell phone down. "I've been calling for almost 8 hours."
"Till the bitter end," another volunteer said before picking up his phone again.
Upstairs, a dozen interns read numbers from sheets and talked on phones during the minutes before the voting ended and the waiting for results began. Others set up the turkey and butternut squash soup downstairs. They brought their dogs. They talked about work that day.
Bill Bailey's campaign finance manager, Elizabeth Schlemner, spoke on the phone in the office's foyer. Bailey was in Seymour, Ind., at his campaign headquarters, waiting to hear results from the election. The voter turnout this year was dismal, with only 25,657 of the more than 90,000 registered voters in Monroe County voting.
As the initial numbers from early voting in Monroe County arrived, the the crowd seemed optimistic. Of the votes counted, 1,242 were Bailey, and the numbers for the Republican opponent, Rep. Todd Young, came in at 660.
"We've done as much as we can in this campaign," Bailey said. "We'll know soon enough."
This story will be updated.
