Cecilia Tkaczyk will win! George Amedore will win! Confidence is high!

That’s the message Republicans and Democrats in the state Senate brought this morning to Fred Dicker’s Talk-1300 show, with each side claiming they have some sort of edge.

The battle for the 46th Senate District will conclude with the counting of absentee ballots in heavily Democratic Ulster County, a process that is already underway this morning.

Sen. Mike Gianaris of Queens told Dicker that even though Tkaczyk, the Democratic candidate, has a 920-vote deficit to make up, there are roughly 400 votes that are being challenged.

For a look at the absentee ballot from Ulster County broken down by party enrollment, check this post from Friday.

“This is going to be decided in a court room at the end of the day,” Gianaris said in the interview.

Libous, of course, disagreed, saying he expected that by late tonight Amedore would emerge as the clear statistical winner.

“We’re very confident, confident that at the end of the day Amedore is going to get elected,” said the Binghamton Republican.

In the other unresolved Senate race, Sen. Stephen Saland, R-Poughkeepsie, trails Democrat Terry Gipson by 1,700 votes, a gap that he appears unlikely to make up.

“Right now the focus is on Ulster,” Libous said in response to question about Saland’s chances.

Both Libous and Gianaris are the respective heads of their conference’s fundraising efforts.

There’s a lot riding on the absentee and paper ballot count in a district that stretches from the Mohawk Valley to the Hudson Valley and was created during the redistricting process by the GOP.

Democrats right now have a 32-member numerical majority, though Brooklyn Sen.-elect Simcha Felder has pledged to sit with the Republican conference.

Should Tkaczyk win, however, the Independent Democratic Conference, a four-member breakaway conference of Sens. Jeff Klein, Diane Savino, David Carlucci and David Valesky, will come in to play as power brokers.

Klein, in an op/ed in The Journal News and subsequent radio interview with ex-Gov. David Paterson on Wednesday, insisted that not only would the IDC remain a permanent third conference, but would likely form a working coalition with either conference.

In the Dicker interview this morning, Gianaris noted that 58 percent of votes went to Democratic candidates and that voters indicated they preferred policy goals such as raising the state’s minimum wage, campaign finance reform and womens health issues.

“There’s a host of issues that people want accomplished that only a Democratic majority can give them,” Gianaris said.

As to what Klein and company might do, Gianaris said he expects that decision to not come until after the two races are resolved.

“As far as I know he’s always been a Democrat and true to capital D Democratic values,” Gianaris said of Klein.

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