puzzle_me

You're forgetting that each vote that changes from Dayton to Emmer decreases the count by two, not by one. If Dayton started with 100 and Emmer started with one, that's a difference of 99 votes. But if one of those switches, Dayton has 99 and Emmer has 2, a difference of 97. So Emmer only needs to get 4000 votes changed, not 9000. Granted, that's still a ton of votes, but it's closer than it actually appears.