In another interesting development in a General Election already flush with them, Gov. Pat McCrory’s chances at a second term rest in large part with provisional ballots that his fellow Republicans, had they gotten their way, would not have fully counted.

It’s McCrory’s good luck that the federal 4th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the 2013 Republican-crafted law that eliminated provisional ballots cast on Election Day in the wrong precincts from being counted. Other provisions of that law, including voter ID, were more famously killed by that court.

McCrory is going to need some more luck because the math does not work in his favor.

Roy Cooper, the state’s attorney general and a Democrat, has declared himself the winner of the governor’s race, but McCrory says not so fast, and isn’t willing to concede until tens of thousands of provisional ballots are counted. Local boards of election, including Robeson County’s, are tasked with having the provisional ballots that were cast legally counted and that information provided to the state Board of Elections by Friday.

It appears that about 2,000 provisionals were cast in Robeson, ranking the county sixth in the state.

Currently, Cooper leads McCrory by about 5,000 votes out of 4.7 million ballots that were cast in North Carolina almost evenly. Using history as a predictor, let’s assume there are 30,000 provisional ballots as well as about 20,000 absentee ballots not yet counted, but all eventually will be (some of the provisionals will surely be discarded for any of a number of reasons.) For McCrory to take the lead, he would need somewhere in excess of 27,500 of those 50,000 ballots, meaning he would have to win the provisional and absentee ballots at a rate of about 55 percent.

Given that 4.7 million ballots were separated by 5,000 votes, it is hard to envision the same margin in a sample of 50,000 votes. That bar gets even higher for McCrory since provisionals are disproportionately cast by minorities, who tend to vote Democratic. McCrory is likely to have a similar advantage among the absentee ballots, which are cast disproportionately by Republicans.

Remember as well that all of the local boards of elections have a 2-1 majority in favor of Republicans, and they will be making the call on what ballots they find legit, and which ones go into the trash bin. So all of this will be closely watched.

What is almost guaranteed is that when all the provisionals and absentee ballots are added, that the margin of victory, whichever way it falls, will not be substantial and that the loser will ask for a recount.

So it will be awhile before we know who the state certifies as the winner — and even then the governor’s race could be headed for the courts.