The Department of Elections processed another 35,859 ballots today, pushing the turnout to 80.4 percent — with tens of thousands yet to be counted. And, in the only outstanding candidate race, District 1, the impact was felt.
Largely on the strength of first-place votes, Connie Chan now outpaces Marjan Philhour by 107 votes. That’s a 194-vote turnaround from yesterday, when Philhour swelled her slim margin to 87 votes.
While Chan gained 324 first-place votes on Philhour in the latest counting, Philhour is still receiving the majority of the No. 2 votes transferring from third-place finisher David Lee.
Conventional wisdom states that late-arriving vote-by-mail ballots lean liberal. And while this would bode well for Chan, that wasn’t the case yesterday, when Philhour padded her tenuous lead by more than 60 votes. And it doesn’t seem to have been the case today, when the “no” tally on Proposition G — which would allow youth voting in local elections — expanded by some 800 votes (it now trails by 6,867).
It’s unclear if prior election patterns are underway, or if the vote totals for District 1 or Prop. G will simply come in unpredictably. In any event, it remains too close to call either race, though the tight candidate race is far more contested.
According to the Department of Elections, there are 26,000 more votes to count, which consists of approximately 18,000 vote-by-mail ballots and approximately 6,400 provisional and 1,400 conditional voter registration ballots. It is unclear how many ballots remain in District 1, but today’s results include votes from the District 1 provisional ballots. Provisional ballots almost always lean heavily progressive — which could explain today’s results and may mean future batches do not quite skew so much toward Chan.
The count will be updated at 4 p.m. on both Saturday and Sunday. In such a tight race, every last ballot may be a factor.
Great update, Joe. Today’s batch was progressive- John Avalos and Vilaska Nguyen received the most #1 votes in their races. And John Arntz said yesterday that the November 5th batch included mail ballots that had been received before election day. So it looks like the “later absentees break progressive” narrative is supported by today’s count (Prop G gap notwithstanding).
In every report (including Election Day midnight), Chan has received more #1s than Philhour. The David Lee transfer rate has remained the same between yesterday (early absentee) and today (late absentee+provisionals). The questions are: how many votes are left in D1 and where are they coming in from? Current turnout looks to be around 84% in D1, so maybe there are as many as 1500 votes left- and 10% of those will be blank for D1, if trends hold. The catbird seat remains Chan’s.
I heard from a D1 campaign there are 1200-1800 outstanding ballots in D1 to be canvassed.