(If this diary is helpful, please rec it. I don’t ask when it’s an opinion piece, but it takes a LONG time to track down all these numbers, so if it can stay up for a day that’d be nice.)
Welcome to issue numero uno of a biweekly update on the California count. I know you LOVE Election Day...well, IT ISN’T OVER!!
In this series, I’ll be tracking outstanding ballot counts and the races that may be affected as numbers change. This first issue will have a bit more info about these ballots and where they come from, then in future updates I’ll move more immediately into the updated counts.
Why are there so many uncounted ballots? Fear not...it’s just because we have a very progressive voting system that is in the middle of significant reforms. For a more thorough explanation, I wrote one before Election Day.
So let’s hit it. We will be discussing:
1. How many ballots are uncounted statewide, and what they are.
2. The uncounted ballot stats from counties with important uncalled races.
3. Updated tallies of those races, which are starting to see post-election day counts trickle in.
Summary of uncounted ballots
Overall status: Even the count of uncounted ballots are NOT final. Any ballots post-marked by Election Day were accepted until Friday. In addition, any ballots still in the mail on Friday may have been directed to the nearest registrar and given a four day extension to get them to the appropriate county.
Overall, at least a third of the California election isn’t tabulated yet. Most counties will process these ballots, then run batches of them on Tuesday and Friday afternoons, updating their numbers at the end of those days.
Statewide Known Uncounted Ballots: 4,834,559!!!
Mail ballots: 3,659,991 (76%)
Provisional in-person ballots: 1,037,837 (21.5%)
Same day registrations: 55,251 (1%)
Problems: 81,504 (1.5%)
What are these ballots?
Mail: Any CA voter can sign up to vote by mail. The counties start counting these before Election Day, but had to stop the night before the election and hold any received ballots for later. The 3.6 million left to count represent about half of the mail vote statewide.
Provisional: These are ballots for individuals who showed up in person, and for some reason needed a provisional ballot. In CA, these are the exact same ballots as the “regular” ballots, and by law they will be counted. They just need to be cross-checked.
The most common reason to use a provisional ballot is that the voter is shown on the records to have already received a mail ballot, but didn’t return it and wants to vote in person. But a lot of them are also people who go to another polling location than their assigned one, or they moved, or whatever. These ballots tend to skew Democratic. Remember Hillary Clinton’s popular vote margin growing from a million to three million in the month after Election Day? The biggest contributor to that was CA provisional ballots being counted.
Same day: These are provisional ballots, but for voters who registered on Election Day. Welcome to democracy, guys! Their registrations will be processed, verified, and then the ballot will be counted. These will probably skew heavily Democratic.
Problems: Ballots that the optical scanners reject because they are bent, or the marks on them are flagged as unreadable. They’re set aside to be hand-counted, and to ensure that the selection in each race is recorded properly. The mass majority of these end up counted...but they take forever.
County-Specific Uncounted Ballots
The counties will update the Secretary of State intermittently. These totals include all known uncounted ballots as of Friday morning.
Los Angeles
Affected races: CA-25 (Hill), CA-39 (Cisneros)
Uncounted ballots: 984,000
Los Angeles counted about 1.9 million ballots on Election Day, so we see that the remaining lot to be counted is a HUGE portion of the vote. Expect this county to take almost the entire 30 days allowed by law to count these ballots. They will add counted ballots to totals on Tuesdays and Fridays. And expect the counts to be slow at first, and then have huge chunks reported as we near December.
Ventura
Affected races: CA-25 (Hill)
Uncounted ballots: 101,092
About a quarter of CA-25’s votes come from Ventura. This portion of the district skews GOP and produced a small (1k) margin for Knight. Hill could lose ground here, but possibly not, and either way the Los Angeles vote should bury any Ventura margins.
Orange
Affected races: CA-39 (Cisneros), CA-45 (Porter), CA-48 (Rouda), CA-49 (Levin)
Uncounted ballots: 419,956, updated 11/08
Hey, for once an election story in Orange County isn’t effing Florida, lol. These House races are CLOSE, and that’s a lot of ballots to count. This is about as many ballots at they had outstanding in 2016, and it took the whole month to get through them all. 160k of the ballots are provisional — if these break Dem as we expect the should, it illustrates why these races aren’t over!
San Bernardino
Affected Races: CA-39 (Cisneros)
Uncounted ballots: 203,563
A small portion of the 39th is here, which tends to skew republican. Cisneros will likely pick up ground in LA...he might lose a little here, but we will have to see.
Stanislaus & San Joaquin Counties
Affected Race: CA-10 (Harder)
Uncounted ballots: Stanislaus 80,360 + San Joaquin 91,770 = 172,130
These two counties will affect this one close House race, so I’m lumping them together. Every single ballot in Stanislaus has CA-10 on it...about 1/3 of the San Joaquin ballots probably include the district. See below...the current count has FLIPPED IN OUR FAVOR!
San Diego & Riverside
Affected Races: CA-49 (Levin), CA-50 (Campa-Najjar)???
Uncounted ballots: SD 465k + Riverside 250k = 715,000
I wasn’t rounding, both counties reported even numbers. Um...sure, guys. That’s some lazy registrar work, lol. The 50th district’s vote comes about 90/10 from San Diego/Riverside. I’ll do some back-of-the-napkin math on this district below...I’m not sure if it’s in play.
What’s the tally going to look like as we proceed??
I’ve watched many, many statewide and district races under this system (which is getting better and will provide faster counts in 2020, lol). Based on past experiences, here what to expect:
1. Expect large counties to take the entire 30 days allowed by law. And don’t expect the number of ballots added to tallies to be evenly divided throughout the month. In 2016, Los Angeles would report like 1k ballots per day for a while, and it looked like they’d never finish on time. Then in the final week they pushed 300k through.
2. Expect the counts to benefit Dems...but that will vary from race to race. The final statewide registration report shows CA as 43.5% Dem, 24% GOP, 27.5% No Party Preference (with NPP votes breaking 44/32 toward us). Votes added tend to help us, but this isn’t evenly distributed geographically. Expect us to run the table on urban vote counts...I’m not sure how eastern counties will play out.
3. Expect the Dem advantage to be stronger in the counts that come later in the month. The counties will first count mail ballots, then move on to provisional ballots. It’s impossible to guess what the partisan makeup of either group is, but provisionals have always proved more Dem than mail ballots. So if a Dem is gaining as we start the count, that will probably pick up steam as it proceeds.
4. How much will races swing? Hard to say...but in my experience I’ve watched margins frequently shift by eight points in the post-election counting.
State of the races
Dems lead: 25, 4, 10, 49
GOP leads: 39, 45, 50
(Democrat listed first in all races.)
CA-25 |
Hill |
Knight |
Margin |
6-Nov |
83662 |
79545 |
4117 |
9-Nov |
90298 |
84272 |
6026 |
Notes: Race remains considered a likely Dem pick up. Hill is looking really good — she may lose some ground in the Ventura counts (but maybe not), but L.A. is probably going to extend her lead.
CA-39 |
Cisneros(d) |
Kim |
Margin |
6-Nov |
73077 |
76956 |
-3879 |
9-Nov |
80539 |
83211 |
-2672 |
Notes: On Election Day, this district broke 53/47 GOP in Orange/San Bernardino, where 2/3 of the vote comes from. It broke 57/43 Dem in Los Angeles. If vote counts in all of the counties shift left, as they tend to do, then yeah this one is in reach. I expect at least 50-100k more votes in this race.
CA-45 |
Porter(d) |
Walters |
Margin |
6-Nov |
88765 |
94998 |
-6233 |
9-Nov |
101955 |
103975 |
-2020 |
|
Notes: Orange has started their counting in earnest. Expect to see the margins fluctuate like this for a while. I believe that the big shifts in CA45 and CA48 are probably Orange picking up the mail ballot counting and pushing a ton through. If mail ballots break this heavily for us consistently as the votes come in, that’s going to be great for us when we get to provisionals. I know it sounds like a lot, but there are probably 50-100k votes outstanding here too.
CA-48 |
Rouda(d) |
Rohrabacher |
Margin |
6-Nov |
91750 |
89068 |
2682 |
9-Nov |
105047 |
97719 |
7328 |
|
Notes: I hear the Kremlin is hiring...I think Rep. Russiabacker is destined for retirement.
CA-10 |
Harder(d) |
Denham |
Margin |
6-Nov |
55414 |
56701 |
-1287 |
9-Nov |
88961 |
85743 |
3218 |
|
Notes: FLIP FLIP FLIP. Why did this flip? Stanislaus came in with a ton of new votes right after Election Day. They probably had a bunch of shoes loaded for machine counts from the mail vote. And more good news: the new votes came in from Stanislaus, not San Joaquin. Stanilaus is the more conservative of the two.
Sorry guys...these counties are really confusing in how they’re reporting the remaining ballots after these new numbers. The vote totals are accurate and I verified via CNN and NY Times, but I can’t figure out how many ballots might still be outstanding. I read the info to mean that Stanislaus blew through their uncounted mail ballots, and in the next update they have <20k votes to count, but I can’t tell for sure. Whatever...we are ahead!
CA-50 |
Campa-Najjar (d) |
Hunter |
Margin |
6-Nov |
71834 |
84777 |
-12943 |
9-Nov |
77334 |
89829 |
-12495 |
Notes: Is this race still in play? I have no idea. It seems possible that there are 100K+ more votes in this district. But it’s hard to say — it’s never been competitive before. I’m going to watch this one. Campa-Najjar is not conceding, and that makes sense to me. But that’s a heck of a gap to close in an R+11 district. I’m a really fair guy — if I bake Hunter congratulation cookies if he wins, what flavor do you all think is best for trading in prison?
CA-49 |
Levin (d) |
Harkey |
|
6-Nov |
104446 |
87588 |
16858 |
9-Nov |
106052 |
89458 |
16594 |
Notes: Several outlets have called this for us, some haven’t. I’ll leave it in the report until we get another 40-50k ballots counted, just in case. The margin shrinking isn’t a concern...it was from some really conservative areas of southern Orange.
Other Races
I will monitor the other called races to see if anything seems like it may shift. CA-21 (Cox) is probably the most likely...the race is a 5k deficit. I don’t think that the uncounted ballots in these counties will shift it. But if this or any of the other competitive districts become exciting, I’ll add them.
Could the Senate race flip from Feinstein to De Leon? A 700k deficit? No, I don’t think so. I’m going to guess her lead expands and she has more than a 1.25 million vote margin in the end.
The insurance commissioner and superintendent of public instruction races are razor-thin. But I don’t think they warrant constant updates, lol.
The uncounted ballots cooooould in theory flip some of the ballot measures. I think Prop 3 is the most likely (water infrastructure). But honestly...these measures are too boring for me to track all of the counties, lol.