Welcome back to our ongoing California ballot count update. The counties have processed a TON of ballots this week, as they blow through the mass majority of their mail ballots. They will move into the provisional ballot counts...and things will slow down.
Election Day feels as though it’s winding down, as race-by-race the outcomes feel certain, and tensions ease. But let’s still look at where we stand!
Bottom Lines (at the top!)
House
We are watching the seven “Clinton districts,” as well as CA50.
Called by AP for Dems: CA-48 Rouda (D), CA-49 Levin (D), CA-25 Hill (D), CA-10 Harder (D), CA-45 Porter (D)
Uncalled, Dem leads: CA-39 Cisneros (D)
GOP lead: CA-21 TJ Cox (D), CA-50 Campa-Najjar (D)
Outlook: This week saw a 5th race called for us (CA45). CA39 moved into a strong Dem lead, making it a likely pickup. CA50 has fallen into impossible territory, I’m sorry to say. The big one to watch is CA21. I have updated counts below, but my analysis from my emergency diary mostly stands — this one is close, and we will be watching it down to the last vote!
Statewide Races
Insurance Commissioner: Last week Dem Ricardo Lara overtook NPP (GOP) candidate Steve Poizner, and Lara’s lead continues to climb.
Vote count is currently Lara (D) at 5.16million / 52% to Poizner (NPP) at 4.77 million / 48%. So the margin has gone from about 250k to 390k...expect Lara to continue pulling ahead.
Superintendent of Public Instruction: Tony Thurmond, 4,589,134 to Marshall Tuck 4,430.035, a lead of 159,099.
Thurmond has almost doubled his lead from Tuesday, when he was up 67,161. As expected, he’s continued to expand his margin. It’s still a close race, but given how Thurmond has performed in mail ballots I expect him to pull way ahead as provisionals are counted.
And don’t be surprised if Thurmond takes off at some point — eventually provisional ballots from dense urban centers will be all that is left, and when those are counted he will probably see a massive boost.
State of the House races
Top race to watch — CA-21 — THIS RACE IS NOW A TOSSUP!
Notes: For a nerd odyssey into deep analysis of this race, check my emergency diary on this district from Thursday. I stand by that analysis, but a few updates have come in. And Nate Silver downgraded it for the GOP from “Lean R” to “Tossup”. This one is in play!
As a brief reminder, here is what’s going on. Conservative voters in Kings/Tulare County are adding to the GOP margins. Blue voters in Kern County are helping Cox (D) close that gap. And Fresno remains a wildcard, with their post-election day count leaning increasingly blue. It’s a race to the end of the count amongst these areas.
Got it? So here’s where we stand:
CA-21 |
Cox (D) |
Valadao |
Margin |
|
6-Nov |
33844 |
39475 |
-5631 |
Election Day Count |
13-Nov |
41739 |
44138 |
-2399 |
Kern counts half their ballots |
14-Nov |
46279 |
48260 |
-1981 |
Fresno/Kings count half |
16-Nov |
48787 |
50873 |
-2,086 |
Another Fresno/Kings dump
|
As you see, Cox’s margin got worse today. HOWEVER, that’s not as bad at it might seem.
The conservative stronghold in Kings/Tulare just blew through the majority of their ballots. They added over 3k votes to this race, which gave Valadao an approx. 350 vote boost. Fresno stepped in with 1,371 new votes for the race and erased 259 of the gain.
Kings/Tulare are helping Valadao shore up, but they are running out of ballots. We have a small number of mail ballots outstanding in all four counties, and then they will move on to the provisional ballots.
I am estimating about 15k votes left in this race, but it’s hard to know for sure. The mass majority of votes left in this race will come from provisional ballots — as a reminder these skew young, hispanic, and blue. Fresno has 24,000 provisionals, Kern has 16,300. Kings has about 1,500 votes left in total. Note that NOT ALL of those outstanding ballots have this race on them. But that is the total population of ballots from which another 15k of votes will come from, so you can see that the mass majority are coming from areas favorable to us.
So sheesh...what’s the outlook???
If Kings/Tulares adds 1,500 ballots and they break 63% GOP (matching the results so far)...that leaves 13,500 ballots in the other counties, and if they break 60% Dem (a little worse than so far)...the race would be…
D +224 votes??? Holy crap this is going to be close!!
Seriously, though, that’s a legitimate estimate based on my approaching the numbers several ways — turnout, past results, vote shares on a per-county basis in ballots counted so far. But that analysis requires some estimations, and if any of my assumptions are off by a hair, that will tip the race. I love elections! This is insane!
Okay, on to the other races…
Called for Dems (25, 48, 49, 45, 10)
Notes: Welcome to the confirmed win column, CA-10 and CA-45! It’s been a long time coming, ha. I do not foresee any surprises in these races at all (except in the sense that the final tallies might reflect an absolute GOP thumping).
There’s not much to say, but I will include the charts for those who are interested in seeing how the counts proceed as mail ballots are processed. This is about exactly what I expected to happen when we were going to bed on election night (and my series of diaries prove it, ha).
CA-25 |
Hill (D) |
Knight |
Margin |
6-Nov |
83662 |
79545 |
4117 |
8-Nov |
90298 |
84272 |
6026 |
13-Nov |
101111 |
91105 |
10006 |
16-Nov |
111217 |
97759 |
13,458 |
CA-48 |
Rouda (D) |
Rohrabacher |
Margin |
6-Nov |
91750 |
89068 |
2682 |
8-Nov |
105047 |
97719 |
7328 |
13-Nov |
118210 |
107612 |
10598 |
16-Nov |
140323 |
123401 |
16,922 |
(Sheesh, and Orange has thousands of votes to add to this race still. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that maybe...it’s quite possible...that voters are offering a very slightly negative opinion on Rohrabacher. Lol)
CA-49 |
Levin (D) |
Harkey |
Margin |
6-Nov |
104446 |
87588 |
16858 |
9-Nov |
106052 |
89458 |
16594 |
13-Nov |
121311 |
99883 |
21428 |
16-Nov |
137341 |
110679 |
26,662 |
CA-45 |
Porter (D) |
Walters |
Margin |
6-Nov |
88765 |
94998 |
-6233 |
8-Nov |
101955 |
103975 |
-2020 |
13-Nov |
116732 |
116471 |
261 |
16-Nov |
143144 |
135120 |
8,024 |
(This race is a really good illustration in the vast difference in the sample of the 60% of votes counted on election night, and the 40% of votes counted later. And this swing is mostly mail ballots...that really backs up the theory that Dems hold their votes until late.)
CA-10 |
Harder (D) |
Denham |
Margin |
6-Nov |
55414 |
56701 |
-1287 |
8-Nov |
88961 |
85743 |
3218 |
13-Nov |
91066 |
87618 |
3448 |
16-Nov |
100717 |
95622 |
5,095 |
Not Called, Dems Lead — CA-39
Notes: Welcome to the lead, Gil Cisneros! All three counties just worked those mail ballots this week, and all three got their updates in on time. (Los Angeles, Orange and San Bernardino). The trend is pretty distinct. We are running out of mail ballots, and starting to look at registrars counting provisionals, where Cisneros should perform very well.
Cisneros is looking very, very strong. The one minor caveat is that Young Kim is an Asian-American woman, and the Los Angeles portion of the district is very Asian...like half the votes. If I were writing about a Democrat in Kim’s position and I wanted to outline a Hail Mary longshot to lessen the blow, I’d say “well, what if she has deep roots in that community and just really worked the GOTV efforts.” That is her last hope, I think, but I’m not seeing evidence that this is likely. But the votes are there to throw this in either direction if the winds change.
CA-39 |
Cisneros (D) |
Kim |
Margin |
6-Nov |
73077 |
76956 |
-3879 |
8-Nov |
80539 |
83211 |
-2672 |
13-Nov |
92741 |
93452 |
-711 |
16-Nov |
110794 |
107774 |
3,020 |
Called for GOP — CA-50
Notes: Sorry to say, but I do not see any evidence in the counting that this race might turn around. All portions of the district lean GOP, and there’s just not enough outstanding votes or any particular set of votes that I see overcoming the gap.
Which is sad. But perhaps Campa-Najjar will be in a position to fight off a Republican if/when Hunter goes to prison. (Funny how that is a completely non-hyperbolic and honest remark.)
CA-50 |
Campa-Najjar (D) |
Hunter |
Margin |
6-Nov |
71834 |
84777 |
-12943 |
8-Nov |
77334 |
89829 |
-12495 |
13-Nov |
89333 |
100892 |
-11559 |
16-Nov |
100556 |
111403 |
-10,847 |
How’d the GOP disruptions turn out?
In my last report, the GOP was starting some nonsense about voter fraud, and trying to slow the counting down with obnoxious behavior. You might be wondering how that went.
I’ve looked around, and it seems like things have calmed down. I can’t find any reports of significant opposition to the counting process, and the candidates themselves seem to have...ahem...shut up. What’s that over there on that wall? Is it writing?? (Oh...no...it’s a graffiti depiction of Trump’s junk. Barf. Someone paint over that.)
I’m sure it was hard being an Orange County Republican watching your formerly safe seat fall to Democrats. Good news guys — there are enough of you to form on ongoing support group! If you make one, I’ll bring cupcakes.
Remaining Votes to Count
Statewide, there are about 2.07 million votes outstanding. The counties are quickly wrapping up their mail ballot counts, and will be moving on to count the (ugh) one million provisional ballots. I say ugh because they’re hard to count and take forever...not because they will turn against us. They’re usually pretty blue.
Given that most of the important races are really moving into safe territory, I don’t see any reason to break down the uncounted ballots on the county level, but the Sec of State will continue to publish updates here.
See you next week!
My next planned update will be Wednesday morning, but if something big breaks in CA-21 I will do one before then. Thanks for reading. I’ll leave you with a Tweet a friend sent me: