Welcome back, diehard election enthusiasts. I assume you’re a diehard enthusiast if you are reading this ballot count update, posted on the eve of the one-month anniversary of the 2018 Midterms, ha.
California is aaaaaaaalmost, but not quite done counting our votes. I considered waiting until we had final tallies, but there’s some news so let’s do an update, then next time I think we will have final figures in all races.
In this update:
- Coming soon preview (how I plan to wrap this series).
- House races look done — we won all seven Clinton districts!
- Update on unprocessed ballots.
- Updated district tallies over time for the called House races. (No news here, but charts for those interested in how the counts proceeded in individual races.)
Coming Soon: the end of this series (we hope, ha).
Thanks to everyone who followed this series. It was a fun cycle. It was exciting. It was scary at times. But we won, and a new day dawns.
I was thinking about how to wrap up this series on the election here in the Golden State. I think that I will look to break up some of the closing analysis and commentary into a couple of segments so that we can have a couple of conversations. My thoughts on the final issue structure...let me know if anything else pops to mind:
- Issue #9, A final count in the races with statewide totals and some numeric analysis
- Issue #10, CA and our electoral process: what worked, what didn’t, how did new laws affect us, and what’s in store for 2020?
- Issue #11, CA and partisanship: what does 2018 say about party and ideology here?
If and readers have other suggestions for micro-issues at the end, let me know. I think that there’s a lot to learn from how the election went this cycle. And hey — there are seven more GOP House seats for us to snag in the state, so let’s get to work, ha. Speaking of which...
House race roundup — looks like we won seven!
The vote counting in CA-21, the final in-question House race in CA, seems like it is 99.9% complete. All four counties that contribute to votes in this race report zero uncounted ballots. Does this mean the total is final? I think maaaaaaybe it is. It’s possible there are some ‘vote curing’ ballots out there still — ballots that had issues where a voter needs to fix them in order to have them included in the certification.
But at this stage...with the five day deadline for curing...there can’t be more than a few. It’d surprise me if there are more than twenty votes to add to the final certification. Democrat TJ Cox currently shows a 862 vote lead. There just aren’t the votes to flip this back to GOP...I’d expect the AP and everyone else to call this one soon. (I think they are being cautious due to their previous ineptitude in this race).
So that helps paint a final picture for California’s 2018 experience.
When the DCCC (and broader coalition of the left) targeted all seven ‘Clinton districts’ (House districts that had Republican reps, but which Clinton won in 2016), that concept seemed an interesting blend of bold, doable, and impossible, ha.
The numbers and demographics indicated that each district was obtainable…but all seven? Most of them partially or totally in Orange County? ALL of them? The state already had a House caucus that was split 39/14 — almost three-quarters Democratic. Producing a 46/7 (87% Dem) outcome seemed...well that sounded like a heck of a lot of work, to be honest.
It meant finding quality candidates for each of these districts. And in most of these districts it meant finding multiple quality candidates, so that we could hold a primary where each district picked the Democrat they felt would best represent them. Then we needed those primaries to be a legitimate debate, but not to become so volatile that the coalition fractured.
And all of that had to navigate our jungle primary system, where a scenario where a district had eight Dems running against two Republicans had the very real possibility of producing a primary result that sent two GOPers to the general, locking us out. CA-10 (Harder) came within 3,019 votes of having this occur. CA-48 (Rouda) and CA-49 (Levin) were close too. And the fact that there were eleven candidates on the right in CA-39 (Cisneros) may have saved us there. But the party and voters managed to work together to skirt disaster.
So we made it through the primaries, and elected strong candidates for the general, and those candidates ran some stellar campaigns — staying on message, building their support, navigating the treacherous waters of Trump-criticism. They got their GOTV and community outreach efforts running. They tapped into the volunteer pools from nearby heavily Dem districts...I was part of the “caravan” that actually threatened the GOP — the carpools going from Los Angeles out to other areas to assist Hill or Porter for an afternoon.
And so yeah...you bring all of the parts together in an adept manner, and you win elections, even in Orange County. It’s an amazing result, just look at CA on a hex map where districts are all portrayed the same size. California isn’t a blue wall — it’s a blue tank, steamrolling the GOP agenda.
Thank you to the donors, and volunteers, and campaign workers who helped make this happen. You did it, and you have the gratitude of the nation, and the Daily Kos community. Oh yeah...and good job, candidates. You can have a brief respite with accolades before we start critiquing everything you say and do again, ha.
Statewide Remaining Ballots
Yep...still counting. It’s wrap-up time, though. The counties should all be finished for their 12/07 deadline. The final ballots are spread out all over, and not really concentrated in any interesting areas where key races would be affected.
Statewide remaining ballots:
Mail: 26,289
Provisional: 36,533
Same day registration provisional: 3,610
Problems: 8,166 (damaged ballots to be inspected and given new cards, if needed)
Total: 74,598
Of note: Congrats, Los Angeles County! You are done! You had a million ballots to count after election night, and you beat fourteen other counties in reporting final tallies. And you beat the deadline by like ten days. Impressive. I mean that seriously...L.A. County had about as many votes cast as the entire state of Wisconsin. Which means it probably beats the vote count for 25-30 of the states, but I’m not going to go count all of those, lol.
Charts for vote tallies in key races over time
Refresher course: what we are looking at is how the vote totals in these races changed over time. You can see how candidates caught up or surpassed their opponents as registrars counted late-arriving mail ballots and provisional ballots.
In the last column marked “Dem % this batch,” what I’ve been looking at is what percent the Dem won of the ballots added in that period. So if 1,000 votes were added to the race in that week, what percent did the Democrat win? This is pertinent because it illustrates how election night counts aren’t always representative of the race as a whole. Why aren’t they? Voters who mail their ballot close to Election Day, or who vote by provisional ballots, tend to skew younger, more minority, more mobile (moved recently), etc.
CA-21 |
Cox (D) |
Valadao |
Margin |
% Dem this batch |
6-Nov |
33844 |
39475 |
-5631 |
46.2% |
13-Nov |
41739 |
44138 |
-2399 |
62.9% |
14-Nov |
46279 |
48260 |
-1981 |
52.4% |
16-Nov |
48787 |
50873 |
-2086 |
49.0% |
19-Nov |
51340 |
52308 |
-968 |
64.0% |
21-Nov |
54266 |
54713 |
-447 |
54.9% |
27-Nov |
56634 |
56105 |
529 |
63.0% |
5-Dec |
57239 |
56377 |
862 |
69.0% |
Notes: No other race on the list better illustrates how late count ballots skew a race. The electorate that ‘chose’ Valadao on election night was much older and whiter — voters who mailed their ballots in September. It was also much more rural, because lower population density precincts get through more of their mail ballot counting by election day, so a lot more of the rural vote is reported on election night. Urban areas got slammed with ballots in the final weeks, and a ton of mail ballots were held over for late counting. The fact that denser areas of Fresno and Bakersfield had so many ballots to count contributed to this remarkable flip.
However, we cannot understate the impact of the Cox campaign’s utilization of our progressive voting laws to run their GOTV operation and swing this one. They pushed voter registration HARD. We can’t know how many votes this generated for them, but consider that Fresno and Kern reported about 1,500 same day registration votes. That was our side pushing for those voters to turn out...it’s not unreasonable to think that 70%+ were Dem votes, given the final tallies. The Cox campaign also spent the final weeks going door to door and asking voters to fill out mail ballots on the spot if the voter was willing. This is perfectly legal in CA, and getting those votes into the mail proved crucial.
I don’t think the media will ever latch on to covering this race as a brilliant piece of campaign strategy. They should. The Cox campaign just nailed how to overcome a popular incumbent...great work and kudos to everyone on that team. You guys took an R+11 mid-Sept poll and made it a Dem win. That is just awesome work. I helped Susan Davis flip a district against Brian “barf” Bilbray in 2000. I now pass on the mantle of twenty years of flip-bragging to you guys — you earned it, lol.
CA-39 |
Cisneros (D) |
Kim |
Margin |
% Dem this batch |
6-Nov |
73077 |
76956 |
-3879 |
48.7% |
8-Nov |
80539 |
83211 |
-2672 |
54.4% |
13-Nov |
92741 |
93452 |
-711 |
54.4% |
16-Nov |
110794 |
107774 |
3020 |
55.8% |
21-Nov |
119805 |
114284 |
5521 |
58.1% |
27-Nov |
123948 |
116918 |
7030 |
61.1% |
5-Dec |
126001 |
118391 |
7610 |
58.2% |
CA-45 |
Porter (D) |
Walters |
Margin |
% Dem this batch |
6-Nov |
88765 |
94998 |
-6233 |
48.3% |
8-Nov |
101955 |
103975 |
-2020 |
59.5% |
13-Nov |
116732 |
116471 |
261 |
54.2% |
16-Nov |
143144 |
135120 |
8024 |
58.6% |
21-Nov |
147944 |
138346 |
9598 |
59.8% |
27-Nov |
155787 |
144363 |
11424 |
56.6% |
5-Dec |
158906 |
146383 |
12523 |
60.7% |
CA-48 |
Rouda (D) |
Rohrabacher |
Margin |
% Dem this batch |
6-Nov |
91750 |
89068 |
2682 |
50.7% |
8-Nov |
105047 |
97719 |
7328 |
60.6% |
13-Nov |
118210 |
107612 |
10598 |
57.1% |
16-Nov |
140323 |
123401 |
16922 |
58.3% |
21-Nov |
146183 |
127837 |
18346 |
56.9% |
27-Nov |
155040 |
134918 |
20122 |
55.6% |
5-Dec |
157837 |
136899 |
20938 |
58.5% |
Notes: 11/07: Oh hey wow, we barely won but we beat him. 12/07: Ok, no, we creamed them. Ha.
CA-25 |
Hill (D) |
Knight |
Margin |
% Dem this batch |
6-Nov |
83662 |
79545 |
4117 |
51.3% |
8-Nov |
90298 |
84272 |
6026 |
58.4% |
13-Nov |
101111 |
91105 |
10006 |
61.3% |
16-Nov |
111217 |
97759 |
13458 |
60.3% |
21-Nov |
121336 |
105110 |
16226 |
57.9% |
27-Nov |
128691 |
108940 |
19751 |
65.8% |
5-Dec |
133209 |
111813 |
21396 |
61.1% |
CA-10 |
Harder (D) |
Denham |
Margin |
% Dem this batch |
6-Nov |
55414 |
56701 |
-1287 |
49.4% |
8-Nov |
88961 |
85743 |
3218 |
53.6% |
13-Nov |
91066 |
87618 |
3448 |
52.9% |
16-Nov |
100717 |
95622 |
5095 |
54.7% |
21-Nov |
106200 |
99595 |
6605 |
58.0% |
27-Nov |
107709 |
100514 |
7195 |
62.1% |
5-Dec |
115886 |
105919 |
9967 |
60.2% |
CA-49 |
Levin (D) |
Harkey |
Margin |
% Dem this batch |
6-Nov |
104446 |
87588 |
16858 |
54.4% |
9-Nov |
106052 |
89458 |
16594 |
46.2% |
13-Nov |
121311 |
99883 |
21428 |
59.4% |
16-Nov |
137341 |
110679 |
26662 |
59.8% |
21-Nov |
150536 |
118360 |
32176 |
63.2% |
27-Nov |
157215 |
122818 |
34397 |
60.0% |
5-Dec |
165103 |
127888 |
37215 |
60.9% |
Note: I mean...an eleven point, 37k vote lead? That’s beyond winning, I think we can call this one a landslide.
CA-50 |
Campa-Najjar (D) |
Hunter |
Margin |
% Dem this batch |
6-Nov |
71834 |
84777 |
-12943 |
45.9% |
8-Nov |
77334 |
89829 |
-12495 |
52.1% |
13-Nov |
89333 |
100892 |
-11559 |
52.0% |
16-Nov |
100556 |
111403 |
-10847 |
51.6% |
21-Nov |
111095 |
121189 |
-10094 |
51.9% |
27-Nov |
122141 |
131313 |
-9172 |
52.2% |
5-Dec |
124373 |
133480 |
-9107 |
50.7% |
Notes: Why didn’t CA50 follow more like CA21, so that the margin decreased a little more even if the race didn’t flip? CA50 sits in Riverside and eastern San Diego counties, and while there are demographic shifts between certain parts of the district there just isn’t the massive demographic differences between zones that you have in CA21. There just aren’t precincts of young hispanic voters to bring in ballots that go 70%+ Dem, so while the late count ballots all trended more Democratic than election day counts, they were pretty consistently barely Dem, and it wasn’t enough.
Still...the blue tide is moving east. Some of the closeness of this race has to do with Hunter’s...sigh...crimes. But the district is also changing demographically, and perhaps it will be more in play in coming cycles.
Insurance Commissioner |
Lara (D) |
Poizner |
|
21-Nov |
5589627 |
5102467 |
487160 |
27-Nov |
5859022 |
5286845 |
572177 |
5-Dec |
6147370 |
5488851 |
658,519 |
Notes: I’ve been tracking it. It’s over, and I’m officially bored of this one, ha. But congrats, Commissioner-elect Lara.
Superintendent |
Thurmond (D) |
Tuck |
Margin |
17-Nov |
4589134 |
4430035 |
159099 |
21-Nov |
4936236 |
4756197 |
180039 |
27-Nov |
5133983 |
4957678 |
176305 |
5-Dec |
5357466 |
5170826 |
186,640 |
Notes: I’ll admit that I am surprised that Thurmond didn’t run up the margins more at the end. I thought he’d nab a hundred thousand from LA’s final counting, but nope. I wasn't quite sure that late counting would follow predictable patterns, though. This was a non-partisan race, with no party listed on the ballot, and it was pretty low-profile as well. So it wasn’t clear how provisional voters would vote.
The margin makes this look like a safe win, but that’s a 50.8% to 49.2% finale. Wow...that’s pretty close. Congrats, Superintendent-elect Thurmond.