CA-44: Where We Stand

When we last checked in with the shocking result in California’s 44th District, Democrat Bill Hedrick was trailing GOP scuzzbucket Rep. Ken Calvert by 4600 votes. The margin has since grown to about 5900 votes. Here’s an update from Bill Hedrick communications director Lori Vandermeir:

Here’s where we stand:  They began counting ballots today in Riverside County so we should have some sort of indication when those numbers are released as to how we’re trending.

The end of last week only OC ballots was being counted which of course didn’t help our numbers – we’re down in that portion of the district (but OC accounts for only 20% of the district and we’re up in Riverside which accounts for 80%).

At this point, only VBM ballots are being counted (those that came in late but were postmarked correctly or those that were dropped off at the polls on election day).

As long as we trend the way we believe we will (maintaining a 4%-5% lead in Riverside County) we should be fine going into the provisional ballot count which should trend highly in our favor.  That process doesn’t begin for another week or two.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE (David): Another dispatch from Lori:

The good news is we’ve been told by the Orange County Registrar that they are now done counting the VBM ballots and we’ve held steady at 37% (which is 14% above Democratic registration – an amazing feat considering that county didn’t really know our candidate before this race).  The bad news is that the OC number today knocked us down a few more thousand overall.

I think I’ve already mentioned to you that our district spans both Orange County and Riverside.  80% of the district is in Riverside (where we’ve been winning) while 20% is in south Orange County (where we’re losing).

While Orange County is now complete, there are still over 50,000 VBM ballots to count in Riverside and we are very sure those will continue to trend in our favor (as they have all along) so the gap should narrow on both Wednesday and Friday (when that county continues counting).

In addition, there are still tens of thousands of provisional ballots which we know will trend our way.  Our campaign received hundreds of calls on election day from solid Democrats complaining that they had been issued provisional ballots even though they had voted in June at the exact same location so we feel safe in saying that we believe the majority of provisional ballots will lean Democratic.

This is what things look like in Orange and Riverside  (the county websites appear to be more up-to-date than the CA SoS):

At current rates, Hedrick would only net about 1,500 votes in Riverside if there are 50K left to count, as Lori suggests. However, unlike some counties in CA, Orange and Riverside don’t appear to break out VBM vs. election day stats, so there’s no way to know just yet if perhaps Hedrick did better in the early vote thanks to heightened Dem enthusiasm.

And no matter what, there are all the provisionals, which always tend to favor Dems – and we don’t have an exact count on those yet. Hedrick is facing difficult odds here, but my fingers are crossed.