CA-AG: Looking Bad for Kamala Harris

Update: A few more counties have added results, Harris’s deficit has grown to 36,800 votes. This was a result of 85,000 new votes in Orange, 17k in Riverside, and 35.5k in San Francisco. I’ve subtracted these from the “unprocessed” totals, and the new projection says Harris stands to gain 1,500 in the remaining ballots uncounted.

However, there is a time gap between the ballots outstanding estimate and the number of votes counting – more likely than not, we’re overestimating the number of Orange, San Diego, and Riverside ballots outstanding – which of course means that Harris has more upside potential in the remaining ballots.  We’ll keep a close eye on the situation and will update accordingly as more data are released tomorrow.

As of last update, San Francisco DA Kamala Harris (D) is trailing Los Angeles County DA Steve Cooley by 22,817 votes out of 7,659,341 counted so far.

According to the Unprocessed Ballot Report (PDF), there are still 2,342,664 ballots uncounted. Sidenote: Don’t you love Debra Bowen and what she’s done with the SoS’s office? Susan Bysiewicz, take notes!

What does this mean?

Well, we can analyze the relative composition of the remaining outstanding ballots, and the news isn’t the best for Harris.

Harris’ statewide weighted average performance for the unprocessed ballots (weighted by the number of votes outstanding) is 45.55% to Cooley’s 45.95%. This is actually a notch down from the 45.64% Harris has received in all counties so far.

This is mostly due to a large number of outstanding ballots in San Diego and Orange Counties. While LA, SF, Alameda, Santa Clara, and Contra Costa will help to offset this, they will be offset by Riverside, San Bern, and also possibly death-by-thousand-cuts in the various counties in the Central Valley.

From this – provided we assume that unprocessed ballots break down the same as the counties they are from thus far – we can estimate that Harris is on pace to fall another 9,486 votes behind Cooley.

For Harris to overcome her 23k deficit, we can also say that Harris will need to do 0.69% better among the uncounted ballots than she has thus far.

Here are the top 12 counties that will pad Cooley’s margin:






























































































































































County Total Harris Cooley Unproc Harris Cooley Margin
Orange 683,073 208,780 416,466 233,196 71,276 142,178 -70,902
San Diego 639,695 246,542 335,071 240,000 92,497 125,712 -33,214
Kern 116,811 31,861 73,293 65,200 17,784 40,910 -23,126
Fresno 127,070 45,013 72,289 79,748 28,250 45,368 -17,118
San Bernardino 341,011 127,276 179,477 99,000 36,950 52,105 -15,155
Riverside 427,254 155,953 236,923 78,100 28,507 43,308 -14,801
Placer 107,703 31,998 66,112 28,056 8,335 17,222 -8,886
Stanislaus 110,462 41,587 59,205 40,430 15,221 21,670 -6,448
Ventura 209,561 81,543 112,402 40,279 15,673 21,604 -5,931
Shasta 47,590 12,778 29,737 16,200 4,350 10,123 -5,773
Tulare 61,150 18,200 38,109 17,204 5,120 10,722 -5,601
El Dorado 51,608 15,335 31,061 17,400 5,170 10,472 -5,302

And where we estimate Harris to get an advantage:






























































































































































County Total Harris Cooley Unproc Harris Cooley Margin
Los Angeles 1,883,468 1,004,737 743,482 411,960 219,760 162,617 57,143
Alameda 315,268 207,519 83,738 122,000 80,304 32,404 47,900
San Francisco 176,573 125,063 35,847 67,754 47,989 13,755 34,234
Santa Clara 371,287 203,177 136,071 108,000 59,100 39,580 19,520
Contra Costa 236,809 125,361 93,978 107,000 56,643 42,463 14,180
Marin 83,391 51,689 25,850 38,050 23,585 11,795 11,790
San Mateo 168,055 95,316 59,945 48,102 27,282 17,158 10,124
Sonoma 138,383 79,052 45,321 40,000 22,850 13,100 9,750
Santa Cruz 66,757 41,428 18,356 28,080 17,426 7,721 9,705
Monterey 60,308 32,664 22,522 40,256 21,803 15,034 6,770
Mendocino 19,097 10,321 6,159 12,358 6,679 3,986 2,693
Solano 93,164 47,383 38,272 25,522 12,980 10,485 2,496

The 34 counties we haven’t listed are expected to lose Harris another 23,531 votes, margin-wise.

Again, this analysis is fraught with assumptions, but gives us a useful picture of where things stand. We’re not taking into account any macro influences – such as the possibility of provisional ballots skewing Democratic – here, and given the sheer number of outstanding ballots – 23% of the total cast – much remains uncertain.  

101 thoughts on “CA-AG: Looking Bad for Kamala Harris”

  2. I would expect the provisional ballots to skew Dem, because Dems are generally younger and probably more likely to vote late. The late votes in Washington seem to be skewing Dem relative to the earlier votes.

  3. I’m not from California, but its obvious if all the statewide Dems win and you are pulling up in the rear and winded like a cross country meet, then the onus falls on her.

  4. lagging the County Reporting Status report (which shows when the vote count was updated).

    For example, ballots came in and have been counted this morning from two counties (Riverside and San Bernardino, both Cooley strongholds) but the latest Unprocessed Ballot Report for them is as of Thursday (showing 78K and 99K ballots left to be counted).

    The same thing seems to have happened in the top two Cooley counties yesterday (Orange and San Diego).  

    Unless the Unprocessed Ballot Report is real time, as the County Status Report is, it is difficult to tell what ballots remain to be counted.  But, the pattern over the past two days may have made it appear as if Cooley is doing better than he actually is.

  5. and not because I like his politics. What concerns me is the Prop 8 case. I want the state of California to defend its Constitution, so we can get the case before the Supreme Court. I don’t want the case to get muddled up in standing issues; let’s throw the question straight at Justice Kennedy, and not give him any reason not to decide.  

  6. I hope Steve Cooley isn’t elected he is enemy number 1 of the marijuana reform movement and will reinvigorate the war on drugs in the state if he is elected. Much rather see the pompous ass lose and never come back.

  7. Repub and thus the leading R candidate for Gov or Senator in the future. We’ll be getting a lot of high profile AG stories in the news the next few years to get his name out there even more.

    Best he loses now to nip this in the bud.

  9. With all precincts reporting (before counting provisionals and late absentees), Steve Westly (D) led Tom McClintock (R) by 24K votes:

    http://articles.latimes.com/20…

    After all votes were counted, Westly won by 17K votes.  

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C…

    Harris was ahead by 15K votes with all precincts reporting.

    There are many more late absentees/provisionals this time.  In 2002, there were about 750K votes counted after election day.  In 2010, there are more than three times that many to be counted.

  10. I don’t think anyone gave her any significant chance to win.

    This should have been a slam dunk for Team Red, their best canidate of the century, and against a far left of average candidate from San Francisco with the #1 CA boogeyman issue (death penalty) against her.

    If Cooley wins, it shows a GOP candidate can still win if he/she is a truly outstanding candidate and the Dem is a SF leftie, or if the Dem is lame-o like Cruz.  If Cooley loses tho, those opportunities might not even exist anymore. (That doesn’t mean you should be firing up a new campaign, Cruz buddy.)

  11. If you want to win in a left-leaning state, then be moderate on everything but homosexuality. Being anti-gay gets you votes.

    I hope that isn’t what may help him win, because it seems like people are already emboldened enough by the homophobic sweep through New Hampshire, Minnesota, and Iowa.

  12. yes and Abel Maldonado has no political future ahead of him. Best he can hope is that Jerry Brown appoint him to some blue ribbon commission or something. Or maybe Obama appoints him to some dead end Federal job. But did they really have to boo him in front of his entire family?

  15. Please forgive and correct any mistakes in what follows. I’m a humanist, not a mathematician. Anyway, here goes.

    The addition of 17K ballots from Riverside County Sunday morning raised Cooley’s margin over Harris by about 2000 votes. THe addition of 85K votes from Orange County raised Cooley’s margin by another 12,500 or so votes. Thus, Cooley’s lead now stands at almost 37,000 votes.

    It seems to me that there is good news hiding in these facts.

    Cooley won Orange County on election day (including early mailed-in ballots) by about 66-34. But he’s winning the late mailed-in and otherwise unprocessed ballots in Orange County by only about 58-42. We can plausibly assume that there is a similar Harris tilt to all the remaining ballots.

    There are now 411,000 Los Angeles County ballots left uncounted. But there are fewer than 150,000 Orange County ballots now left uncounted. Remember that no L. A. County ballots were counted this weekend, whereas  85,000 of the original 233,000 unprocessed Orange County ballots have now been counted.  Moreover, the ballots yet uncounted in both counties are probably going to skew to Harris significantly when compared to the election day figures.

    So: they’re beginning to run out of Republican ballots to count, and the remaining ballots in every county will probably be somewhat more pro-Harris than the election day ballots. Add those two trends together, and you end up with a very close election that Harris may well win.

    1. That’s an important distinction. I didn’t realize they had already counted the early absentees. I wouldn’t be surprised, then, if this later group leans Democratic. Just look at Washington State: the ballots received and tabulated later are trending more Democratic than those received earlier.

  16. This is DAMN close, there are still about 2,122,535 ballots uncounted though.

    I think that Harris will pull this one out.  It’s pretty awesome having a close race I thought us Dems were going to lose, and even the fact that the Chron called it for Cooley, then backtracked.  It was full of hilarity.

  17. OK, sorry to say that as of right now (Nov. 8, 7:30pm PT), Cooley has moved out to a 41,000 vote lead. Bummer.

    There are still 1,710,000 votes left uncounted. A lot of the smaller, rural Republican counties are now finished processing their votes. Of the remaining counties with more than 50,000 votes outstanding, four are Harris counties and four are Cooley counties:

    Harris:

    Los Angeles-322,000 votes remaining

    Alameda-122,000 votes remaining

    Santa Clara-108,000 votes remaining

    Contra Costa-85,000 votes remaining

    Cooley:

    San Diego-218,000 votes remaining

    Orange-84,000 votes remaining

    Fresno-79,000 votes remaining

    Kern-65,000 votes remaining

    Thus of those eight counties, there are 637,000 votes remaining in Harris-tilting counties, and 381,000 votes remaining in Cooley-tilting counties. But I think the counties with smaller numbers of votes remaining still tilt toward Cooley, even though some have finished reporting.

    Bottom line: Things aren’t going as well as I had wished, but let’s keep hope alive, at least for a while. I suspect that someone with real statistical acuity could now tell us who is going to win.

Comments are closed.