By Tim Redmond
NOVEMBER 5, 2014 – David Chiu picked up a few more votes from the final round of mail-in absentees today, setting up a tense couple of days as the rest of the votes are counted.
Chiu now leads by 3,049 votes, 47,797 to 44748.
That’s not surprising – the mail-in absentees tend to be more conservative, and Chiu was ahead in the first bunch by nearly 60 percent.
In this case, the ballots cast later went 56 percent for Chiu.
Here’s what happens now:
According to John Arnst , who runs the Department of Elections, there are 22,365 Assembly District 17 vote-by-mail ballots dropped off at polling places Tuesday. Those are the so-called “Election Day Absentees,” and in the past, they have tended more or less to reflect the Election Day vote.
They will be counted over the next few days, with results daily at 4pm.
Campos won slightly less than 57 percent of the Election Day vote, if my math is right. If that trend is reflected in the Election Day Absentees, he would pick up 3,128 votes.
In other words, the race would be within less than 100 votes.
Then there are 11,000 “provisional” ballots to be counted. I have no idea where they are from or how they will break.
But it’s safe to say that this one is by no means over, and we’re all going to be checking the sfelections.org website tomorrow at 4pm. That’s when we’ll see how the Election Day absentees are breaking.
