By Tim Redmond
NOVEMBER 4, 2014 (7:45pm) – At a certain point, all you can do is hunker down and wait for the votes to be counted. There may be a few people left who haven’t voted who the campaigns can get to the polls, and every last one matters. The Campos folks were out in force at the 24th Street BART station, along with the Daniel Flores for Judge campaign and Yes on C, all looking to get the evening commuters to vote. It was very festive and fun – and if Campos is going to win, he needs turnout.
When I was riding around counting precincts, most were at maybe 125 voters. The Campos folks need those numbers up to 200 in the Mission and Bernal, and there’s always a surge in the evening when people decided to vote after work.
I suspect that when the first absentees comes in, there will be cheers in the Chiu camps and some groans from Campos HQ; Chiu has already banked a lot of absentee votes, and Campos is relying more on Election Day turnout. But if the absentee numbers are close at all, that will be a bad sign for Chiu and a good sign for Campos.
As soon as we see real Election Day results, which will be around 9:30, I can back out the absentees and we can look at the trend and guess where it’s going.
But we should all be prepared: The Assembly race may well not be determined tonight. If it’s close, the Department of Elections will need to count every one of what could be a whole pile of Election Day absentees – and that typically takes several days.
I think we’ll know the fate of most of the initiatives tonight. The Soda Tax needs two-thirds, and if it’s close, it could be a squeaker. But the rest will be clear pretty quickly.
The School Board and Community College Board races, with a lot of candidates, will change through the night, and since these things tend to hinge on a few hundred votes, there may be some candidates waiting until Thursday or Friday to crack the champagne.
