There are two features of the California election cycle that makes things difficult to try to figure out what is and will happen.  The first, as discussed last week is its use of an open, semi-partisan, top two primary in which the candidates who finish first and second, regardless of party and regardless of percent, advance to the November general election.  The other is how California votes and count votes.

Like its two neighbors to the north, Oregon and Washington, California has very liberal rules on mail-in ballots.  The deadline for the local election authorities to receive mail-in ballots is this upcoming Friday (June 8), and those ballots will count as long as they are postmarked by yesterday.  In addition to mail-in ballots that have yet to arrive, there are also provisional ballots (and, based on early news reports, there may have been a problem with voter registration records in Los Angeles County that could result in a large number of provisional ballots in that county).  In short, we will not know how many votes remain to be counted until this weekend or early next week when counties report to the state how many ballots remain to be counted.  The California Secretary of State’s website has two relevant tabs for the remaining count — one that summarizes the status of unprocessed ballots in each county (crucial to knowing how many votes remain) and one on country reporting status that provides information on each county’s on-going updates (e.g. if done, when last reported, etc.).  The county reporting status update (as of this posting) indicates that most of the counties have completed their election day vote counts, but a handful of counties, primarily Santa Clara are not yet done from last night.

Because of the late ballots,  the current vote totals are a little like highly accurate pre-election polls.  We know that there will be some differences between the election night percentages and the remaining uncounted ballots, but it is reasonable to expect that those differences will be small.  In a general election, based on past history, we would expect the late votes to lean Democratic compared to the election day results.  However, in a top two primary, the issue is not whether the votes will be for a Democrat or a Republican, but which Democrat or which Republican.  If the late votes favor a fourth-placed Democrat over a second-placed Democrat and a third-placed Republican over a first-placed Republican, that could move the third-placed Republican into second place even if the overall Democratic percentage in the district improves.  In other words, depending upon how close the race is, it may still be too early to tell who will advance.  Things will improve over June as the counties send updates to the Secretary of State.  The counties, however, have until July 6 to finish their counts.  Depending upon how quickly updates are sent, we may not know the two finalists in some races for two or three weeks.

The state-wide numbers from last night have the Democrats receiving around 60% of the total vote to 40% for the Republicans.  For Governor, Gavin Newsom (Democrat) and John Cox (Republican) appear to have advanced.  While later results have moved Antonio Villaraigosa ahead of the field for third place, the Republicans did a solid enough job of unifying behind John Cox that the margin is almost certainly too large for Cox to fall to third when the remaining ballots are counted.  The state-wide races to watch in the next several weeks are Lieutenant Governor where the two Democrats narrowly lead the top Republican candidate, Treasurer where the two Republicans are essentially tied for second place, and Senate where incumbent Diane Feinstein will advance to the general election but Democrat Kevin DeLeon has a narrow lead over a pack of Republicans (with James Bradley currently leading the pack in third place).  The difference between the Governor’s race and the Senate race shows the importance of the challenging party uniting behind a candidate.  The ability of the Republicans to unite behind John Cox secured them a spot in the general election for governor, but their inability to unite behind a Senate candidate probably has cost them a spot in the general election for senator.

At the Congressional level, most of the districts have sufficiently wide margin to project the top two, and most of those top two will be a Democrat versus Republican.  There are some districts that are still too close or in which a third party candidate will make the general.  In addition, there were some noted in last week’s post that did have a battle to choose the top Democrat   Right now, there are thirteen districts in which the gap between second and third is less than 3% and a handful more in which the gap is between 3 and 5% (with some of these districts having more than two candidates still in the mix for second).  Right now, the only district in which the Democrats do not have a candidate in the top two is California 8 in which the top Democrat is in third-place, trailing the second-placed Republican by 1.1%.

Given the number of close races for second, we may not have a clear picture of who made the general election and how California is shaping up until mid-June.