SD-37: Moorlach Slips Slightly, but His Raw Vote Total Puts Him Closer to Victory

The new data for the day is out; let’s dive in.  Before that, let’s go back to yesterday’s post to remind ourselves both where we started, back when only vote-by-mail ballots had been counted, and where we left off.  Scroll down to the green type if you’re in a hurry.

TRANCHE 1 (On-hand and in-order Vote-by-Mail ballots only)

TRANCHE 4 — TRANCHE 1 + ALL “REGULAR” ELECTION DAY BALLOTS

And that brings us to today!

TRANCHE 5 — TRANCHE 4 + MOST REMAINING EARLY VBMs and VBMs LEFT AT POLLS

Let’s start with “who picked up how many votes today?”  The Registrar reports that 4,491 (73,562 – 69,071) additional votes were tallied, but obviously that’s not true when you look at the numbers as Moorlach himself gained more votes than that today.  There were actually 8,563 new votes tabulated, if you look at the table below — 4,537 for Moorlach and a combined 4,026 for his opponents:

MOORLACH: 36,393 – 31,856 = 4,537
WAGNER: 31,870 – 28,449 = 3,421
NAMAZI: 2,490 – 2,266 = 224
LOUISE: 1589 – 1,218 = 381

Moorlach’s percentage went down a bit, but his victory became more secure because his vote margin versus the three other candidates combined continued to increase.  In other words, he’s more votes up over the 50% margin — he gained 511 votes today — and therefore his lead is now harder to overcome.  Or, according to other figures … maybe he isn’t.

Specifically: adding up the figures for individual totals shows that his opponents combined have 35.954 votes.  Add that to Moorlach’s 36,393 and you get 72,347 votes.  Half of that is 36,173,5, so by this reckoning he’s now up above by 219 votes, as compared to being up by 247 votes yesterday.  That would not be good, but with half of the vote counted a drop in his margin by 28 would also not be disastrous.

[Note that, again, these figures are not adding up; this is inconsistent with Moorlach’s having gained 511 votes today.  I’ll come back later to see if there are any corrections.]

Which votes were counted?  Yesterday, you may recall, this is what the Registrar said remained:

550 — estimated total number of vote-by-mail ballots left to count

4,850 — estimated total number of vote-by-mail ballots returned at the polls left to count

788 — provisional ballots left to count

141 — paper ballots left to count

to which would be added however many new absentees came in that weren’t included in the original count.  (I suspect that ones arriving by mail on Tuesday may not have been counted in yesterday’s total.)

Here’s what the figures are today:

Total estimated number of ballots to count (after Election Day): 7915

Total estimated number of ballots counted (after Election Day): 4491

Total estimated number of ballots left to count: 3424

BROKEN DOWN BY CATEGORY (with numbers left to count in orange):

550 — estimated total number of vote-by-mail ballots; 450 counted, 10 left to count [maybe should be 100?]

4,850 — estimated total number of vote-by-mail ballots returned at the polls left to count
New estimate is 3,956, have counted 3,860, left to count are 96

788 — provisional ballots left to count — remains the same (these take longer)

141 — paper ballots left to count — remains the same (these also take longer)

2,440 — estimated number of eligible vote-by-mail ballots received after Election Day left to count

I think that this is the first time that I’ve seen this category used.  It’s a good idea to segregate out the “SD-29” votes (hat tip to Chris Nguyen for the term) like this so we can keep track of how the term fluctuates.

Unfortunately, the numbers in orange add up to 3,475 rather than 3424 — maybe it has to do with their being estimates — so we can’t be sure of those either.  All we can say for sure is that Moorlach’s victory, however you slice it, looks a little closer to reality today than yesterday.