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Here are some election results leftover from Thanksgiving!

Notable results and non-results:

• Ashleigh Aitken today cut her deficit against Harry Sidhu from 748, to 712.  That small amount is pretty much keeping in line with previous days, as that gain of 36 came from the counting of only 338 ballots roughly 10.6% of a ballot’s gain per vote counted.
• In a comment on the last post I estimated that Anaheim probably had about 5,400 plus-or-minus-1,000 votes still outstanding, the vast majority of them being provisionals or conditional voter registrations. I think, but am not sure (and don’t have time to check), that I made an arithmetical error in that comment, by failing to account for the fact that Sidhu and Aitken combined have been picking up only 56% of the vote lately. So when we’re talking about the margin between the two of them, 6,400 to be counted in the mayor’s race means an estimate of only 3,584 split between the two of them, 5,400 votes means only 3,024 split between them, and 4,400 votes means only 2,464 split between them.
• So how much, presuming for now that the 56% joint share remains in effect, would Ashleigh need to get to make up a 712-vote deficit?  Respectively: 59.933%, 61.772%, and 64.444% of the joint vote between them.  And how well has Ashleigh been doing recently?  In my last three records (one of which I think is two day’s worth of results because the ROV wasn’t supposed to do a run on the 20th but did one), of the two-person share of the vote she’s gotten 59,299%, 59.886%, and today 62.500%.  Over the last week combined, she’s gotten 2,523 of the past 4,214 votes, which equals 59,872%.  Did I mention that this looked like it would be close?
• I’m making a lot of presumptions here: that the same 56% rate of ballots go to the top two candidates, that my estimate of Anaheim’s share of the outstanding votes is correct, that the currently outstanding votes will share the vote split of the past week, when provisionals ruled (when in fact if more and more provisionals are getting approved the percentage should shift ever more towards Ashleigh — a prediction that, as you can see, came through today.)  But given those presumptions: say 6,000 votes outstanding, 56% going to the top two, and let’s make it 60% of the two-person vote going to Ashleigh, we’d we’d her pick up — well, you do the math.
• Just kidding!  I’ll do the math.  We’d expect 3,360 votes to  go to the pair, with Ashleigh getting 2016 of them and Sidhu the other 1,344.  Ashleigh would pick up 672 votes and Sidhu would win by 40.  But if I’d made it 6400 votes, then we’d expect the pair to share 3,584 votes, of which Ashleigh gets 2,150 and Sidhu 1,434 — then Ashleigh picks up 716 votes and wins the race by 4 votes.  (I swear that I did not know that was going to happen when I picked those estimates!)
• Ousted incumbents include Tim Surridge from Orange Unified School Board, Dennis P. Walsh from Saddleback Valley, Rob Zur Schmiede in Laguna Beach Council, Frank Cobo in the Midway City Sanitary District — and Billy O’Connell in Huntington Beach is looking a little Edison High School green around the gills.

Let’s move “What’s Left to Count?” up towards the top, because it’s getting increasingly important to our estimates:

WHAT’S LEFT TO COUNT?

Total Ballots Left to Count

Here are the downballot races that are still close.  I have generally included the static numbers from Tuesday’s OC ROV report and the Secretary of State’s office (for multi-county races) and the trend from the previous reports on Saturday.  In each race, the name in orange is currently barely in and the one in magenta is currently barely out.  (I’m somewhat arbitrarily and selectively drawing the line right around “under 2%,” down 1% from the previous day’s criterion.)

If you know anything interesting about these races and why we should care about them, please speak up!

Normandin is safe.  Perry may not be.  Perry picked up 166, Kelly 178, and De Bretteville 203.  Perry’s lead over Kelly drops from 175 to 163 while Kelly’s lead drops from 69 to 44.  De Bretteville is two more days like this from passing Kelly (and six to pass Perry), while Kelly would need 14 more days like this to pass Perry.

Hill and Barke both pick up 39 votes.  For context, Davidson picks up 34, but is not in trouble.

Schulman remains safe.  Kunath picks up 114, Dan Walsh 147, Dennis Walsh 143 and is out of the game.  Kunath’s lead shrinks from 188 to 155.  Five more days like this would change the lead.

So overall Jeng is up by 138.  Or so.

Alvarez is pulling away in late ballots.  We’ll call this one.

Marks adds 562, Kowalke 455, Hayden 565.  Kowalke’s lead over Hayden drops from 303 to 193.  Two more days like this would change the lead.

This looks over, but we’ll keep watching it because the final margin might matter to future elections.  Singer is safe.  Briscoe adds 88.  Souders adds 74.  VDMark 85.  Decisive, but one wants even more!

Chaffee’s lead up by 7 to 1137.  Percentage is still tight, so while the game’s over let’s wait to see the final score.

See my discussion up at the top of the post.  Aitken trend not strong enough yet — although finally a sizeable amount of votes got counted in this race — but challenged provisionals of her voters are the ones most likely to be out there.  Note that the “56% for the top two candidates” number I use is far lower than the 64.5% number that we see overall.  (That may suggest some random voting at among the provisions — probably more helpful to Ashleigh, if so, than to Sidhu.

Repeating yet again:

HOWEVER, there is good reason to suspect that a sizable number of provisional ballots are being challenged in Anaheim, whose percentage of the overall vote has been shrinking each day over the last week just when one would think it would be growing as the ROV moves to counting provisional votes, and therefore are not reflected in these figures.  [NOTE: THIS CHANGED TODAY.] (This will be the topic of a longer separate story, as soon as I can get to it.  Let’s just say for now that if it turns out that Disney lawyers are trying to obstruct or even just delay counting of the Latino vote in their flagship city, every network except maybe Disney’s own ABC and Fox will be interested in it.)

What this suggests is that the theory was correct — and that many of the provisionals may have had their voters located and gotten approved for inclusion.  I AM GOING TO TRY TO FIND THOSE BALLOTS IF I CAN AND SEE WHOSE NAMES WERE BEING EXCLUDED.  IF IT IS POSSIBLE TO GET COPIES OF THE ENVELOPE SIGNATURES THEMSELVES TO BE EXAMINED PRIVATELY BY A COURT’S SPECIAL MASTER, I WILL DO THAT AS WELL.  IF PEOPLE (who I’m merely guessing might be affiliated with Disney) HAVE BEEN TRYING TO PREVENT THE EXPEDITED COUNTING OF LATINO BALLOTS ON FLIMSY BASES IN VIOLATION OF THE LAW, I’M GOING TO FIND LAWYERS MUCH BETTER THAN I AM AND MAKE THE SCOFFLAWS VERY SORRY.

We’re done with this one.  It’s over.

These are from provisional ballots, which by definition are cast on election day.  The margin rose from 10 to 11; Park gained 3, Vaughn 2, and Val 0.  If many provisionals remain, Park is in trouble.  If not … well, it will be close either way.

This race is over.

Kempf widens that gap a little on Christoph, adding 160 compared to 133.

Moore adds 8, Rainey 3, Troutman 7.  Probably just a slow day.

Stoaks adds 651, but Duffield adds 855, closing the gap from 258 to 54.  What the heck?  Why is Duffy raging on in provisionals?

Very few new votes counted.  James remains within striking distance of Ward — but that’s not the way to bet.

Pulido picks up 128; Tinajero gains 156.  Slow day in Santana.  First day in four that Pulido hasn’t dropped a tenth of a percent.

Repeating: one of two things is happening.  One is that the late trend is good for Tinajero but that he’s going to run out of remaining days.  The other is that this is another one where I strongly suspect, without having sought or received evidence to back up my opinion, that Pulido’s people have been challenging provisional ballots from areas (and possibly ethnicities) that they believe will be more likely to support Tinajero.  If so, then the likelihood is good that Tinajero will eventually win — but his mayoral term will have a difficult birth.  … Definitely not over until the last provisional is counted.

I don’t think that we’ll get much warning before the trickle of ballots — including all eligible provisionals — stops.  Every day it goes on is probably going to be a good one for Tinajero.

Almost no movement.  This is almost surely over; it’s just the possibility of a flood of provisionals that keeps me watching.

Almost no movement.  Only the possibility of spurious challenges to provisionals keeps hope for this one alive.

No change.

Swan picks up 397; Pollard gains 466.  The lead shrinks from 2,226 to 2,157,  If he only loses 69 votes per day, Swan can wait him out.

Moorhead picks up 625,  Maddox gains 552.

YES adds 242 votes.  NO adds 111 votes.  Margin jumps from  6,280 to 6411.  I’m only leaving this up here because of the probable correlation to the Mayoral vote.