In my update last night, when I indicated that although there are still 17,000 ballots countywide, I also noted that as is “often the case in close contests, the count focused on Council District 7 the last two days so as to knock off the bulk of those ballots. There are only a handful of ballots left in this race.”

I should have been clearer, in that I wasn’t conjecturing on that point. The Registrar’s office did indeed focus its count Monday and Tuesday on this district because of the interest, and last night reported to the on-lookers that the count was nearly complete, with only a handful of ballots left. So, of the 17,000 ballots left in the region, a miniscule amount are in this contest.

The final ballots counted, however, are “provisional” ballots. These tend to go more Democratic than mail ballots. Not all “provisional” ballots will be valid ballots, however, so all predictions are ballpark predictions.

Monday’s update for the County on the CA Secretary of State’s site said 26,000 ballots remained to be counted, with 4,100 of them mail ballots and 21,900 provisional ballots.

Tuesday’s County website says Sherman’s at 50.3% and the number of ballots left to count is 17,700. There’s a very good chance that the 4,200 counted in that time were the rest of the mail ballots (explaining Sherman’s slight rise), and the remainder left to count are provisional ballots.

If the 6% of countywide ballots figure is correct, and if we assume 90% of the remaining provisional are valid, using the June 12 numbers from the Registrar Sherman needs 40.7% of the remaining ballots if he’s to stay above 50%.

So I’d say that Sherman’s chances are good, but it’s not over yet because provisional ballots tend to be a bit more Democratic than mail and polling place votes.

Douglas Johnson (from the Rose Institute of State and Local Government at Claremont McKenna College)

DEMAIO: 73,566 31.68%

FILNER: 70,166 30.21%

FLETCHER: 56,062 24.14%

DUMANIS: 30,821 13.27%

PETTUS: 1,631 0.70%

Oh, that comment was time-stamped at 11PM last night. I originally thought it said 11AM today and was going to try to find your neighborhood this afternoon !

The 50 plus one outright win is often a local procedure as determined by city and county charters. All state legislative and congressional races are a “top-two go to a runoff” process.

Okay, so showing my ignorance at how the jungle primary thing works, I thought 50+1 made you a winner, so how does Issa with 60+ not win his seat?

This article ran today: http://www.nctimes.com/news/elections/election-tetalman-says-women-are-key-to-unseating-issa/article_da8398a2-737d-5cfa-9d41-980dbfd9f4c9.html

sorry to seem so stupid, but it’s confusing.

Let’s not muddy the situation with rumors. Nothing exists but the votes that have been counted and appear above. That is the present vote count. The Registrar is not secretly counting other votes, while not recording the tally. Thanks. —Barry Jantz

One cannot assume there are no write-in votes. That would change the whole equation.

If we assume that there are precisely 26,000 outstanding ballots countywide and that 6% (I think a bit high but we can go with that) are in D6 that would add 1560 ballots to the total for 31,100 total votes cast. 50%+1= 15551.

15551-sherman’s total vote as of today=724. 724/1560=0.464102564

You would want to see if on any “bunch” of ballots Sherman ever pulled less than 46.4%. I do not believe he has.

If your assumption of 6% is correct, Sherman would need 48.2% of the remaining votes. You have to add the votes that the other three are above 50% to the votes he would be below 50%.

Does anyone have the numbers BEFORE today’s update. We can easily figure out how many Sherman had in the last sample to see how he is fairing.