UPDATED: All eyes on City Council District 7 in San Diego
Tuesday, June 19 — After yesterday’s update from the Registrar…
SCOTT SHERMAN |
15542 |
50.16% |
MAT KOSTRINSKY |
12447 |
40.17% |
RIK HAUPTFELD |
1791 |
5.78% |
NATHAN E. JOHNSON |
1207 |
3.90% |
As of yesterday morning, 112 ballots were left to count. The race was over a week ago, per the below, but this confirms the current numbers.
Tuesday, June 12 — after 5 pm update from the Registrar of Voters…
But, starting with my tweet at 4:26 pm:
“Prediction: Out of about 30,150 votes, @ShermanforSD will have 50.25%, about 75 votes more than the 50 mark.”
Then, after the Registrar released the updated results, from the U-T San Diego’s Jen Kuhney, who had it first at 5:00 pm:
“Latest results: Sherman 50.3%, Kostrinsky 40.17%. Almost all of D7 ballots counted, but there could be a few more, RoV said.”
Then, Kuhney at 5:12 pm:
“ShermanforSD now 91 votes over runoff after latest results.”
So, I guess I was off by 16 votes. Toot toot.
The bottom line is this: The Registrar’s website still shows thousands of uncounted ballots countywide. But, 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.
If, for instance, there were even 100 left, Sherman has the count locked up, for all intents and purposes.
A tidbit: Sherman received about 55 percent of today’s ballots.
Currently:
SCOTT SHERMAN |
15206 |
50.30% |
MAT KOSTRINSKY |
12145 |
40.17% |
RIK HAUPTFELD |
1727 |
5.71% |
NATHAN E. JOHNSON |
1155 |
3.82% |
_______________
Original Monday (June 11) post…
Following last Tuesday’s hotly contested San Diego City Council election for District 7, interest was piqued over the weekend when Friday’s count of late absentee and provisional ballots showed front-runner Scott Sherman’s portion of the vote tally slipping from about 51 percent to 50.59 percent.
With about 88,000 votes left to count across the county, it’s unclear what proportion of those remaining ballots are in the City of San Diego or even the 7th District, for that matter.
Yet, what’s clear is that it takes at least 50 percent plus one vote to secure an outright victory in the primary. With Sherman’s margin at last count heading towards that magic 50 number – even if only for a day or two — twitter recently sprang to life with a few self-annointed mathematicians, including yours truly (although I’d say I’m more of a wannabe in the arithmetic department than an anointed one).
The second place finisher in the primary race, Mat Kostrinsky, has no chance of catching Sherman, since he’s trailing by more than 10 points. Yet, political watchers know if Sherman falls below 50 percent, a forced top-two finisher run-off with Kostrinsky in November is a different day, with what will be a much larger turnout than the likely plus thirty percent achieved last Tuesday (the 27 percent turnout initially reported is also going up as the outstanding ballots are counted).
With four Democratic and three Republican city council seats assured, it would be a bit of an understatement to say the balance of power rests with this race and the District 1 runoff between Ray Ellis and Sherri Lightner. The difference between a 6-3, or 5-4 leaning-one-way-or-the-other council makeup matters greatly when measuring both majority council votes and mayoral veto thresholds, especially also eying a Carl DeMaio and Bob Filner mayoral ho-down.
That said, it’s a busy Monday at the Registrar of Voters office, with both Kostrinsky and Sherman partisans on hand ensuring the quality and accuracy of the ballot counting process. If there were still chad, these nice folks would be hanging on every one.
So, what are the odds Sherman falls below the mark? Inquiring minds want to know.
Local policy and statistical wonk Erik Bruvold did an analysis, indicating that if the remaining 88,000 ballots are proportionally distributed geographically, Sherman would have to get less than 47 percent of the approximate 5,165 remaining District 7 votes to end up with less than 50 percent of the overall vote. He says on Twitter, “No interim updates have shown him pulling less than that,” while also noting that since prior vote counts can be treated as samples, none of them show Sherman under 47 percent. “(It’s a) low chance this one would be,” referring to the last uncounted ballots.
Bruvold also mentions, “It’s a fun exercise in probability math.”
Speak for yourself, dude.
Another ballot count update is anticipated from the Registrar of Voters late today.
Political operatives — and mathematicians — will be watching closely.
______
Monday 5 pm Update: The ROV counted approximately 62,000 votes countywide since the Friday update, leaving about 26,000 votes to count. Sherman’s vote total dropped from 50.59 to 50.19 percent. Someone else do the rest of the math. Erik Bruvold?
SCOTT SHERMAN |
14827 |
50.19% |
MAT KOSTRINSKY |
11925 |
40.37% |
RIK HAUPTFELD |
1664 |
5.63% |
NATHAN E. JOHNSON |
1124 |
3.81% |
Thanks for posting this, Barry. Outrageous that the San Diego media has ignored this story, regardless how it turns out.
Update: Latest count from the Registrar’s office released at 4:30 p.m. Monday puts Sherman at 56 votes above the 50% + 1 threshold. Some 26,000 ballots countywide still to be counted. Next update scheduled at 5 pm Tuesday.
At this point Sherman needs 46.34% of the vote to get over the 50% threshold. This assumes that 6% of the outstanding 26,000 ballots come from D7
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.
Erik,
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%.
I agree with Erik’s numbers. In the even more unlikely scenario that a whole 10 percent of the remaining ballots are from District 7, Sherman would need 1,244 of those 2,600 votes to be at exactly 50 percent plus one vote. That’s 47.8 percent of 2,600 votes. But, it’s much more likely the remaining ballots in this district total about 1,400 to 1,500 votes, making Sherman’s required percentage of the “take” even lower, in the mid-46 percent arena. Yet, it doesn’t appear he has received lower than 46.5 percent in any portion of the ballots counted thus far. Close.
Right now there are 29,540 (14827+11925+1664 +1124) total cast in the race (I am assuming the registrar lists ALL ballots cast and that there are no “qualified” write ins that have appeared).
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.
Erik:
One cannot assume there are no write-in votes. That would change the whole equation.
Not just write-ins, qualified write ins. Did any write-ins qualify?
Good point, Thor. Don’t think anyone qualified as a write-in. Someone smarter than me probably knows the answer.
I’ve heard an unsubstantiated rumor that Sherman is down to 34 votes.
_____
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
Mat K should be praying that Scott Sherman comes in above 50% +1. Otherwise, his political life will be a living hades if there’s a runoff in November. Mat can’t change his mis-truths and should consider dropping out, ’cause it ain’t gonna be pretty.
Go Scott go!
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.
Sally:
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.
Barry, Understand and agree with your comment re: rumors. For the record, the rumor was substantiated by the cocktail or two my neighbor had while relaying the information to me; and the cocktail or two I had is what caused me to have the bright idea to get on Rostra and continue the rumor.
“..and the cocktail or two I had is what caused me to have the bright idea to get on Rostra and continue the rumor.”
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 !
Tuesday’s update shows Scott Sherman with 15,206 votes, or 50.30 percent.
Also noteworthy, Filner has narrowed the gap with DeMaio. The initial results had DeMaio leading by about 2 percentage points. The latest numbers have DeMaio leading by less than 1.5 percentage points. (1.47 percentage points, to be exact):
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%
11am has been known to happen around here. We’re behind St. Therese, just up the hill from the fire station.
One concern in the analysis: the first “uncounted” ballots to be counted are the last-minute-arriving mail ballots. Those typically follow the early-arriving mail ballots that were the first ballots counted.
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)
Excellent analysis, Doug.
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.
I am very pleased with the results, we need to work for Ray Ellis and Carl DeMaio to win, TO WIN. I am in for walking precincts. Let us all like minded people commit. We need to walk or give treasure and be the example for the state. San Diego will be the example.