4-wk sprint: Reality Check
Kuff alludes to the state of the county. Here’s the math behind that:
HD Votes DEM Support ========================== Total 220,082 45.5% ========================== 126 10,992 29.9% 127 14,874 26.6% 128 10,209 27.9% 129 12,498 32.0% 130 13,804 21.7% 131 7,749 80.6% 132 10,995 33.7% 133 15,848 25.5% 134 15,351 40.8% 135 8,737 35.7% 137 3,989 52.7% 138 9,059 33.3% 139 8,829 74.5% 140 3,278 73.4% 141 6,434 82.8% 142 7,057 76.6% 143 4,832 69.8% 144 4,178 53.3% 145 4,713 59.4% 146 9,657 75.7% 147 9,656 78.5% 148 6,862 59.7% 149 8,286 49.4% 150 12,195 26.9%
Some oddities since I’ve been otherwise occupied from updating:
- Dems did not seem to win on Saturday. Given how awful 2010 was, that may track with that experience. But the one comparison I have from 2012 was that it was the only day that Dems had a clear win on (three others were a draw).
- Saturday is usually the first big day of Early Voting. This time around, Saturday’s total in-person vote failed to top Friday’s. It’s possible that this is one of the signs that the mail ballot program this year took votes out of the In-Person pool of voters.
- Dems did extremely well on Sunday and that made the weekend a small win. Important because the entire second week really has to be a win for Dems to have a good shot on Election Day. But …
- Monday reverted back to form, with Dems getting about 46% of the in-person vote that day.
In short, it doesn’t look great for the county.
The races that appear competitive on here (HD137, HD144, and HD149) all behave in strange ways. In particular, much of the Dem vote in these boxes comes in late. In 2012, Gene Wu (137) got 69% of E-Day vote, Mary Ann Perez (144) got 58% and Hubert Vo (149) got 65%. I’m not terribly concerned about any of them even though they look as if they should be competitive.
Perez’ showing is most impressive to me – she obviously starts off with the most competitively drawn district and has benefited greatly from the mail ballot program run by the party, and plenty of money raised to defend her seat. When we saw her partisan scores during 2012 Early Vote, there wasn’t much positive to see there. She came in better than the numbers suggested, but was still behind on the opening numbers. That she’s showing a lead of any kind at this point is encouraging. In the case of Wu and Vo, the in-person numbers for the second week are much better now that Democrats who can’t vote from 8am to 4:30pm now have a few extra hours after work to go vote.
For the county as a whole, things are starting to solidify. Dems should win E-Day, but just winning isn’t enough. We’re going to need to see an E-Day better than 53% for Dems to win. 2012 is a very different cycle to compare against. But be that as it may, the relevant range to look at from that election was that while Obama won E-Day with only 51.9% and no other statewide did better than 52%, many of the downballot judicial candidates did break that threshold, with several winning around 54% on E-Day. That still creates some possibility for a mixed result in the county. We’ll have a better sense of what the likelihood is for that once Early Vote closes up, though. The final two days are still expected to be the biggest.