CA GOV 2021 - 2022 megathread

[politicallefty]

Yeah, we're gonna need some votes to come in first. No surprise. The media doesn't always call these right away, even if it is a landslide.

[politicallefty]

Placer County at 51.6% No. Lmao.

[politicallefty]

NBC calls it!

[politicallefty]

How could any county be even close to 100%?  Doesn't CA allow ballots mailed out today to count even if they are received days from now?  And who knows how many of them are out there.

That's right. Not all of the outstanding vote is the Election Day vote. California allows ballots to be counted so long as they were postmarked by today.

[politicallefty]

Well...

https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1429865259804790784

[politicallefty]

The final margin will ultimately depend on how many VBM votes are still outstanding. As noted before, the ballots need only have been postmarked by Election Day, but they have to be received by September 21st. Prior to 2020, those used to be some of the most left-leaning ballots. It remains to be seen what those votes will look like this time, but they will surely be more left-leaning than the ED vote.

With just under 9m votes in, the margin stands at 29.2%.

I do wonder if the simplified ballot will make the vote counting faster than usual. This is by far the most simple ballot California voters ever get to see.

[politicallefty]

Lake County seems very late in reporting results.

I had that on my watchlist of counties that could potentially flip or be really close in the recall. I'm not sure if that'll happen, but I had reasons. It's been trending away from Democrats in recent years. But one of my biggest reasons is that it's been hit by some bad wildfires in recent years.

My last minute prediction isn't looking too far off:

Last minute prediction, but I'll say No by 21%. The momentum really seems to be on Newsom's side. Not at all surprising, but I think the map looks like 2018 except that Orange, Riverside, and Merced Counties are all up in the air. Among the smaller counties, it's possible Lake votes Yes, but I think Nevada County will definitely vote No.

That said, I'm going to be really mad if San Bernardino flips. I didn't see that one getting this close. The others are more reliant on low-propensity voters. In other words, losing Merced and Riverside in this election doesn't really concern or scare me. Sacramento and San Joaquin tend to hold strong, but the southern parts of the Central Valley have a lot of low-propensity voters. The same is true of parts of the Inland Empire, particularly Riverside County.

[politicallefty]

I don't think there's much to draw from those counties. Most of the swings were pretty small, so it's almost sort of noise (like most of the state). The Bay Area came out in force for Newsom and the Sacramento area continues to trend leftward. The Central Valley south of Stockton always has a Democratic drop-off in off-year elections.

The big anomaly I mentioned in my post in the prediction topic earlier is very apparent on that map: Lassen County. I myself am curious to know what happened there. Turnout was up over 12% in that county compared to 2018, despite a decade of population loss. There has to be something going on. It's not the first anomalous result I've seen from that county. Jerry Brown only lost it by 8% in 2010, two years after Obama lost it by 34% (the latter being a more typical result in that county). I still don't have an explanation for that one (and the county reverted to form in 2014, with Brown losing by 35%).