California recall and time to call predictions

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I say Newsom survives and this is declared election night, it'll still be mathematically possible for him to go down in the coming days but it'll be clear based on the results we have that he won't.

[Oryxslayer]

Reminder that Biden's result after all the votes obtained before election day were counted was ~65%, and his final result was 63.5%. E-day and post-eday votes were a superminority of the electorate, so they were not unable to dramatically alter the topline.

[Roll Roons]

At this point, the recall succeeding would be arguably the most surprising electoral result in my lifetime. It will be called on Tuesday, and I doubt it'll take more than a couple hours.

[Skill and Chance]

Hmmm... out of an abundance of caution, I doubt they would call it night of unless No was nearly running on par with Biden?  

[SnowLabrador]

Newsom is declared the winner after a day or two of waiting.

[Interlocutor is just not there yet]

Given how in-person voting seems to be underwhelming so far, we'll find out that night & I predict it'll be called within the hour.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

At this point, the recall succeeding would be arguably the most surprising electoral result in my lifetime.

That would still be New Hampshire Democratic Primary, 2008.

It'd be up there though.

[Non Swing Voter]

How fast do they count the already received ballots?  Why wouldn't they call it at poll closing time the way they do most Presidential elections.  It's doubtful this is going to be close.

[DrScholl]

The thing to remember is that a short ballot takes a quicker amount of time to count. The race should be called by the time the second vote reporting happens by 9 or 10 pm PST.

[Oryxslayer]

How fast do they count the already received ballots?  Why wouldn't they call it at poll closing time the way they do most Presidential elections.  It's doubtful this is going to be close.

~71% of final 2020 votes were counted within 24 hours, the soonest timestamp I got on 2020 election archives. This lines up with the little under 70% of votes which were in the counties possession and verified before election day, so it seems like these were all released fairly quickly. The majority of the remaining votes were processed over the next few days, with the stragglers taking forever to process. Of course the stragglers matter in tight house races that get all the attention, so California earns a reputation of taking forever to count.

What's stopping a poll-closing call is the lack of an exit. It is technically a not a partisan race, so you can't simply look at prior records and declare it done. You would need a bit of data, say that 70+% which will quickly report.

See my previous post for data on the partisanship of the 2020 vote count.

[Sir Mohamed]

Looks like Newsom will already be declared winner on Tuesday night. I can't wait for John Cox's face.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Newsom survives it will be convincingly clear on Tues night

[Schiff for Senate]

Newsom survives and it's obvious within a few days if not on election day itself (probably the latter).

[Minnesota Mike]

We will know within an hour of poll close that Newsom easily survives.

[Liberalrocks]

We will know within an hour of poll close that Newsom easily survives.

[Greedo punched first]

CA-39, CA-45, and CA-48 voted for Cox in 2018. Will any of them vote no?

[TodayJunior]

It will be called at 11PM tomorrow night and the final margin will be 20-22%. This thing is over, it's been over, and Republicans cannot, will not, EVER win a state-wide race in California. The biggest foe is math for Republicans. It's just not there.

[Progressive Pessimist]

Looks like Newsom will already be declared winner on Tuesday night. I can't wait for John Cox's face.

His bear will probably abandon him out of humiliation.

[Adam Griffin]

The networks are probably going to pussy-foot around on this thing because 1) that's how they are and 2) no exit polls, so I doubt even in the best-case scenario that we get any major network calls before the first few hours and/or at least one-third of the vote is in and it shows a wide margin.

However, it'll be clear to anybody with a lick of sense what's going on as soon as the first handful of votes are counted.