The San Francisco Department of Elections moments ago released the results of an additional 35,979 ballots. That brings the grand total of processed ballots to 325,114 — 62.3 percent of the electorate.
There are, perhaps, 81,000 ballots remaining. The ceiling on turnout appears to be about 77.8 percent, just a shade higher than the 77 percent historical average in presidential contests going back to 1916.
On to the contested Board of Supervisors races
Thursday’s ballot drop resulted in the mathematical oddity of District 1 incumbent supervisor Connie Chan and challenger Marjan Philhour both having exactly 11,001 votes.
The race continues to trend Chan’s way. After being up by 262 votes yesterday, today’s vote drop saw her lead rise to 558. Four years ago, Chan bested Philhour by fewer than 200 votes. Two years ago, the affluent Seacliff neighborhood was grafted into District 1 during the contentious redistricting process. For Chan to — possibly — win in 2024 by a greater margin than in 2020 was not an expected outcome.
Thousands of votes remain to be counted and this race is still a tight, 51-49 tilt.
In case you were wondering, per Elections Director John Arntz, the official method of settling a tied vote in a Board of Supervisors race is a “drawing of lots” — that is, drawing long or short straws.
In District 5, Incumbent Dean Preston stagnated in his race against top challenger Bilal Mahmood. While Preston has more first-place votes than Mahmood — 9,751 to 9,581 — the polarizing incumbent is being swamped in the transfers. After ranked-choice voting permutations, Mahmood leads by 1,307 votes. That’s 20 votes more than Friday.
While a goodly number of votes are outstanding, every subsequent tranche of votes has not helped Preston mitigate his deficit. This pattern could reverse in the coming days, but there’s no logical reason to expect it should. Preston is running out of runway.
In District 7, Supervisor Myrna Melgar added a shade under 100 votes to her lead over political newcomer Matt Boschetto and is now ahead by nearly 1,600. Like Preston, challenger Boschetto is running out of electorate with which to mitigate his deficit.
In District 11, Chyanne Chen has caught and passed Michael Lai. She is now 99 votes up on Lai after having trailed by 136 yesterday. In every subsequent tranche of votes, Chen has cut into Lai’s lead before leapfrogging him today.
This contest remains tighter than tight.
In Districts 3 and 9 Danny Sauter and Jackie Fielder continue to hold nigh-insurmountable leads.
In the Board of Education race, top vote-getters Jaime Huling, Parag Gupta and Supriya Ray will be taking office in January. In the battle for the fourth and final slot newcomer John Jersin is only 1,162 votes ahead of incumbent board president Matt Alexander (100,289 to 99,127). Alexander gained 988 votes in today’s count after gaining 1,100 in yesterday’s. He has gained just shy of 4,000 votes on Jersin since the initial vote drop on Tuesday.
We have a race.
There were 15 ballot measures put before San Francisco voters in this election. There are no significant changes. The lavishly funded Prop. D continues to spiral into the city’s political septic tank, and is now being rejected by 56 percent of the electorate. Its scantly funded countermeasure, Prop. E, looks to be pulling ahead; it now has 52 percent of the vote and is up by 11,390 votes
Prop. F, a police pension measure, continues to be submerged with 54.2 percent of voters inveighing against it. Prop. H, a fire pension measure, is clinging to a 51.7 percent approval rate (at least endorsee Rep. Nancy Pelosi won something this cycle).
Prop. K, the polarizing measure to close portions of the Great Highway, continues to sit strong. A shade over 54 percent of voters are now in favor of shutting down the roadway — a bulge of 28,402 votes.
Mayor London Breed conceded the race on Wednesday and Daniel Lurie on Thursday claimed victory. After today’s ballot drop and ranked-choice voting permutations, Lurie leads by just over 30,000 votes (55.7 percent to 44.3 percent).
The next updates will come on Sunday at 4 p.m. and Monday at 4 p.m.
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