Costa Takes Lead in 20th C.D.; McNerney Lead Narrows, Cooley's Lead Over Harris Grows

Democratic incumbent Jim Costa has taken a 1,318 vote (1.8%) lead over Republican challenger Andy Vidak in the 20th Congressional District (CA) as of 5:28 p.m. November 10, the Secretary of State reports. The votes that put Costa into the lead appear to come from the most recent reporting from Fresno County. SOS reports do not update the total votes remaining from Fresno (or Kern) counties which may still impact the final vote totals in this contest.

In the 11th C.D., Democratic incumbent Jerry McNerney has seen his lead shrink somewhat, to .9% (1,685 votes) over Republican David Harmer, with updated vote counts from Alameda, Contra Costa and San Joaquin counties during the day on November 10. The American Independent candidate, David Christensen, the only third-party candidate in the race, has seen his percentage of the vote increase to 5.1%.

And in the race to determine the next Attorney General of California, Republican Steve Cooley has expanded his lead over Democrat Kamala Harris to 19,357 votes, giving him a .2% lead with approximately 1,000,000 votes left to count statewide. While an exact count is impossible, a review suggests that there are perhaps 30 - 40,000 more votes remaining to be counted in pro-Harris counties than in pro-Cooley counties. (Of course, the percentage of gap between the candidates vote counts vary greatly from county to county; an exact analysis of the outstanding votes is beyond the scope of this blog.) Finally, as ballot processing continues in the county registrar offices, expect to see the number of late absentee ballots included in the counts to diminish, likely dropping off significantly next week. The provisional ballots which will show up in vote counts in greater numbers later this week and into next week will reflect votes from election day, at which point Harris' late surge should be fully reflected. Those later votes are expected to trend Democratic to a much greater extent than the votes tallied after election night to date.

Votes counts after the Friday reports are tallied should provide a better picture of the trend for provisional ballots, but expect a much clearer picture when vote tallies are provided next week. (Los Angeles County, with over 200,000 ballots left to process / report, will be reporting this Friday, then again next Tuesday and Friday.) Until then, the A.G.'s race remains much too close to call.