The Secretary of State shows 100% of precincts reporting, and Kamala Harris leads Steve Cooley by approximately 15,000 votes:
Harris: 3,292,836 (45.9%)
Cooley: 3,277,998 (45.7%)
Now the “100% precincts reporting” stat does not mean that every last vote has been counted. There remain potentially hundreds of thousands of uncounted late absentee ballots across the state. However, Harris’s campaign believes – and I agree – that these ballots will likely break for her, and lead to her becoming the next Attorney General.
Today Harris declared victory and her campaign manager, Ace Smith, put out the following statement:
In spite of Steve Cooley’s Dewey-esque declaration of victory at 11:00 pm Tuesday night – which was followed six hours later by a cancellation of a Wednesday morning “victory” press conference – San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris will be the next Attorney General of the State of California. Here is why:
• With 100% of precincts reporting, Kamala Harris has won the Election Day count by 14,838 votes, 45.9% to 45.7%.
• Uncounted ballots will only bolster Kamala Harris’s lead, as they will reflect Harris’s strong Election Day advantage.
• Considering that Cooley jumped out to a 50% to 42% lead on Tuesday night thanks to early absentee ballots – and considering where the vote total ended up – our model shows that Kamala Harris clearly won the vote on Election Day by 3%. The provisional ballots cast on Tuesday will reflect Harris’s victory.
• The late absentee ballots will reflect Harris’s late surge in the race – which was captured both in public and private polling.
This all seems quite sound to me, especially considering their evidence that Harris won on election day. Let’s hope her lead holds. Not just because Dems would then have had a clean sweep of the statewide offices, but also because Steve Cooley is a crazy right-winger who shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a position of power like the AG’s office.
I totally agree that Steve Cooley is a right-wing wing nut, and I do not want him in the AG office, I watched him declare victory then I watched the count come in throughout the night and I saw that Kamala’s stronghold is the Bay Area and Los Angeles County while Cooley’s stronghold is rural California and Orange County.
I am wondering how many of the ballots yet to be counted come from Cooley’s strongholds. Aren’t conservatives more likely to mail in their ballots and vote absentee? What makes Kamala’s camp so sure that the ballots yet to be counted will swing her way? I am so excited that she passed him up, but I don’t want to count my chickens before they hatch….so I would like to hear about what signs they have that makes them think the late ballots will swing for Kamala.
about how many late absentees + provisionals remain uncounted?
http://vote.sos.ca.gov/vote-by… isn’t working.
This has nothing to do with Kamala Harris or anything factual. It is just my nature, after a lifetime of electoral disappointments, never to count the win until its official. In 2000, I was parking my car as the radio announced that Al Gore won Florida. I felt the election was over, we win! So I didn’t turn on the TV until I’d been home for a half hour or so. You know the rest. Those scars will never heal.
Side note: Cooley ran a TV ad that saw like six thousand times listing all his reasons not to vote for Harris (death penalty, immigrants, etc.). Every single thing in the ad made me like her more. But I am a DFH.
Per the count as of right now:
Kamala D. Harris (Dem) 3,302,221 45.9%
Steve Cooley (Rep) 3,293,191 45.8%
Peter Allen (Grn) 185,412 2.5%
Timothy J. Hannan (Lib) 180,395 2.5%
Diane Beall Templin (AI) 125,325 1.7%
Robert J. Evans (P&F) 117,125 1.6%
So out of 7,203,669 votes tallied so far, Harris is up by only 9,030 votes.
But the two right-wing candidates got 305,720 votes; and the two left-wing candidates got 302,537 votes.
This is where third party voting could’ve easily swung the election either way. If a few more Greens had voted Democratic, we may not be sweating this out at all. And if a few more AIP people had voted Republican, hello Attorney General Cooley.
Obviously, this isn’t the final count, and the numbers will surely move around. But it’s where you definitely had enough third party votes to swing the election.
BTW, check out the Illinois Senate numbers:
Mark Kirk (Rep) 48.2%
Alexi Giannoulias (Dem) 46.3%
LeAlan Jones (Green) 3.2%
Mike Labno (Lib) 2.4%
On the Lawrence O’Donnell show last night it was reported that Karl Rove tossed in one million at the last minute to run ads against Kamala Harris because he thinks she has a future.
Well Harris(45.9%) is maintaining Her lead over Cooley(45.7%) with a difference of 17,015 votes between the two Candidates for AG. Hopefully in the end Kamala Harris will be California’s next AG.