On Tuesday night we were all (including me) counting Jim Costa amongst the casualties of the 2010 GOP wave. After all he was trailing Republican challenger Andy Vidak by 1823 votes with 100% of precincts reporting.
Fortunately that judgement seems to have been premature. 🙂
Below the fold for all the details…….
CA-20 comprises part of Fresno and Kern counties and all of Kings.
Whilst votes cast in district on election day have all been counted there are still a large number of vote by mail, provisional and “other” ballots to be counted. Other ballots include ballots that are damaged, ballots that could not be machine read and ballots diverted by optical scanners for further review.
Of course some of these have been processed and counted since Tuesday and as of the close of counting on friday Costa has narrowed the gap to only 1091 votes!
Here is how I think the remaining votes will shape out.
Firstly Fresno County.
Fresno thus far has voted 60/40 in favour of Costa and it has about 80000 votes left to count. The number of 20th District votes left in Fresno is approximately 16000. If these break for Costa as the votes counted have thus far then that is a net gain for Costa of about 3200 votes.
Secondly Kern County.
Kern has thus far split 62/38 in favour of Costa and it has about 65000 votes to count. About 13000 of these are in the 20th. If they shape out the way votes counted thus far have then Costa stands to gain about another 2500 votes.
Lastly Kings County.
Kings is all in the 20th and has voted thus far 70/30 in favour of Vidak. However Kings has only another 500 odd votes to count which would give Vidak a gain of only 200 votes.
So…..
-1100 (current Vidak lead)
-200 (Kings gain to Vidak)
+3200 (Fresno Gain to Costa)
+2500 (Kern Gain to Costa)
That leaves Costa in front when all is said, done and counted by about 4400 votes. Assume my numbers are overly optimistic. (They are approximate for ease of calculation but otherwise no heroic or unrealistic assumptions have been made.)
Then Costa should have an ample lead to win.
Your thoughts at this seemingly great news?
although I will admit that Costa is one of my least favorite CA Democratic elected officials. That is because while he was in the Legislature he pushed a bill that effectively eliminated effective rent control in CA. I don’t live in his district, so I didn’t have to decide to hold my nose and vote for him. I still think of him as an a$$#ole, though.