(I’m doing blog outreach for Eric Garcetti’s re-election campaign)

As Dave noted below, estimates put turnout in Los Angeles today at a sad 15%.

Though city officials were skittish about making predictions on voter turnout, Fernando J. Guerra, director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University who is also a lobbyist, said he expected 15% of voters to show up. In the 5th council district, it could jump to as high as 30%, he said, because of the interest in the wide-open council race, the city attorney’s race and a school board race there.

The 5th council district is made up of the progressive communities of West LA, the Fairfax district and Westwood (home to UCLA) as well as some not so progressive sections of the San Fernando Valley including Encino and Sherman Oaks. On balance though, if one district is going to have a disproportionate impact on the citywide races and props, you could do worse than the 5th. Clearly the single largest determining factor in the low turnout today is the lack of a competitive race at the top of the ticket. Antonio Villaraigosa is expected to sail through to a second term as Mayor.

We’ve been asking folks to chime in with their election day experiences over at Eric’s blog and on Facebook and it will come as no surprise to hear “ghost town”, “had the place to myself” and “fast and easy” were among the descriptors used. Some of the election day on the ground reports over the flip.

Polls close at 8pm. Eric will be doing GOTV until then and then will head over to his election night party at Avalon in Hollywood (details here.) I’ll be tweeting live from the party and if I have access, look for updates at Eric’s blog as well.

[UPDATE]Results will come in here.

More…

Some on the ground reports from Angelenos:

I voted at the Golden Gate Retirement Hotel on Lockwood (CD13). Parking was difficult- didn’t trust the fact that schoolyard restrictions (No Parking 7am-5pm) would be lifted. The poll worker could barely speak English and could not alphabetize. It was 10 am, they were just installing the counter machine and sadly, mine was the first vote recorded.

Although most elderly voters vote absentee in the future I would recommend polling places without stairs. Still, I take pride in voting and never take it for granted.

Voting at Elysian Heights Elementary went very smooth. In and out in minutes. All polls were filled when I entered, but there was no waiting.

Voted this morning in Valley Glen – it was just me and the poll workers when I was there at 11am, but they said the turnout today has been good. No trouble at all getting the provisional ballot I needed (I’m new to that neighborhood after being a CD13 girl, and haven’t re-registered yet).

I went to vote over on Melrose and Berendo about an hour ago. It had horrible street parking and it was pretty dead in there. No one else was in there voting other than me. The poll worker said I was around the 50th voter.

I voted today in West Hollywood. There was some confusion as to where my polling place was as I have just moved. The polling volunteers were extremely helpful in providing me with a provisional ballot.

I saw 10 others voting while I was there at 8:30AM. The West Hollywood election is rather interesting and I’d be surprised if there wasn’t decent turnout today.

I went around 3pm today. There was 1 other person voting. I was in and out in about 5 min. Trying to encourage more people to vote. Most of my friends didn’t even know voting was happening today.

I voted at 9am at Allesandro Elementary-there were only a handful of people at the poll. There was a larger crowd waiting to leave than there were waiting to vote cause the ballot receptacle (don’t know what it’s called) had a paper jam. Or ballot jam rather. After a few minutes I just handed my ballot over to one of the workers so I could get to work. They were about to call the city when I left, I hope they fixed it….

Really slow at Mayberry Elementary School at 11:30. People at the yoga studio didn’t seem to know there were elections today…Also, alot of changes in polling places and people saying they never got anything in the mail about the election in general.

Too fast, too easy-even though we got displaced from the Silver Lake Recreation Center to St. Teresa’s. Where are all the voters?

I voted on Larchmont and it was a ghost-town-esque situation at the polling spot. You could see the tumbleweeds, and the pollsters (polling people? poll masters?) were just a little too grateful to see me. Kind of a bummer.

The last Field poll (PDF) results of every election cycle are the turnout estimates. They are usually fairly accurate. In 2006, they predicted (PDF) 8.16 million ballots cast for Arnold’s reelection, and about 8.9 million actually voted.  In 2004, they guessed 12.2 million and 12.59 actually voted. And in 2000, they estimated 11.5 million and 11.14 showed up.

This year they are estimating 13.65 million voters. While there is no clear bias either way based on the past numbers, but if I had to take the over/under, I’d take over this year.  Turnout is a tough game to guess at this year, but Field’s guesses are pretty interesting.  Some notable demographic figures: Field expects a full 25% of the electorate to be between 18-34, 67% to be white, 19% to be Latino, 6% to be African-American, and 8% to be Asian/other.

Finally, on the “historic” participation rate.  There will likely be history made in the sheer number of ballots cast, but that happens pretty much every presidential election due to population growth. What is more noteworthy is the expected turnout amongst our 17.3 million registered voters (78.9%), which would be the highest such figure since 1976. Also, Field estimates the overall participation rate, the percentage of eligible voters that actually vote, to be around 58.8%, the highest since 1972.

Who knows what these turnout numbers mean in terms of winning elections, but I’m always in favor of everybody voting.  That’s a generally a pretty good thing for progressive politics.

I complained yesterday about the polling being all over the place, Obama up 6, Clinton up 9 seemed to be the spread. That’s 15 points, whoa. The crucial question seems to be turnout. And we get Field’s answer (PDF) this morning: 8.9 million, a record turnout for a presidential primary. Of course that doesn’t say all that much because we have over 15 million registered voters in the state, and Field estimates there are 23 million Californians eligible, but what can you do?

On mail-in voting: “The Field Poll estimates that of the 8.9 million total votes cast, mail ballots will account for 4.1 million, the largest number for any previous California primary election.”

But the big question for the presidential race that seems to be in everybody’s thoughts is the turnout demographics:

Overall, 70% of California’s primary voters are expected to be white non-Hispanics, 17% Latino, 6% Black/African-American, and 7% Asian/other.  Ethnic voters will comprise a large share of precinct voters (36%) than mail ballot voters (25%), while white non-Hispanics will account for a greater share of mail ballot voters (75%) than precinct voters (64%).

There should be the approximate distribution of voters by age groups – 13% in the 18-29 age group; 15% in the 30-39 group, 20% in the 40-49 group; 30% in the 50-64 group, and 22% in the 65 or older group.  Voters age 65 or older will account for a larger share of the mail ballots (28%) than of the precinct votes (16%).

What to make of that, I don’t know. A strong youth turnout would favor Obama, and a strong female vote favors Clinton, or so the conventional wisdom goes. But with records of all sorts being set this year, perhaps it wouldn’t be a bad idea to toss aside the CW.