Updated Vote Count
The Orange County Registrar of Voters posted its daily vote tabulation update at 5pm PT. It shows that Katie Porter has cut Mimi Walters’ lead by more than 1,000 votes since the last update on Friday.
Walters’ lead is now down to 1,011 votes with 220k votes tallied.
Her lead was around 6,200 votes and 3.4 percent on Election Night with 173k total votes cast. At the rate that the late vote tallies have trended, Porter could take the lead by this time tomorrow.
On Election Night, there were 441k uncounted votes. There are now 303k uncounted votes, and at the beginning of the today, there were 329k uncounted votes. So, it looks like the OC Registrar processes somewhere around 30k uncounted votes a day countywide.
The total Election Night vote count was 650k with 279k precinct votes and 366k early vote-by-mail ballots counted. Given that vote-by-mail tends to trend Dem, it seems that Walters built a big advantage with the in-person vote.
Orange County Registrar Process
I give massive credit to the OC Registrar, which is led by a Republican, for how transparently they have done the vote count. Considering all the incompetence that we’re seeing in Florida, the OC vote count has so far been diligent and above board.
The Registrar updates on a daily basis, and archives each of the daily tallies. They also maintain a running count of the remaining uncounted votes, and they break them down by category (i.e., early vote-by-mail, late arriving vote-by-mail, absentee ballots dropped off at polling places, provisional ballots, etc.). This allows for easy analysis of the results, and provides some hint of where things are likely to go.
Remaining Uncounted Votes
With the races in CA-39 and CA-45, the GOP leads have shrunk once the early vote-by-mail tabulations began. According to the Registrar, the 56k vote-by-mail ballots received within 3 days of Election Day have all been counted. Based on past trends, this group tends to lean Dem.
The largest bloc of uncounted ballots was the 189k vote-by-mail ballots that were dropped off on Election Day. About 106k remain uncounted. Although this group has tended to lean less Dem, they are still contributing to Porter’s vote gains.
The largest remaining bloc of uncounted ballots is the roughly 160k provisional ballots, and none of them have been counted since Election Day.
Another unknown is the 21k vote-by-mail ballots received after (but postmarked by) Election Day. So far, none of these ballots have been counted either.
What we know is that Porter made huge gains with the first wave of post-Election Day vote-by-mail tallies. Unless the later vote-by-mail and provisional ballots reverse trend and go more GOP, there seems to be a large enough outstanding vote to push Porter over the finish line in CA-45.