OC Blog

Daucher Lead Over Correa Shrinks To 361

The latest results have been posted by the OC Registrar of Voters, and Lynn Daucher's lead over Lou Correa has shrunk to 361, meaning Correa cut Daucher's lead by more than 50% in a single day:

Lynn Daucher (Rep)     50,433           50.2%
Lou Correa (Dem)            50,072          49.8%

Ouch.

According to Martin Wisckol at Total Buzz, 47,000 absentees were counted on Saturday and the bulk of absentees were counted today. If that is true, and the number of uncounted ballots from the 34th SD has dwindled dramatically, that is the best news of the day for Daucher.

UPDATE: I've put in a call to Neal Kelley, but just went to voice mail. Today's results would seem to confirm Team Corea's claim that late ballots will substantially favor Lou.

A reader emailed me this take:

It is impossible to know how many of the ballots remaining to be counted are from the 34th Senate District, but of the 696,777 ballots counted so far county-wide, 14.42% of them voted for either Lou or Lynn.

14.42% of the remaining ballots equals 7846 to go.

UPDATE II: Here's Martin Wisckol's post on the latest tally.

UPDATE III: Following is the now-customary Paul Mitchell analysis of the day's tally:

Today Lou Correa made up a considerable amount of ground against Lynn Daucher.  He won 3,910 votes to her 3,507.  The gap now sits at 361, less than half of the weekend gap.  There are up to 6,200 ballots still to be counted.  In order to win, Correa needs to maintain today’s 53/47 advantage for the remainder of the counting.

The good news for Correa:  He has caught up some, winning today’s balloting at a 53% to 47% rate – close to his Election Day tally.

The good news for Daucher:  The remaining absentee ballots are not specifically from Election Day.  They are ballots which were damaged, and could have been cast at any time.

The bad news for us:  The rest of the counting will be going very slow.  Damaged ballots to be duplicated before being run through the machines and provisionals have to be researched and validated before being counted.

It all now rests on three factors:

1) How many absentee ballots are outstanding, which is probably around 4,000.  (absentee ballots have been about 12.2% of votes cast so far.  With 32,499 absentees in the county, that makes 3,965 outstanding).

2) When the absentees were cast. The remaining ballots are not date-specific.  They are ballots which were damaged and set-aside to be duplicated.  They include ballots from Election Day, (when Correa was winning 52/48) and prior days (when Daucher was winning 52/48).

3) How many provisionals are counted.  It has been expected that provisionals would lean toward Correa because they are day-of-election and because of the higher propensity for some precincts to have voting problems.  However, of the estimated 2,650 provisionals in the 34th, a good chunk will not count.  A Grand Jury Report from ’04 found that 16% of provisionals in Orange County were not counted because the voter could not be verified or has submitted more than one ballot (often when they mail on Monday and vote on Tuesday because they think their ballot isn’t going to be received in time). Applying this discounting to the provisionals, the total likely to be counted is around 2,200.

Correa’s one day performance at 53% is not likely to be repeated in the remaining absentees as they are not ballots that were turned in on Election Day.  He should out-perform Daucher on the provisionals, however he would have to win those ballots at a rate greater than 60% to 40% in order for it to have a decisive impact on the outcome.

Final Note: One aberration in today’s results was the counting of 5,665 “election day paper ballots” that had been left uncounted since election day.  I never understood what these were, but it seems from the counts that about 4,800 came from the 34th.  Because of these ballots, over 30% of today’s county-wide totals came into the 34th SD – a figure wildly different than previous days.  Excluding these paper ballots, today’s count was 14% of the total county ballots.

And, if anyone cares, here are the numbers:

November 13th            

6200         B               Ballots Outstanding    

50,072       C               Correa Total    

50,433       D               Daucher Total    

53%          x                Percentage Correa Needs to Tie  

47%          1-x             Percentage Daucher Needs to Tie          

                Formula: xb+c=(1-x)b+d                      

47%          Y                Percentage Daucher won in today's count

53%          1-Y             Percentage Correa won in today's count                              

                7417          Number of ballots counted today  

Dueling Methodologies In The 34th SD

Earler today, the OC Registrar posted the latest results from the Daucher-Correa race. Daucher is still ahead, although her margin shrank to 764.

So, who will win in the 34th SD?  That depends on to whom you talk.

Paul Mitchell from EdVoice sent out another analysis based on the latest count from the ROV:

Today the Orange County Registrar of Voters counted 47,000 ballots in the county, 5,847 which were in the 34th Senate District.  In this count, Correa added 2,958 votes and Daucher added 2,889.  This means that Correa made up a bit of ground (69 votes) and now is behind by 764.

Daucher’s daily percentage of the vote has been diminishing over time.  Thursday’s count was 56% Daucher, Friday’s was 52%, and today’s was 49%.  While this percentage of the vote is trending away from her, it also means that Correa’s uphill battle continues to get steeper.  He is losing time to make up ground, and the percentage he needs to get on all remaining ballots has increased.

Daucher's Lead Widens To 833. Is It A Lock?

Counting continues for the 34th Senate District. The ROV results released earlier today increased Daucher's lead to 833.

OC Democratic Party Executive Director Mike Levin places his hope in the belief that late absentees will break toward Correa -- something I wouldn't bet the farm on.

I subsequently received this e-mail from Paul Mitchell, political director and COO for EdVoice:

Today Assemblymember Lynn Daucher gained additional ground against Supervisor Lou Correa, and is now leading by 833 votes. 

Of the 5,200 ballots counted today, she won at a rate of 52%.  With the presumption that there were 7,000 votes outstanding, Correa would now have to win at a rate of 80% in order to overtake Daucher.

November 9th        

1378        B       Ballots Outstanding  

43204      C       Correa Total  

44037      D       Daucher Total  

80%         x       Percentage Correa Needs to Tie

20%        1-x     Percentage Daucher Needs to Tie        

       Formula: xb+c=(1-x)b+d          

                    80%              

52%         Y       Percentage Daucher won in today's count

I don't pretend to understand how this formula was derived, but I like the result.

Scenes From The 34th SD Count-O-Rama

They're still counting away at the OC Registrar of Voters. I've been snooping around and picked up some interesting tidbits from the last couple of days:

• OC Supervisor Lou Correa showed up at the OC Registrar's office the morning after the election, walking around and talking to ROV staff. I understand he's one of the candidates, but he's also one of the ROV staff's bosses -- making his presence inappropriate. If he were a Republican, I've no doubt the Dems would accuse him of trying to intimidate ROV staff. Perhaps that's why the Correa campaign team persuaded Lou it was best to leave rather than create a bad impression.

• The ROV is lousy with Democratic operatives -- several of whom have apparently been writing down the names of voters whose ballots are challenged. When told to stop, they apologize, claim ignorance and then substitute another operative who then does the same thing.

• If Daucher maintains her lead and wins the seat, it will be the only legislative seat with majority Democratic registration that elected a Republican on Election Day.

OC Democratic Party Considers Suing If Correa Loses 34th Senate District Race

From today's OC Register:

County Democratic Party Chairman Frank Barbaro said that if Daucher wins by a narrow margin, his party will consider challenging the outcome.

Gee, I didn't see that coming for the last couple of weeks.

"(But) I don't know if there's a legal basis to try to overturn an election based on people having to wait in a long line," he said.

Since when has that been an impediment to filing lawsuits to overturn an undesirable election result?

Daucher Widens Her Lead To 553

A reader e-mailed to let me know Lynn Daucher has increased her lead to 553 votes.

Looks like those theorists who theorized the late absentees would mirror the trend of the earlier absentees are proving correct.

Still, the number of uncounted absentees (up to 7,000) makes me wish I were a mathematician able to render some sort of scientific prediction.

Why Lynn Will Win (and the Vietnamese Vote)

Team (Van) Tran conducted a huge offensive on behalf of Daucher this fall. Numerous Vietnamese-language mailers were sent. Weekly ads ran in ethnic newspapers and around the clock on radio stations (1480 AM and 106.3 FM). Even though the ex-Brea resident was new to Little Saigon voters, Daucher visited the diverse district often, especially at the right time with key people including the governor. Scott Baugh and Daucher rightly acknowledged Team Tran as well as Garden Grove School board member Trung Nguyen for their help. Fellow GG board member Lan Nguyen also played a key role but he didn't make it to the Irvine Hyatt on election night despite winning his reelection.

Daucher prematurely spouted about "taking on Loretta Sanchez." At the time (11 p.m. on Tuesday) she had a double-digit lead...

About 2/3 of Vietnamese Americans in Orange County voted via absentee ballots sent early and late. It is unknown at this time how many requested ballots in Vietnamese. This past July, renewal of the temporary provisions of the Voting Rights Act received nearly unanimous bi-partisan support. However, a number of Republican lawmakers acted to amend, delay or defeat renewal of the Act, including Campbell, Miller, Rohrabacher and Royce. Calvert and Sanchez voted yes. Supervisor Chris Norby also testified against its renewal and its $22 million cost per election cycle (English and four other languages) to Orange County taxpayers.

How ironic that those requesting foreign-language ballots may affect the outcome of two local races this year. The other was Harman vs. Harkey. "He beat Harkey 1,364 to 591 on those ballots, 73 percent of which were in Vietnamese." Read the OCR article. I wonder how many voters requested Spanish-language ballots.

Van Tran anticipates that many of those absentees will be in favor of Daucher, resulting in more than the 138-vote lead posted at the Total Buzz yesterday. Yet unlike the Harman v. Harkey race in the 35th SD, a Republican battle, Correa and the Democrats have their share of Vietnamese supporters.

I was way off with my Sanchez v. Nguyen prediction. Tan may not have garnered as many Vietnamese votes. He spent much more money (>$500K) and fared no better than the other sacrificial GOP nominees who came before him. Tan lost 38-62. District turnout was a meek 26.5%. with 38% for Democrats and 27% for Republicans.

47th CD Registration: DEM 42.6%, REP 37.1%, DTS 16.7%, AI 1.7%

2004: Dr. Alexandra Coronado lost 40% to 60%. Voter registration was 187,846. Turnout was 58%. 2002: Entrepreneur Jeff Chavez lost 35% to 61% despite quitting before the general election. 2000: Elementary school teacher Gloria Matta-Tuckman lost 35-60.

Daucher & Correa, Neck and Neck

The latest results in the 34th SD were just posted by the OC Registrar of Voters, and Lynn Daucher and Lou Corrrea each have 50%. Daucher is actually ahead by just 13 votes. That is with 361 of 377 precincts reporting.

Wow. That's tight.

I overheard at the OC GOP election night party there are on the order of 20,000 uncounted absentee ballots. I don't know if these are now being counted and reported along with the precinct results. But given how heavily the absentees broke for Daucher, the number 20,000 is a comforting one to Team Daucher as the election day votes narrow the gap between her and Correa.

It's going to be a late night for both campaigns, both of which I'm sure have people camped out at the OC Registrar's until this is over.

Daucher Closes Strong

Four - count 'em, FOUR - Daucher mailers arrived at Stately Leyes Manor on Monday, the last mail day of the Fall campaign. For a solid month, we have received at least one Daucher mailer almost every day, most days multiple mailers. ZERO Correa mail. And a tidy little closer, too, the much-anticipated Schwarzenegger robo-call that apparently went wide to all(?) Republican households. Any Democrats?

Now that it is all over but the shouting (and recounts and lawsuits), the strategy for each side is crystal clear. Daucher started mailing before the primary and never let up, establishing herself in the hearts and minds (or mailboxes, anyway) of voters as our de facto Assembly representative. She was ubiquitous and effective hitting on a variety of issues important to the district. She also targeted sub-universes including Vietnamese, Latino, Women, Independents, etc. She had lots of signs and several TV ads. Although there were some Independent Expenditures (IE's), most notably from the California Republican Party, most of the media came disclaimed from Daucher for Senate, which means that the money, the media and the message, all ran through her campaign. She scores high on accountability.

34th SD Mailbox: Daucher On Eminent Domain

The Lynn Daucher for Senate campaign sent out this mailer on eminent domain which landed in 34th Senate District mailboxes on Wednesday.