OC Political

In the First Supervisorial District Special Election, Lou Correa won early absentee voters, but Andrew Do won late absentee voters and poll voters.  Correa won 13,629 early absentee votes while Do won 13,480, a difference of 149 votes.  The infamous habit of Vietnamese voters casting ballots late reared its head again, as Do won 2,069 late absentee ballots to Correa’s 1,821, a difference of 248 votes.  Do won at the polls too, with 2,681 votes to Correa’s 2,541, a difference of 140 votes.

Judging by these trends, the earlier election date assisted Correa while a later election date would have assisted Do. The earlier date favored Correa because it took more time for Do’s campaign to build up his name ID and persuade voters to vote for him while Correa simply had to remind the earlier voters of their many years of voting for him.  A later date would have helped Do by giving his campaign more time to build his name ID and persuade voters.

There are 637 outstanding absentee ballots and 1264 outstanding provisional ballots.  If the remaining absentee ballots come in at the same rate as the other late absentee ballots, Do will have 18,491 votes while Correa will have 18,220, a lead for Do of 271 votes.

If through some miracle 100% of the provisional ballots are valid, Correa would need to beat Do by 22% in the provisionals (technically, 21.518%).  However, if 88% of the provisional ballots are valid, Correa would need to beat Do by 24.37% in provisional balloting.

The mysterious factor are the SB 29 ballots.  No one knows how many of these are still out there, as there are two more days of mail where these ballots can come in.  Obviously, if they trend similarly to late absentees, then Do’s lead widens and Correa needs even more of the provisional ballots.  Obviously, if they trend closer to early absentees, then Do’s lead narrows and Correa needs fewer of the provisional ballots.  We’ll find out by Friday how the SB 29 ballots went and if Correa was a genius for writing SB 29 or if Correa wrote a bill that helped lead to his own demise.

In a city-by-city breakdown, there were no surprises for the two front-runners, with Correa dominating Santa Ana (54%) and Do winning the rest of the First Supervisorial District.  Do was strongest in his current home of Westminster (49%) while his former home of Garden Grove was his weakest lead (41%) though that’s likely the spoiler effect of Garden Grove Councilman Chris Phan.  Oddly, Garden Grove was not Chris Phan’s best community; he won 20% of the vote there, but he won 21% in the unincorporated community of Midway City.

Phan and Do won a combined 61% of the vote in Garden Grove, 65% in Fountain Valley, 66% in Westminster, 68% in Midway City, and 40% in Santa Ana.  Adding Nguyen in increases that to 66% in Garden Grove, 68% in Fountain Valley, 70% in Westminster, 72% in Midway City, and 43% in Santa Ana.

Lost in most discussions is the Lupe Moreno factor.  She does not have 100% name ID, and she didn’t really campaign in this election.  She was also the only woman in the race.  If even 30% of the votes cast for her were cast by Latino and Latina voters who would have otherwise voted for Correa, she may well have played a critical spoiler role to stop Correa and allow Do to win.