CA-7 Ballot Update

While I haven't taken a deep dive into the California ballots yet, I do want to provide an update. I predicted Republicans wouldn't come close to taking any California Democratic congressional seats. I was surprised that Scott Jones only trailed Democrat Ami Bera by 1.2% at the end of election night. Most districts showed similar VBM and election day results. Here Ami Bera won VBMs 54%-46%. That was what I expected from the race. Jones then won election day ballots 53%-47%. A shift like that was uncommon and, to me at least, surprising.

There are 251k Sacramento VBM and provisional ballots left to process. This district should have more than half of them. For some reason Sacramento updated their totals with just a handful this morning. Scott Jones took these 222-161. The 61 ballots cuts Bera's lead 2,033. While that's not much, Jones getting 58% of the ballots would be huge if it were an indicator of how unprocessed ballots will go. He probably needs to get only 51% of what's left to win. What we don't know is how representative these ballots were. They may have been a Jones favorable precinct someone forgot to enter on election day. The post-election day count here should be watched.