The first two tranches of votes were tallied last night in the special election race that will determine a new Mayor to run out the last of recalled Mayor Sheng Thao's term that ends in 2026. The race will also determine the replacement in Oakland's District 2 for Nikki Fortunato Bas, who left the seat to assume her role as an Alameda County Supervisor after winning election in 2024. There is also a special half cent sales tax ballot measure, Measure A.
This update will focus on the Mayoral election. D2 is too soon to call, but it does appear to be more likely than not that Charlene Wang will prevail. The lopsided count on Measure A makes it's victory all but certain.
The Vote Tranches:
Tranche 1, Published 8:12 pm : Consisted of about 44,232 votes, those received by ballot box or mail-in in the days before election day. Voters had until April 15 to mail in their ballots, and until 8pm the same day to drop them off at a ballot drop box. That first tranche had more Loren Taylor votes, about 21,658 votes—48.96% of the total. Barbara Lee had 19,819 votes, about 44.8% of the total. A little more than 6% of the rest of the votes were dispersed among the lower voter-getters, with Tyron C. Jordan leading that group, and Trump-supporter Mindy Pechenuk right behind.
Tranche 2, Published 9:25pm: The second tranche came in later that night, the first iteration of day of in-person votes. That was about 4,220 or so ballots for the Mayoral candidates. The race clearly tightened with the second tranche, with Lee gaining almost a full point on Taylor in the straight vote [.9%]. As a result, Lee is only a little more than 2 points behind Taylor in the latest count, after being about 4 points behind with the first count.
Lee received a much higher proportion of these 4.2K votes, about 55%, according to calculations of this publication. If the trend were to continue in this direction, Lee would close the gap on Taylor with enough votes. But whether that trend continues and how many votes are outstanding is an unknown at this point.
ALCO Registrar Updates Received Ballots:
Though many of the Mayoral candidates have appeared more aligned with Taylor than Lee, the RCV breakdowns appear to be splitting the votes between the two front-runners. In ranked choice end result with the current vote tally, Lee is behind by 2.34 from the starting straight vote of 2.52.
Although there won't be another ballot count announcement until Friday, this morning, the Registrar updated the number of ballots received as of today to about 73, 156. That pushes the total number received to just about 30% and suggesting that despite concerns that Oakland's turnout might be much, much lower than usual, it may get closer to a typical voting volume. Ballots post-marked by April 15 have five days to reach the registrar to be considered valid.
Up to yesterday, returned ballot numbers had been quite low, around 20%.
Ranked Choice Voting Impacts:
After the first tranche, the Registrar begins to run the still compiling vote totals in Ranked Choice Voting calculations to suggest potential outcomes. In the final tally, although Taylor is currently prevailing, Lee is getting a larger share of the other candidates' votes than Taylor.
A higher proportion of the ranked choice votes go to Lee in the calculations. Tyron C. Jordan, for example, the lower vote getting frontrunner gives most of his votes to Lee in the final calculation:
The only candidate giving a significantly larger proportion of their votes to Taylor is Taylor-supporter, Mindy Pechenuk, who campaigned as a First/Second slate with Taylor with his apparent awareness and blessing.
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