Election live updates: Predictions and what to watch in SF

Election Day is upon us. Voters nationwide and in San Francisco are watching with bated breath (or trying not to watch at all) as the historically close and high-stakes races are counted. 

Pollsters generally have Vice President Kamala Harris and Donald Trump tied for the presidency. The San Francisco mayoral race is also close, with Mayor London Breed and top challenger Daniel Lurie seen as top contenders in a battle that could come down to just a handful of votes. But with ranked-choice voting, Mark Farrell or Supervisor Aaron Peskin could still win the day.

Races we’re watching: Voters will decide on Proposition K, which aims to permanently ban private vehicles from a 2-mile stretch of the Upper Great Highway between Lincoln Way and Sloat Boulevard. Supporters of Prop. K back the creation of a new park. 

Also on deck is Prop. D, which aims to dramatically reduce the number of city commissions to a hard cap of 65, while expanding mayoral powers. Prop. E, a similar but competing proposal introduced by Peskin, was put on the ballot as a “poison pill” to thwart Prop. D, according to its opponents. If both measures pass, the one with more votes will become law. It has become the most expensive ballot measure fight in this year’s election.

And then there is the hotly contested battle for District 5, where incumbent Supervisor Dean Preston is facing off with main challenger Bilal Mahmood, a tech entrepreneur and relative newcomer. The supervisor race is one of the most expensive ever, with more than $1.5 million in total contributions. 

Also worth keeping an eye on is the race for District 1, where Supervisor Connie Chan is challenged by moderate Marjan Philhour, who ran for the seat in 2016 and 2020, losing to Chan in the latter year by 123 votes. Will her third run for office be the charm? 

This story will be updated with local and national election results as and when they come in. Refresh for updates from across the city, where we’ll be attending candidates’ events, bouncing around watch parties, and bringing you up-to-the-minute vibe checks.  

As it turns out, San Francisco homes’ garages do more than host parked cars, band rehearsals and tool benches. On Election Day, some of them become workshops of democracy.

In one of the peculiarities of city life, voters can volunteer to host polling places at their homes. There are 501 polling sites open in San Francisco today. Those include schools, firehouses, community centers, businesses and 163 garages, Department of Elections Director John Arntz told The Standard in an email.

— George Kelly

A Redditor spotted a Waymo driving through San Francisco Tuesday with a Daniel Lurie placard tucked on the inside of its windshield.

“Now that’s something I haven’t seen before,” Lurie spokesperson Max Szabo said when reached for comment. “Must have been a supporter.”

The Redditor in question, Sophia Tung, later told The Standard she saw the sign on her livestream, which is trained on the Waymo lot at 250 Second St. in SoMa. (As it happens, Tung is something of a Waymo superfan. She even dressed up as a self-driving car for Halloween, spinning, roof-mounted lidar and all.)

Commenters chimed in saying they’d seen the same car over the weekend, meaning the placard has likely been an unwitting Lurie billboard for at least two or three days.

If you see any other vehicles deputized as mayoral campaign surrogates, let us know!

— Astrid Kane

On Clement Street in the Inner Richmond, babysitter Allison Jung wore a “Trump 2024” T-shirt that read “I’m voting for the felon.” The San Mateo County resident said her life was much better under his presidency. “Lots of my friends are afraid to say they are supporting Trump,” she told The Standard. “I am not ashamed.”

— Han Li

When you’re explaining, you’re losing. It’s an old adage that I’ll bet former mayor Mark Farrell hasn’t heard, because he’s decided to explain his latest ethics scandal to potentially thousands of households across San Francisco.

Just this morning this reporter found campaign literature hanging on my front door with a full page letter where Farrell explains that his latest ethics snafu is a mere “accounting error.”

We covered it extensively yesterday, but the short version is this: Farrell signed a settlement with the city’s ethics commission, and agreed to pay $108,000 after the commission found he was illegally double dipping into a ballot campaign account, to help his mayoral run.

The crazy thing is that given the deluge of news about former President Donald Trump and vice president Kamala Harris, there’s a real possibility some voters would not have heard about Farrell paying the highest-ever ethics commission settlement in San Francisco history. Now his letter ensures everyone will be googling “What the hell did Mark Farrell do now?!”

Happy voting.

— Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez

Mayoral candidate Daniel Lurie is the beneficiary of a hefty, eleventh-hour contribution. Jean-Pierre Conte, who is the chairperson of a nearly $50-billion investment firm chipped in $100,000 to help the Levi’s heir on Tuesday, just weeks after he had contributed the same amount to former interim mayor Mark Farrell.

Rev. Dr. Amos C. Brown, senior pastor of Third Baptist Church in San Francisco, told The Standard that he was in the nation’s capital to support a high-profile parishioner. “I’m in D.C. here with my member, the vice president,” Brown said, referring to Kamala Harris.

“I’m profoundly concerned about the destiny of this nation,” Brown added. “I’m concerned about how we have lost any civility,” he added, referring to Yale Law School professor’s Stephen L. Carter’s 1998 book “Civility” on the etiquette of democracy.

In the wake of Harris’ acceptance of the Democratic nomination, Brown called for community members to join in 100 days of prayer in the run-up to election day.

During those days, he said the primary issue he heard about from church members was about “the overwhelming number of people in this society who do not see us Black folks as human. You know, John Steinbeck said [in his novel “The Winter Of Our Discontent”] ‘I want to know how many people in my lifetime I’ve looked at, but never seen.'”

Brown, who said he expects to attend an election-night watch party tonight at Howard University’s Washington, D.C. campus, said that he keeps thinking of Third Baptist Church’s founder Eliza Davis, an enslaved woman who managed to buy her freedom alongside her husband Russell before moving to San Francisco in the early 1850s.

“We’ve always affirmed women in leadership. We’ve got women deacons in Third Baptist, we’ve got women preachers,” Brown said, before referring again to his member, Vice President Harris: “She’s a member of Third Baptist, because she saw a spiritual community that was inclusive.”

— George Kelly

Early on Election Day, just after sunrise, half a dozen men sat at the counter inside Clooney’s bar nursing beverages and catching up with Monday Night Football’s Kansas City Chiefs victory over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

In between a local television station airing political ads slamming local candidates and promos featuring Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Trump, San Francisco native Dave McLaughlin sat near an empty shot glass and a mostly full draft beer and watched the screens.

“I just hope we have a switch and and Trump gets the hell out,” McLaughlin said, adding that he mailed his ballot in three weeks ago.

“And with this New York trial, I hope he goes to jail,” he added, referring to a sentencing in a hush money case where Trump was convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records. A second term for the former president could make it harder to impose a sentence on Nov. 26 in Manhattan.

— George Kelly

Six supervisor seats are up for grabs this election, and people seem particularly animated about the contests in District 5 and District 3. 

“I predict that if London Breed and Dean Preston win reelection, District 5 residents will suffer. The animosity that Preston has for Breed is beyond repair,” Jones Allen said.

With District 3 Supervisor Peskin termed out, six challengers are vying to be his replacement. Each has pitched what they believe are priorities for the district, which includes North Beach, Chinatown, and Fisherman’s Wharf. 

Jordan Bowen thinks Danny Sauter has the best shot at winning the District 3 supervisor seat, pointing to an appeal to younger voters who are calling for more housing development and endorsements from prominent Democratic party organizations.

Sauter’s challengers seem to recognize him as a serious contender, with several candidates coordinating to deny him victory, the SF Examiner reported last month.

“Danny will win this,” he said.

— Garrett Leahy

Former interim Mayor Mark Farrell and Levi’s heir Daniel Lurie are the most serious contenders for mayor, according to an unscientific poll of Standard readers published Saturday.

Respondents showed the most confidence in Farrell, with 1,046 predicting he will emerge victorious after Tuesday’s election. In second place was Lurie, with 824 people betting he will be the city’s next mayor.

Other polls have shown Lurie’s standing in the mayor’s race skyrocket in the months leading up to the election, borne by a wave of campaign spending far surpassing his opponents.

Peter Johnston, who said his top issues are housing and public transit, thinks the wealthy political outsider will outperform his opponents thanks to the city’s ranked-choice voting system. 

“The other three top candidates are too polarizing to draw enough second-choice votes,” Johnston said. “Breed is my obvious first pick, and Farrell and Peskin are both utterly disqualifying given my values.”

Nick Podell made a similar prediction.

“Daniel Lurie wins in RCV round 4,” he said.

— Garrett Leahy

Dozens of people packed out Manny’s on Valencia street on Monday night in preparation for Election Day over a plate of Zuni chicken and a floral white wine.

Supervisor Matt Dorsey even poured refills for the crowd gathered in the cafe that’s well-known for its political events.

People traded predictions, consoled anxieties, and prepared for the expected chaos for what was shaping up to be yet another close presidential election.

Castro resident Maura McGinn waited patiently in line with a camouflauge Harris – Walz hat. Rejuvenated by the recent Iowa poll showing the Democrat taking a surprising lead over Donald Trump, she said she was optimistic for Kamala Harris, but less so for her mayoral pick London Breed.

“I think the House, the Senate, and a lot of the local propositions have been sacrificed due to the national election. I think that’s where a lot of the energy is for the average voter,” said McGinn, who spent her Monday campaigning for the incumbent mayor.

McGinn worried that the doom loop narrative about San Francisco would sink Breed’s chances at winning, despite what she see as the mayor’s successes.

“My friends in Amsterdam or even North Carolina ask me if I feel safe in San Francisco. I think people bought into that safety narrative locally as well,” said McGinn. “Only recently have people noticed what [Mayor Breed] has done. I say don’t make perfection the enemy of great. Unfortunately I think Lurie is going to pull through because of this.”

— Sam Mondros

Two people who said they were campaigning for Trump, alongside a woman they said was homeless as a result of Democratic policies and a man who was filming, came to the Democratic headquarters in downtown San Francisco Monday afternoon.

Although the Trump supporters claimed to be there to “convert people to the other side,” the encounter escalated as they refused to leave. Eventually, the group, which declined to give their names, was escorted out by security after the interaction, which almost turned into a shoving match.

One of the men appeared to be YouTuber Danny Mullen, who describes himself as a comedian on social media and posts videos of himself “raiding” cities and college campuses. Mullen did not respond to The Standard’s request for comment.

— Amanda Andrade-Rhoades