Brace yourself for a long election night. As in, several days long.
Whether you’re awaiting results of the presidential race, the contest for mayor, or the various supervisor races, there’s a high chance you’ll go to bed Tuesday night — and Wednesday night — without a definitive outcome.
Mark 8:45 p.m. on your calendar Tuesday. That’s when the San Francisco Department of Elections will release its first results. More tallies will dribble out before midnight. Tuesday’s end-of-day count will include vote-by-mail ballots received before Election Day as well as in-person polling.
It’s unclear how many votes elections staff will be able to tally Tuesday night — and the number left outstanding. Previous contests have varied from 78% of all ballot results in the November 2020 general election being released on election night to just 45% during this year’s March primary.
More results will be released daily starting Thursday. They will contain vote-by-mail ballots received after Election Day. Remember, ballots that are postmarked on Tuesday are counted.
SF mayor and supervisors
The last competitive mayor’s race in San Francisco offers some clues as to how long voters will have to wait for results.
When Mayor London Breed faced off against former state Sen. Mark Leno in 2018, the race was called nearly a week after Election Day.
Polling this time around shows a tight race among four candidates — Breed, Mark Farrell, Aaron Peskin, and Daniel Lurie — and no mayoral contender is absolutely sweeping the deck with voters.
Considering the state of the race, San Francisco State University political science professor Jason McDaniel said he highly doubts the city will quickly know who its next mayor will be.
“I would be very surprised if we have a clear winner on election night,” McDaniel told The Standard.
And there’s another element to this race that adds uncertainty to the timing of an official result: In 2022, voters decided to align the mayoral election with the presidential contest. That means a slew of voters who wouldn’t have otherwise voted in a local election may end up participating, McDaniel said, making the mayoral race even more difficult to forecast.
There are also vote-by-mail trends, which make things even harder to predict.
In 2020, the state made vote-by-mail universal. Before that, people sent their ballots through the mail at a rate of about 66%. That number soared in 2020 to about 91% and has remained in the high 80s. Whether that trend will continue in the first-ever post-pandemic general election remains to be seen.
Some of the odd-numbered supervisor contests could also be tight races. In 2020, District 1 voters had to wait five days until incumbent Connie Chan was announced the winner over challenger Marjan Philhour in a razor-thin election that hinged on 123 votes.
Trump vs. Harris
The race you’ve all been waiting for could have a similar timetable to the mayor and supervisor races.
Polls nationwide, including one released Sunday by The New York Times and Siena College, show Donald Trump and Kamala Harris in a dead heat.
But data out of Iowa from renowned pollster J. Ann Selzer on Saturday showing Harris leading by 3 points shocked political observers, who considered the state safely in Trump’s hands.
Democrats have pounced on the poll, saying it portends a potential blowout by Harris in other swing states, though Selzer said in a recent interview she doesn’t know whether it says anything about the rest of the country.
In 2020, pollsters were much more confident in prophesizing a leader in the final days of the election, with President Joe Biden leading then-President Trump by single to low double digits. Even that race took time to call, with the Associated Press declaring Biden the winner four days after Election Day.
“There’s a path that we might know [the winner],” said SFSU’s McDaniel. “If Kamala does surprisingly well in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia, we may be confident that she has a chance. Same with Trump if he does well in Virginia, Florida, Pennsylvania. … We’ll have a good chance to know.”
Noah Baustin contributed reporting.