CA Governor's Race: 6/6 Expectations
I expect Saturday to be a much slower day of counting. California counties reported 39 vote drops on Friday, but we are currently expecting only a handful today. Three key counties, Los Angeles, Orange, and Santa Clara, are expected to report around 5:00 PM PT, though weekend updates are often smaller than weekday releases even in the counties that do drop.
For Steyer, today's results are particularly important. As discussed last night, Democratic performance in the Central Valley and Inland Empire has generally been much weaker than expected, both in the initial vote and in the late-counted ballots. As a result, Steyer increasingly needs even stronger results from his best-performing regions, particularly Los Angeles, the Bay Area, and other major urban counties.
Steyer needs at *least* a 17-point improvement against Hilton compared to the June 2 vote in today's major county drops. Reaching that benchmark would keep him at least somewhat competitive in the race; exceeding it by a few points would make me pretty interested to see what we get in the Inland Empire and Central Valley as the trail continues.
Hilton is likely to lose most of the 8.2-point lead he held Wednesday morning, but he only needs a few things to break his way to hold off Steyer.
One key drop may be Los Angeles today (depending on how many ballots we get). Friday’s drop was extremely blue; if today’s batch shifts back closer to Steyer 15 from the June 2 vote, Hilton would be in a very strong position to hold on.