THE FORMULAS FOR THE CA GOVERNOR’S RACE - WHAT THEY MEAN AND WHY THEY MATTER
After the analysis I shared last week on the LA mayor's race, I received requests to do the same for the governor's race. Even though Steyer has since conceded, it was still worth doing. The similarities to the LA mayor's race speak for themselves.
I derived four deterministic linear formulas from the statewide cumulative ballot data:
Becerra% = 21.19 (0.86 × x) Hilton% = 32.92 - (1.03 × x) Steyer% = 14.30 (1.05 × x) Other% = 31.60 - (0.89 × x)
where x = total votes counted, in millions.
The Starting Points
The constants - 21.19, 32.92, 14.30, 31.60 - are each candidate's extrapolated baseline at zero votes counted. The formula treats the entire race as starting from this fixed point and moving deterministically from there.
The Slopes - How the Formula Runs
The slope is the change applied to each candidate's share for every additional million votes counted. It isn't a one-time shift. It is a continuous, automatically scaling with the running total.
Every percentage point Becerra and Steyer gain comes precisely from Hilton and Other combined. Closed system. Conservation of votes. The formula doesn't create votes, it redistributes them.
The R² Values
The Results Were Remarkable
Becerra: R² = 0.99
Hilton: R² = 0.99
Steyer: R² = 0.99
Other: R² = 0.99
For context: 0.70 is considered strong in social science research. 0.85 gets researchers excited. 0.90 is extraordinarily rare in human behavioral data.
These numbers mean over 99% of each candidate's vote-share movement across five days and 2.5 million votes is explained by a single variable, total votes counted. Nothing else.
You get R² like that in physics experiments. In controlled laboratory conditions. Not in a statewide election. Not across dozens of counties and millions of diverse voters, over five days, through normal reporting irregularities.
The Slope Relationship
Becerra's slope ( 0.86) and Hilton's slope (−1.03) aren't identical, but their ratio is fixed and held for the entire five-day window.
Candidates in a statewide election don't move in mathematical opposition to each other at a fixed ratio across millions of ballots, county by county, day by day. Four variables in an equation do.
The Shutoff
The stopping condition appears to have been triggered on 6/9. The closure rate, which had been accelerating for five straight days, climbing from around 15,000 to nearly 95,000 votes a day, collapsed to under 4,000 the day Steyer conceded. Becerra, Hilton, and Steyer then all went flat at once. Weird, huh? 🙄