LA County said this morning that it has counted more than 3.3 million ballots, with about 618,000 to go. KCRW gets a rundown of the results so far — including for district attorney, LA City Council and Board of Supervisors. What do the votes say about demographics, turnout, and trends.
“In the 2016 general election, 36% of all ballots cast in LA were vote-by-mail ballots. And now we’re looking at 79% of all ballots. … We’re still getting some ballots in because we can in California receive them up to 17 days after they’re post-marked on Election Day,” says Mindy Romero, founder and director of the Center for Inclusive Democracy, which is part of the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy.
Paul Mitchell, Vice President of Political Data Inc., says what’s been interesting is the polarization of people choosing to vote early or late based on their political party.
“A lot of the people that are voting by mail early … were heavily progressive. And they were driven to the polls because they thought the post office was going to have huge lags. Or there was some concern about their ballot not being counted.”
He continues, “On the flipside, Republicans were doing the opposite. They were voting at the polls in the last couple days. In fact, looking just at LA County, the early waves were three to one Democratic. On Election Day, about half of the electorate was Republican. So you have this flip. And it’s going to impact how we watch the votes getting counted as well.”
KCRW also airs a live special short speech by Joe Biden.