It's common knowledge in San Francisco that "early absentee" voters are more conservative, and as the Election Day votes start pouring in it shifts the results in a more progressive direction. As the City begins to hand-count the Election Day returns, initial numbers released yesterday generally confirmed that trend. Prop A (Muni Reform)'s lead widened from one point to six, and Prop H (parking initiative)'s defeat went from 42-58 to 36-67. But with 9,500 additional votes counted, Prop E -- which would mandate the Mayor's appearance at a monthly Board of Supervisors meeting -- is still behind by three points, which mirrored the early absentee returns. While it will still be a few days before all the votes are counted, initial Election Day votes suggest that Question Time will fail.

Progressives were ecsatic after the polls closed on November 6th, as their two major priorities -- passing Prop A and defeating Prop H -- were winning, even among early absentees. But what was a pleasant surprise was that Prop E -- which Mayor Newsom had raised $80,000 to defeat -- was only behind by three points. The general feeling at the El Rio party was that once Election Day votes were counted, Question Time would pass.

Now that some of those votes have been counted, we have not seen any movement in the progressive direction for Prop E. Mayor Newsom's re-elect numbers have dipped from 77% to 72%, and Quintin Mecke's results have about doubled. Moderate ballot measures like Prop C and Prop J are still leading, but not as much. And, of course, Prop A's slim lead has turned into a healthy margin -- whereas Prop H is getting completely crushed.

More ominous for Prop E is where the votes are coming from. The Elections Department says that we have "46% of precincts reporting," but I was advised that this does not mean all votes in each precinct have been counted -- only that counting has been initiated in 46% of the precincts. But comparing how many votes are from each neighborhood can give us a better idea of who these voters are.

9,540 Election Day votes were counted yesterday. Over 1,000 came from the progressive Mission District, but only 400 are from the Marina. 969 come from the Western Addition -- which votes progressive but tends to have low turnout. In contrast, 833 came from West of Twin Peaks -- a conservative area that traditionally has among the highest turnouts in the City.

The Elections Department will post new numbers every day at 4:00 p.m., but the early returns are not encouraging for Proposition E. Could the Mayor's last-minute hit-pieces on Prop E have been more effective than Don Fisher's attacks on Prop A? Were voters more inclined to support progressives on an issue-based measure like Prop A, than a measure like Prop E that had serious undertones of the Chris Daly-Gavin Newsom rivalry?

Stay tuned ...

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