“I Heard That”: Bravo to 3 Dynamic Women - Beyond Chron

Rochelle Metcalfe writes:

"Cohen is a San Francisco native, has worked for Mayor Gavin Newsom, and as a policy analyst for the federal government. This young woman has a bright future. Active in the Democratic Party; received major endorsements in her first run for political office (the youngest to run in Dist. 10)."

Read more at Beyond Chron

Understanding D10 RCV Election Results - Fog City Journal

Steven Hill writes,

Though the results in the ranked-choice race for District 10 Supervisor have not been officially certified by the San Francisco Department of Elections, Malia Cohen, a liberal Democrat, is the presumed Supervisor-elect for the District.

Read more at Fog City Journal and FairVote

Malia Cohen Wins Seat for Supervisor for District #10

SAN FRANCISCO (11/18) – In a long and heated race to represent District #10, of the 23 candidates, Malia Cohen has been recognized by the Department of Elections as the winner of the highly contested race. In a press statement to supporters, Cohen stated, " All District 10 votes have been counted, and our campaign has emerged as the winner in the District 10 race for Supervisor. It will be an honor to serve you and the interests of our community in City Hall..."

Marlene Tran's success shows strength of Asian voters - SFWeekly

"Tran, a retired teacher, had no campaign manager and only a handful of volunteers, and was barely mentioned in mainstream media.  Had Marlene run a real campaign and reached out beyond the Chinese community, she could have won." - SFWeekly

Tony Kelly Concedes the Race to Malia Cohen

From Tony Kelly:

Tonight, I offered my congratulations to District 10's next Supervisor, Malia Cohen. I came in second in the ranked-choice runoff, by a few hundred votes. (The final count is still in the works, and will be certified by November 30.)

New Numbers

I've been told (h/t Steve Moss) that all the absentee ballots have been counted, and now it's just the provisional ballots that are left.

And again, it's changed in the initial round of counting, but if the RCV projections from today hold, Malia Cohen still holds on to win a fairly convincing victory.

BeyondChron has a good analysis of how a candidate can move from fifth place in the raw numbers up to first after ranked-choice voting.

The numbers as of 11/14...

RCV Projections

I spent some time this weekend with the latest numbers from Sunday, and applying knowledge of how many votes go to candidates as gleaned from the preliminary RCV count that came out Friday, determined that Cohen would still be ahead of Kelly at the end, but by a razor thin margin of 50.1% to 49.9%, and separated by only 22 votes in my projected tally. In my calculations, Tran now takes 3rd, Sweet 4th, Moss 5th. My modified RCV-D10.xls

Again, my calculations are guestimates. As new tallies come in, things will likely change again, but Kelly and Cohen are pulling away from the pack at this point. If it ends up close enough, look for Kelly to ask for and get a recount, too.

FYI, the next preliminary RCV results run will occur on Tuesday, Nov 9, and the final tally has to be certified by Nov 30.

Feeling Wonky

If you're really feeling wonky and want to dive into the election results further, try downloading the Excel spreadsheet to get a sense of where votes are going as candidates are eliminated.

http://www.sfelections.org/results/20101102/d10.html

Some interesting things pop out at me from this:

First, I'm glad to see (as evidenced by the low number of exhausted ballots for these candidates) that many of the people who voted for Hampton, Donaldson, Morris, and the other 'community candidates' ignored the candidates' pleas to 'vote for me and only me'. Also interesting that Sweet and Cohen picked up most of these candidates' votes, indicating a sense that they were perceived to also be 'community candidates'.

Eric Smith's endorsement of Malia Cohen didn't seem to help get her many of his votes, as more of his votes went to Kelly than Cohen.

Nearly 80% of DeWitt Lacy's votes go to Malia Cohen, suggesting either a racial or perhaps youth bent to these votes. The progressiveness of Tony Kelly made him the second-highest beneficiary of Lacy's votes.

Almost half of Teresa Duque's votes get picked up by Marlene Tran, despite Duque bad-mouthing Tran for months. This could indicate a racially-based preference, one that should be strongly acknowledged by those running in future races. If Duque hadn't been in the race at all, Tran would have started out with far and away more votes than any other candidate.

Moss' votes go to Kelly 2:1 over Cohen and 2:1 over Sweet, an interesting commentary that people seemed to have voted 'Potrero Hill' over politics, as Moss is more closely aligned with both Sweet and Cohen than Kelly, by far.

Tran's votes also go 2:1 to Kelly over Cohen and 2:1 to Kelly over Sweet, suggesting that her endorsement of him as her #2 paid off.

In Round 19, Sweet's votes go to Cohen 3:1 over Kelly, which is what puts her over the top and makes her the leader in the race. But, with only 150 votes between the first and second place candidates, it would only take Kelly picking up 10 more votes than Cohen each round for him to pull it out, but that may actually be more difficult than one would think.

Keep watching!! There are still plenty of ballots to be counted (late absentee and provisional), so this could all change.