How Juan Gonzalez won the San Leandro Mayor's office at the end of the counting of votes

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On November 18, 2022, the Alameda County Registrar of Voters released the vote count for nearly all votes cast in the November 2022 general election. After being behind for the entire vote count, Juan Gonzalez effectively won the race. 

How did this happen?


First, from election night through 11/17, the Registrar had reported a total of 13,746 first choice ballots in the Mayor's race. On 11/18, the number of votes reported increased by 6,436 to 20,185 total votes. That was a nearly 47% jump in the reported votes. Another way of looking at the data is that prior to 11/18, all previous vote counts released by the Registrar did not include roughly one-third of the votes that were cast in the race.

Second, Gonzalez decisively took the lead in the the first choice ballots that were released by the Registrar on 11/18. Gonzalez took these votes by 39% to 33% margin. With the exception of the first vote count released by the Registrar on election night right after the polls closed when Bryan Azevedo had a 7.14% lead, the first choice votes for Gonzalez and Bryan Azevedo were more evenly matched as the votes were released by the Registrar - until 11/18 when Gonzalez's support outpaced Azevedo's support.

Consequently, on 11/18 Gonzalez almost eliminated Azevedo's lead in first choice ballots. Azevedo lead in first choice votes dropped from 429 votes on 11/17 to just 16 votes.  

Finally, Azevedo's 16 vote lead disappeared as soon after the Registrar ran the Ranked Choice Voter calculations. Voters of Lee Thomas that cast a second choice ballot favored Gonzalez over Azevedo by roughly a 56 to 44 margin.  

A total of 3,881 ballots from voters that supported Thomas in the first round were transferred to both Gonzalez and Azevedo. Of this amount, Gonzalez received 2,179 of these votes, constituting 477 more second choice votes from Thomas supporters than Azevedo received.

As a result, Gonzalez ended up on 11/18 - after the Ranked Choice Voter tabulations - with a lead of 338 votes in the San Leandro Mayor's race.

Note: On Saturday, November 19, 2022, the East Bay Times reported that 2,000 votes for the entire county remain to be counted. These votes won't change the outcome of the San Leandro mayor's race given the 338 vote Gonzalez has.

Update: On Monday, November 21, 2022, the Registrar completed the counting of the ballots. The final count, e.g. after the Ranked Choice Voting calculations, showed Gonzalez prevailed by 294 votes.  Gonzalez received 10,174 votes (50.73%) verse 9,880 (49.27%) for Azevedo.



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