Unfolding Politics in California Post-Election

California’s political landscape remains in a state of development, even two days after the polls closed on Tuesday.

The update on voting outcomes from Thursday showed a minor change in both the gubernatorial and Los Angeles mayoral races, though everything still feels pretty static.

With the counting delays being a factor, the race for California’s governor is heating up. Former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra has been closing in on front-runner Steve Hilton, making the primary a tighter contest.

At the latest count, Hilton has maintained a slim lead with 1.5 million votes, which accounts for about 27.2% of the total. Becerra, somewhat unexpectedly, trails closely behind with 26%—that’s approximately 1,444,257 votes. It’s interesting to see how close this has turned out to be.

Meanwhile, billionaire and progressive candidate Tom Steyer sits in third place, holding about 20.2% with 1,122,789 votes counted so far. The count has been sluggish; he still has around 65,000 votes unprocessed at this point.

Turning to Los Angeles, the picture isn’t much clearer. The vote count has been progressing at a snail’s pace, leading to minimal shifts in the mayoral race. As it stands now, Spencer Pratt finds himself falling behind Nitya Raman in a November runoff against Karen Bass, the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder and County Clerk.

The number of votes counted has risen to over 1.4 million, although Pratt’s share has dipped slightly from 29.91% to 29.35%. On the flip side, Raman has seen a minor rise, going from 22.81% to 23.42%. It’s curious how these shifts play out in a tight race.

Bass, for her part, has also seen her percentage climb a smidge, increasing from 34.97% to 35.08%. It seems things are definitely still in flux here.

In a rather telling observation, the California Post visited a sprawling ballot-processing facility on Thursday, noting that many workstations remained empty despite the significant backlog. Over 632,000 ballots are still awaiting counting, illustrating that there’s quite a bit of work left to do.

Los Angeles County only managed to process about 159,000 ballots in the last two days, which feels almost trivial compared to the outstanding total. With thousands of ballots still on deck, updates will be released on weekdays around 4 p.m. until the process wraps up.

Election officials have cautioned that the counting could take days or even weeks, as they take their time to verify signatures and review mail-in ballots thoroughly. It’s a meticulous process, and perhaps that’s for the best, even if it feels a bit slow.