A Too Early Estimate of District 5
District 5 is the closest race on San Mateo's ballot. Adam Loraine leads Dana Yates Sahae by 15 votes, with Dave Johnson in third, and roughly 40% of the ballots are still to be counted.
The short version
Loraine needs 49.7% of the remaining votes cast for him or Yates Sahae to stay ahead, and so far he has won 50.2% of them. Every scenario below has him winning, by 12 to 235 votes, but that's within what chance (about 95 votes) and late-ballot swings (about 250 votes in 2022) could undo.
Loraine needs 49.7% of what's left
Loraine's share of the votes for him and Yates Sahae (Linhares in 2022). Right of the dashed line, Loraine stays ahead. Most of the ballots still to count are mail ballots.
Source: San Mateo County Elections Office, 2022 and 2026 county updates.
Where the count stands
Loraine leads by 15 votes
District 5 votes counted through the county's 2:49 PM update on November 5.
Source: San Mateo County Elections Office. 5,344 ballots counted, 40.0% of registered voters.
The November 5 update was the first count of ballots that arrived after election night. It added 451 votes in District 5: 207 for Loraine, 187 for Yates Sahae and 57 for Johnson. That moved Loraine from 5 votes behind to 15 ahead. He won 52.5% of the new votes cast for him or Yates Sahae.
What decides it
Johnson has about 20% of the vote, and his share barely changes from one scenario to the next. So the race comes down to how the rest splits between the top two. About 2,300 of the remaining votes should go to Loraine or Yates Sahae, if turnout matches 2022. Loraine needs 49.7% of them to stay ahead. Each point above or below that moves the final margin by about 46 votes.
2022 was a slow comeback
Loraine has been here before. In 2022 he trailed Linhares until the count was well past half done, then pulled ahead as later ballots came in.
Loraine came back in 2022
Loraine's share of the votes for Loraine and Linhares at each point in the 2022 count.
Source: San Mateo County Elections Office, 2022 county updates.
Of the votes counted after November 11, 2022, Loraine won 54.7%.
Four scenarios
- At the current rate: the remaining votes in each precinct split like the votes counted there so far.
- At the mail-ballot rate: they split like the mail ballots counted in that precinct so far, leaving out the in-person votes from election night. Most of the remaining ballots are mail ballots.
- At the 2022 rate: they split the way the same ground voted in 2022, with Linhares's voters going to Yates Sahae. Johnson keeps his current share.
- Like 2022's late ballots: the same, but using only the 2022 votes counted after November 11, when the 2022 count was at about the same point as the 2026 count is now.
Loraine wins every scenario, by 12 to 235 votes
Projected final margin over Yates Sahae. Johnson finishes with about 1,500 to 1,540 votes.
Projection from the county's November 5 count, assuming 2022 turnout.
At the current rate, Loraine holds on by 12 votes out of about 7,570. Counting only mail ballots, which is most of what's left, he wins by 52. If the rest of the count leans his way like 2022's did, he wins by about 235.
The race turns on two of the large precincts. Precinct 26054 is Yates Sahae's strongest by far, and she keeps it in every scenario. Loraine has 42.4% of the two-way vote there after winning 50.8% of the same ground in 2022. Precinct 26052 has the most ballots left to count. Loraine trails there slightly now, but he won the area in 2022 and edges ahead in both 2022 scenarios.
How sure is this?
The votes counted so far are exact. The projected votes aren't. Even if the remaining voters split exactly the way a scenario says, chance alone gives each projection a margin of error of about 95 votes either way. That's the minimum, though. The bigger unknown is how the remaining votes will split, and that has swung much more than chance would from batch to batch. This year, Loraine won 39% to 41% of each batch of in-person votes on election night, and 45% to 53% of each batch of mail ballots. In-person voters leaned toward Yates Sahae (and Johnson), but nearly all in-person votes were counted on election night. Most of the ballots still to count are mail ballots, so the mail range is the one that matters.
The best test is 2022 itself. The two simple scenarios, the current rate (Loraine by 12 this year) and the mail-ballot rate (Loraine by 52), can be run on the 2022 count to see how they would have done:
Simple projections got 2022 wrong
Projected 2022 margin at each point, if the rest of the ballots had split like all the votes counted so far (top bar) or like just the mail ballots counted so far (bottom bar). The dashed line is the actual result, Loraine by 237.
Mail only: Linhares by 9 From November 11 59% counted All votes: Linhares by 52
Mail only: Linhares by 9 From November 14 80% counted All votes: Loraine by 142
Mail only: Loraine by 160
Source: San Mateo County Elections Office, 2022 county updates.
At this stage of the count, the current-rate projection missed by about 300 votes and picked the wrong winner. Leaving out the in-person votes helped, but the mail-ballot projection still missed by about 250 and called a near tie, because the late mail ballots leaned toward Loraine. The other two scenarios can't be tested this way, since they're built from the 2022 results themselves but they exist to explore possibilities based on the limited data available.
A few other things to keep in mind:
- 2022 may not repeat. The late-ballot scenario assumes the voters who carried Loraine late in 2022 favor him over Yates Sahae the same way. The results don't say why those ballots leaned his way.
- Different candidates. Yates Sahae isn't Linhares, and Johnson wasn't on the 2022 ballot.
- Turnout is an estimate, though it matters least. Even the highest likely turnout doesn't change the winner in any scenario (see the details below).
Loraine is ahead in every scenario, but none of them is far enough ahead to call the race. The next few county updates will say more than these projections can. We will know a lot more tonight and Monday night. If Loraine keeps winning more than half of the new votes cast for him or Yates Sahae, his lead should hold. If the next updates show a split of votes that favor Yates Sahae then his lead is at risk.
How the projection works
How many ballots are left
The county doesn't publish how many ballots are still waiting to be counted, so the projections assume each part of District 5 turns out at its 2022 rate. That was the last council election without a presidential race on the ballot, and the district turned out at 64.7%. At that rate, District 5 will cast about 8,640 ballots, leaving about 3,300 to count. So far, 87.6% of the district's ballots have a vote in the council race, so those ballots should hold about 2,890 more votes.
Turnout will probably be higher. Mail ballots received before Election Day came to 28.3% of registered voters, compared with 26.2% in 2022, and in-person voting on election night was up by about a quarter. Depending on how much of that is more voters rather than earlier voting, District 5 could finish at 70% to 78% turnout, with 4,000 to 5,100 ballots left to count. That wouldn't change the winner in any scenario. At 78%, the margins grow by 2 votes at the current rate, 25 at the mail-ballot rate, 43 at the 2022 rate and 118 like 2022's late ballots.
Carrying 2022 results onto 2026 precincts
The county builds each election's voting precincts by combining smaller base precincts, and it combines them differently each time. Because both elections use the same base precincts, each 2026 precinct can be split into pieces that each fall inside a single 2022 precinct. A 2022 precinct's voters, ballots and votes are divided among its pieces in proportion to land area, then added up for each 2026 precinct. The divided totals add back up to the 2022 district results, 64.7% turnout and 51.7% for Loraine.
The 2022 late ballots
The county posted 20 updates during the 2022 count, each with results for every precinct. Subtracting each precinct's November 11 totals from its certified totals gives the votes counted after November 11 there. Those late votes are carried onto the 2026 precincts the same way as the full results.
Projecting each precinct
- Final ballots = registered voters today × the 2022 turnout for the same ground.
- Ballots left = final ballots minus ballots counted so far.
- Votes left = ballots left × the share of that precinct's counted ballots with a vote in this race.
- Each candidate's share of the votes left comes from the scenario. At the mail-ballot rate, it's each candidate's share of the mail ballots counted in that precinct, from the county's split of each precinct's votes into mail and in-person ballots. In the 2022 scenarios, Johnson keeps his current share, and the rest splits between Loraine and Yates Sahae by Loraine's and Linhares's 2022 shares for that ground.
- Final count = votes counted so far plus the projected votes left, summed over the district's six precincts.
Checks
- Matching to the 2022 count by date instead (two days after the election, November 10) gives Loraine by 195 in the late-ballot scenario.
- If Johnson got none of the remaining votes, Loraine's margin at the 2022 rate would be 115 rather than 94.
By precinct
"Two-way" is Loraine's share of the votes for Loraine and Yates Sahae combined.
| Precinct | Left to count | Loraine two-way now | Loraine 2022 | Loraine 2022 late |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 26052 | 917 | 49.5% | 51.3% | 54.4% |
| 26054 | 800 | 42.4% | 50.8% | 55.9% |
| 26057 | 813 | 53.6% | 50.9% | 54.0% |
| 26063 | 625 | 53.6% | 54.5% | 55.0% |
| 26064 | 66 | 52.7% | 48.6% | 52.2% |
| 26075 | 77 | 64.6% | 57.0% | 56.5% |
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San Mateo Election Results by Precinct