Strickland holds onto a 450 vote lead 1 week after Election Day

The Issue: In one of the closest elections in the state of California this election cycle, Hannah Beth Jackson and Tony Strickland have been competing for the 19th State Senate District Seat.  As of Tuesday Night, Tony Strickland leads by almost 500 votes and now looks like a good pick to be the overall winner.

Monday Night Numbers

The Ventura County Star’s Timm Herdt reported that Tony Strickland took the lead from Hannah Beth Jackson on Monday.  Herdt states that Strickland started Monday losing to Hannah Beth Jackson by 255 votes and finished the day ahead by 540 votes.

Tuesday Night Numbers

According to a source close to the election, the results from all of Santa Barbara County’s roughly 4,000 remaining absentee ballots have been tabulated giving an edge of only 800 votes to Jackson in Santa Barbara County, while all of Ventura County’s 54,000 remaining ballots have yet to all be included in the count.  If you include Tuesday’s share of Ventura County ballots, the count at the end of day Tuesday has Tony Strickland up by about 460 votes.  This doesn’t include ballots remaining to be included from Santa Clarita (expected to support Strickland) and the rest of the Ventura County ballots.

The only hope for Hannah Beth Jackson is the 21,000 provisional ballots from all three counties yet to be counted.  Being provisional ballots, they probably won’t all qualify to be counted and she would have to make up the difference in the lead Strickland is expected to widen over the last days of absentee ballot counting.

Recount

Since it is unlikely that either Jackson or Strickland will pass the .05 percent threshold, an automatic recount will take place.  Public notice was posted for the recount, which will feature 10% of the district’s 600 precincts.  The manual recount starts Thursday, November 13 and could last until the December 1 innauguration.