Just over 23 percent of registered San Francisco voters, or 115,183 out of 495,050 of you, mailed in ballots or went to polling places on Tuesday. And while Mayor London Breed and her $600 million housing bond measure both won easily, a couple of the races remain in ranked-choice limbo as of Wednesday morning.
The two races that we mostly knew would be hotly contested — and which have played out with the most drama in the local media — the district attorney's race and the race for the District 5 seat on the Board of Supervisors, were very close when it came to first-choice votes. And as we have in the last few local elections, we'll have to wait a day or two before a final victor will be declared as the election systems tally those second- and third- and fourth-choice votes.
In the case of both races, Mayor Breed's chosen candidates Suzy Loftus and Vallie Brown did not win majorities of first-choice votes. The progressives' favored DA candidate Chesa Boudin won a plurality of 33%, compared to Loftus's 30.9%, and Brown won 46.6% compared to progressive competitor Dean Preston's 47.4%.
But in both races, preliminary reports of Round 1 of ranked-choice votes give Loftus and Brown leads, when second-choice votes from eliminated candidates are transferred to them. As SFGate reported via the city's midnight election results update, in the DA's race, once candidates Nancy Tung and Leif Dautch are eliminated, Loftus took a 240-vote lead. In the D5 race, Brown led Preston by just under 600 votes, but the Chronicle reported that Preston was ahead by 218 votes after ranked-choice vote counting was "completed." Mail-in and provisional ballots are still being counted.
The picture is clearer for the ballot propositions, which all had fairly predictable results.
Prop A (affordable housing bond) won with 69.5% voting yes.
Prop B (renaming the city's elderly and disabled agency) won with 76.4% voting yes.
Prop C (overturning the vape ban) fell with 80.5% voting no.
Prop D (the Lyft/Uber tax to benefit transit and traffic mitigation) just eked by with exactly the 66.66% it needed in yes votes, because it's a tax.
Prop E (freeing public land for teacher housing) won with 74.5% voting yes.
Prop F (more transparency in local campaign finance) won with 76.5% voting yes.
Jenny Lam easily won her previously appointed seat on the Board of Education, and Dennis Herrera and Jose Cisneros continue to be our City Attorney and Treasurer, respectively.
The Chronicle also has results of local races in Alameda, Contra Costa, Sonoma, Marin, and San Mateo Counties.