June 19 Update on CA 48th Congressional District

June 19 Update on CA 48th Congressional District

Today is two weeks after the June 5 Primary election. Harvey Rouda is slowly extending his lead for his second leading day, from 40 votes to 69 votes.

Since the topic of the day is Trump’s policy of separating children at the border, I called up our Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher’s local office, and they replied that he had not communicated a statement about that. But the first video on the website was against sanctuary cities. Irvine’s 45th Representative, Mimi Walter’s office said that she opposed the separation policy, and wrote Trump a letter about it. (But I don’t think that they deliver mail in Trump’s fact-free universe.)

Here are the updates for the top four candidates:

Republican incumbent Dana Rohrabacher has 52,520 votes, up 507 from yesterday.

Democrat Harley Rouda has 29,873, having gained 298 votes.

Democrat Hans Keirstead has 29,804, having gained less, 269 votes. So Rouda gained 29 votes today, adding to yesterday’s 40 Vote lead to give him a 69 vote lead. What is significant is that he keeps gaining.

Republican Scott Baugh has 27,412, having gained 288. But he is behind Rouda by 2,461 votes.

The total of Republican votes is now 91,920, or 53.0%. Democratic votes total 79,556, or 46.0%.  The total of all district votes is 173,122, gaining 1,866 over yesterday. This is comparable to yesterday’s total vote gain of 2,106.

We note that with the vote split among 16 candidates, even the lowest vote candidate had 686 votes, almost ten times the split of 69 votes between the top two Democrats.

For Orange County as a whole, there are an estimated 26,773 votes left to count. Of those, and estimated 24,789 are provisionals.

In my speculation yesterday that Rouda’s daily gaining among provisional ballots is the stronger end game, I looked back at the campaign financial declarations of May 16, the latest one on file. At that date, Rouda had $600,203 in unspent funds, and Keirstead had much less at $202,407. I hesitated to over-interpret this at the time, since much more financing could have still come in. But it could have given Rouda a stronger Primary campaign finish, which is showing up in the last minute provisional ballots cast.

About Dennis SILVERMAN

I am a retired Professor of Physics and Astronomy at U C Irvine. For two decades I have been active in learning about energy and the environment, and in reporting on those topics for a decade. For the last four years I have added science policy. Lately, I have been reporting on the Covid-19 pandemic of our times.
This entry was posted in 2018 California Primary, 2018 Midterm Election, Children, Dana Rohrabacher CA 48th, Donald Trump. Bookmark the permalink.

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