I’m not going to follow CA-36 too closely, but I see that the first absentee ballots give Democrat Janice Hahn a 9-point lead over Republican Craig Huey, a real lead of more than 3000 votes. So, Hahn’s doing better overall than the Democratic/Republican patterns in returned ballots had been suggesting, and Democrats have been talking up their ground game – which exists! – over the less-than-mighty Republican ground game in Venice.
Also, with just these absentees in, we’ve got the ballots of around 39,000 voters. In the primary, only 63,584 voters cast ballots. A reminder that if Democrats had roused their base, they could have knocked out Huey in the first round.
UPDATE: Realistically, half the votes are in. I’m calling it:
Janice Hahn (D) defeats Craig Huey (R).
The pre-election poll gave Hahn a 10-point lead in voters who’d already mailed in ballots. and it held up.
