The 2022 voting is over, unless you’re in Georgia. We’re still waiting for final counts, but the San Francisco races have been decided. The Election Department has all the numbers.https://sfelections.sfgov.org/november-8-2022-election-results-summary
What could be the last batch of results will be posted Friday, Nov. 17 at around 4 pm. We’ll keep updating this page with post-election news and notes, and as always stay tuned to our Twitter feed.
7:03 pm: Ann Hsu, appointed by Mayor London Breed after the February recall of three board members (one of whom ran again and placed fifth), has conceded to Alida Fisher, who will be the third member along with Lisa Weissman-Ward and Lainie Motamedi.
Who is Fisher and what are her thoughts about schools? Glad you asked, because editor Alex Lash has all the details.
Gracious Gordon Mar
Nov. 16, 5:02 pm: Sup. Gordon Mar has now conceded to challenger Joel Engardio and has shared a statement via Twitter (which somehow is still a thing):
Note how Mar makes reference to affordable housing in District 4, one of the western areas of the city that, given decades of downzoning and not-building, has seen negative housing growth — one of the reasons we’re in a crushing housing crisis.
The supervisor has endured slings and arrows and worse for his efforts to have a more inclusive Sunset neighborhood. Nevertheless, San Francisco is is trouble if legislators can’t get their act together and do a lot, lot, lot more on housing.
Turnout turns high
Nov. 16, 4:48 pm: SF officials counting votes were right all along: The percentage of voters who came to the polls, or mailed in their ballots, or dropped them off and so on, was going to rise like sourdough. The latest figure is 61 percent; contrast that with other midterms, like 2018’s 74.5 percent, 2014’s 53 percent, and 2010’s 61 percent.
Nov. 16, 4:36 pm: Time to put this election in the books. There are but 5,800 ballots left to count, so even as there are a couple of races closer than that, given how little change has taken place in the last couple of days, San Francisco has its 2022 winners and losers.
Incumbency has its advantages, with inevitable exceptions. Joel Engardio will unseat Sup. Gordon Mar in District 4, the first time that’s happened in our district elections since district elections came in a couple of decades ago. (Engardio has run for office several times, so points for perseverance.)
Alida Fisher will take the third seat on the SFUSD’s Board of Education; mayoral appointee Ann Hsu couldn’t hold on, down some 3,500 votes from 1,700 earlier in the week. The mayor’s other two appointees, Lainie Motamedi and Lisa Weissman-Ward, were clearly in about a week ago.
Former Board of Education president Gabriela López, will end up in fifth place and a bit shy of 90,000 votes, which is nearly 40,000 votes more than the support she received when she was recalled in February.
Neither of the housing reform propositions, D nor E, prevailed. Prop D, which sought to streamline affordable housing, fails to pass by more than 5,000 votes. Its competitor, Prop E, bombed by more than 20,000 votes, but if the goal was to confuse people so they’d negate both, maybe that worked.
Note that Mayor London Breed sought to have supervisors approve some streamlining for much-needed affordable housing, but that effort got nixed not once, not twice, but three times. So she went to the voters, only to have progressive supervisors like Connie Chan float a rival proposal. Is it any wonder we’re in a housing crisis?
Over in District 6, Honey Mahogany has conceded to also-appointed Sup. Matt Dorsey. The latter is serving out the term of former supervisor Matt Haney, who’s now representing SF in the state Assembly.
Monday, Nov. 14, 4:48 pm: It’s been nearly a week, and nearly all the ballots have been counted since Election Day Tuesday, Nov. 8. Several races have been close, but by now it’s increasingly clear which way the votes are leaning; just 38,000 ballots are left to count, so if you ran for something and are coming up short, you’ll need a miracle out of a movie to pull off a win.
For Board of Education, Alida Fisher is now ahead of mayoral appointee and incumbent Ann Hsu for the third seat, by around 1,700 votes.
With ranked-choice votes being sorted in District 6, Sup. Matt Dorsey is still above the 50 percent threshold, fending off a challenge from Honey Mahogany, the former chief of staff for former Sup. Matt Haney. But all eyes are on District 4, as Joel Engardio continues to keep his nearly 500-vote cushion over Sup. Gordon Mar. This is an upset, as noted below.
Finally, it’s likely curtains for the mayor-backed Prop D, the housing streamlining measure, where the nays are climbing above 7,000 votes — that’s a gain of around 1,400. (Prop E, backed by progressive supervisors, also is going down, albeit by a much wider margin.)
These numbers don’t lie. Concession calls and statements are probably in their final stages.
DA for two years
5:10 pm: The SF Chronicle is calling the district attorney race for Brooke Jenkins, who now leads John Hamasaki 54 to 46 percent. This will be a truncated DA stint, serving out the rest of Chesa Boudin’s term, the DA who was recalled in June. Jenkins will be up for re-election in 2024.
51–49, that’s my number
Nov. 13, 4:15 pm: With another day of counting, turnout is up to nearly 50 percent. The District 4 supervisor race remains 51 to 49 percent in favor of challenger Joel Engardio. (We’d love to know who those 16 write-in candidates are.)
Prop D also remains behind by the same percentage, 51 percent no to 49 percent yes, but the vote difference is slightly wider today — about 5,600.
And if current trends continue, fourth-place Board of Ed candidate Alida Fisher could soon overtake incumbent Ann Hsu for the third and final contested seat. The gap between the two is now just 0.05 percent, or 272 votes.
It’s possible we won’t know the outcomes of these races for at least a few more days.
Next vote update: Monday 4 pm.
Miles to go
10:30 am: Turnout is now at 45 percent and climbing, and 82,000 votes still to count is quite a handful. But will they change the shape of a few undecided races?
- Prop D, the mayor-backed affordable housing measure, is nearly 4,000 votes underwater. Its rival Prop E, the supervisors’ version, has lost.
- Ann Hsu’s lead for the final Board of Education seat is down to about 1,800 votes over fourth-place Alida Fisher. The lead has been shrinking with each updated count this week.
- District 4 challenger Joel Engardio has a lead of about 400 voters over incumbent Sup. Gordon Mar. D4 is basically the Sunset district; it’s unclear how many votes in this subset are left to count.
Still plenty liberal, if you’re keeping score
Nov. 12, 9:40 am: You’ve probably heard local politicians and pundits proclaim a rightward tilt to our blue-bubble electorate. You also probably noticed that everything not deemed sufficiently “progressive” by the guardians of that label is deemed a product of right-wing manipulation.
Next time you hear that, check how SF voted on the California propositions: 89 percent in favor of enshrined abortion rights, plus landslide votes against more legalized gambling, for public school arts funding, against the Lyft-backed climate tax that would benefit Lyft, and for the law that bans sales of flavored tobacco products. Oh, and don’t forget that SF voted for new taxes or spending for public transit, public employee pensions, libraries, public schools, and to punish owners of empty homes.
How’s that for hard-line liberal?
But as we wrote Wednesday, the SF election wasn’t about progressive or moderate, or left or right. It was by and large a vote for a better city — and in some cases, unfortunately, a lack of robust candidate choices.
Now that we can catch our breath until 2024, let’s hope more people across the political spectrum, with a wealth of ideas and insights, are inspired to run and make SF a better place.
Streamlining deeper in the pickle barrel
4:45 pm: On Thursday the difference between yes and no votes on Proposition D was looking tighter than a Buddy Rich solo at about 1,400 votes, with the nays prevailing. Now that’s grown to more than 2,100.
D is the mayor-backed initiative to speed up affordable housing, cutting red tap for a range of projects (some 100% affordable, some with a lower threshold of below-market units under certain conditions). It would also remove the supervisors from the approval process, which is why the supervisors opposed it.
San Francisco’s housing crisis is exacerbated by our self-imposed bureaucracy and the leeway allowed even a single person for discretionary reviews and appeals. These hurdles add costs to projects and lead to delays, or stymie housing altogether. None of this should be news; in fact, streamlining was a key element for recovering from the COVID pandemic.
It’s not a consolation that the supervisors’ competing initiative, Proposition E, is failing by a wider margin, 55 percent to 45 percent. Did voters get tripped up by the fact that there were two propositions with eerily similar names? That’s a more than reasonable question.
School daze
4:22 pm: Unlike the other races, voters’ preferences for the board of the SF Unified School District are getting more particular, to put it simply. Mayoral appointees Lisa Weissman-Ward and Lainie Motamedi are still comfortable in the top two spots, but the race is on for third place.
Alida Fisher in fourth place is now some 4,600 votes behind Ann Hsu, London Breed’s third appointee; at the last update Thursday afternoon, Hsu was up by almost 7,000 votes. Remember that Hsu was admonished for her comment that Black and brown parents weren’t too concerned about their kids’ academic performance.
Also worth highlighting is that the former board president, Gabriela López, improved dramatically from Thursday, and even from the votes for her opposing her recall in February. Tl;dr our update from Thursday on her tally aged like milk.
Nov. 11, 4:10 pm: After counting 30,000 more votes, SF’s Department of Elections results show that turnout, as expected, is rising, up to 39 percent of voters, and that there are about 110,000 ballots left to count.
What the results don’t show is a significant shift in races. Leaders were still atop their fields, while in some races contenders crept closer.
In the closely watched District 4, Joel Engardio solidified his lead over Sup. Gordon Mar, adding a little padding to his 500-vote lead earlier. In the district attorney contest, John Hamasaki added some 500 votes against incumbent Brooke Jenkins, but still needs more than 17,000 votes to overtake her. The race in District 6, primarily between Sup. Matt Dorsey and challenger Honey Mahogany, is materially unchanged.
The DA takes the win
4:54 pm: In their infinite wisdom 20 years ago, San Francisco voters did away with runoffs between the top two contenders of a race where no single candidate garners more than 50 percent of the vote, and set up “instant runoffs” with ranked-choice voting. This is what’s happening with the race for district attorney.
Brooke Jenkins, appointed by Mayor London Breed after the recall of DA Chesa Boudin, has been leading this week, and now may be over the top as the SF Department of Elections runs through ranked-choice voting.
As of early morning Wednesday, no candidate was over the critical 50 percent threshold; Jenkins led with 48 percent of the vote, and John Hamasaki was second with 34 percent. Now the votes of two candidates placing third and fourth, Maurice Chenier and Joe Alioto Veronese, have been redistributed. The second- and third-choice options on their ballots are tallied and spread among the top contenders.
That has put Jenkins over the critical 50 percent mark, and up nearly 18,000 votes on Hamasaki. What’s more, Jenkins went ahead and declared victory Wednesday:
This looks like another victory for incumbency, as voters were loath to take a flyer on other candidates. In fact, the SF Chronicle did not make an endorsement in this race, calling everyone running “deeply flawed.”
Total recall
4:33 pm: Remember February, when there was a contentious vote over whether three existing members of the SF Board of Education should keep their seats? It may seem like a long time ago, but the voters haven’t forgotten.
Gabriela López, who was president of said board and a supporter of toxic fellow member Alison Collins, was recalled by more than 127,000 votes; around 49,000 voters felt that she should remain in her role. Here are the results from earlier this year:
Undaunted, López decided to run again, and this time has placed fifth, with a smidge more than 46,000 votes so far. (See results below.) Whatever bile and ill feeling were stirred up by the recall, derided as a vendetta by out-of-town billionaires, none of this appears to have improved her numbers much this time around.
4:19 pm: Ballots continue being tabulated and arriving at the SF Department of Elections. At last check, it says 137,000 votes remain to be counted. The midterm turnout figure is growing, but not by much. (As we wrote earlier, the turnout percentage in the low 30s is way down from other midterms, such as 2018‘s 74.5 percent, 2014‘s 53 percent, and 2010‘s 61 percent.)
The closely watched supervisor races haven’t materially changed: In District 4, Joel Engardio continues to lead incumbent Gordon Mar, and in District 6, Sup. Matt Dorsey is still ahead of challenger Honey Mahogany. Both Engardio and Dorsey also are above the 50 percent mark, and the ranked-choice mechanism that makes for an “instant runoff” won’t kick in. Engardio is up by some 500 votes, while Dorsey is up by nearly 1,500.
As for the ballot measures, propositions D and E are still withering. There are about 1,400 more no votes for Prop D than yes votes, while Prop E is going down with approximately 17,000 more nays than yay.
The so-called under votes for each, meaning the Elections Department recorded them as incomplete, is more than 10,000 for each measure. Either voters were confused by the competing initiatives, or they may not have voted properly. (Editor’s note: According to reporter Adam L. Brinklow, the confusion is understandable.)
The leading candidates for school board, for their part, solidified their numbers. The three mayor’s picks are holding on:
Enough with ‘moderates vs. progressives’
2 pm: It’s easy enough to consider the election, if the results remain on track, a big win for Mayor Breed. After all, her recent political appointees all ran for office and are likely to go 6 for 6.
What’s more important, however, is whether the election is a big win for San Francisco. Here’s one way it could be: moderate and progressive labels, often misused and misleading, are breaking down and, we can only hope, start to make room for people to get involved on the basis of ideas and solutions, not factionalism. Our editor in chief Alex Lash has this post-election commentary.
With 100,000 votes to go, Jenkins stakes a claim
Nov. 10, 1:16 pm: Interim District Attorney Brooke Jenkins has claimed victory with a 56 percent to 44 percent lead, telling reporters today she’s “putting the foot on the gas.” Challenger John Hamasaki has not conceded.
Elections officials say there are about 104,000 ballots left to count and add to the 158,000 already counted.
Final update isn’t much of one
Nov. 9, 12:29 am: National returns show the Democrats beating back a red wave and perhaps even holding the Senate. In our little blue bubble, the last update of the night kept the suspense on a few key races.
We won’t know at least until the Election Department’s next update on Thursday who will be SF’s next district attorney, District 4 supervisor, and District 6 supervisor, and the fate of Prop D hangs in the balance as well. That’s the mayor and YIMBY side’s preferred measure to speed up affordable housing. Thanks for tuning in tonight!
Could it be London’s night?
10:30 pm: With another update about to roll in, some tides will have to turn big time to keep Mayor Breed from having a big night. And she’s not even on the ballot.
So far, all of her political appointees —the three Board of Education incumbents, District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, and District 6 Sup. Matt Dorsey — have leads. Jenkins and Dorsey are well ahead. Another progressive and sometime-rival of the mayor, District 4 Sup. Gordon Mar, is also behind by a few hundred votes. He told the SF Standard that the early votes “tend to be most conservative.” (The first round counted included a lot of mail-ins, and now we’re getting deep into the ballots cast at polling stations today.)
Caveat! Less than half of citywide precincts have been counted.
But if everything remained as-is, Breed’s only two “losses” would be Prop C, forcing more oversight of her homelessness department, and Prop H, a change in election year that she vehemently opposed, even though it would give her an extra year before running again in 2024.
The first drop
8:57 pm: A few notes from the first release of the night’s totals from San Francisco — 132,000 ballots counted. The next drop is at 9:45 pm.
- In the SF school board race, the top three vote-getters so far are the incumbents who were appointed this spring by Mayor London Breed. But it’s not a wide margin.
- Brooke Jenkins leads the DA race but not with enough to end the ranked-choice process.
- Among the hotly contested supervisor races, Joel Engardio and Gordon Mar are neck and neck in District 4, and Matt Dorsey has a lead in District 6.
- Among the city propositions, let’s check on the two dueling pairs. First, Props D and E, which both aim to streamline affordable housing.
And now Props I and J, rival measures on the closures of JFK Drive and the Great Highway.
Props I and J: A tale of two last-minute rallies
5:50 pm: One of the most contentious issues to emerge from the pandemic is the closure of SF streets to ban or limit car traffic. It galvanized political will to convert JFK Drive, once one of SF’s most dangerous, into a permanent car-free promenade.
With big backing from the de Young Museum’s former chair Dede Wilsey and its parent organization — claiming economic damage without providing evidence — Prop I aims to return cars to JFK, and to the Great Highway as well.
On the other side, Prop J would codify the supervisors’ April vote.
We’ll soon learn how voters respond, but this afternoon there was a big gap in final get-out-the-vote enthusiasm.
The Prop I campaign called for sign wavers to station themselves at 19th Ave and Lincoln, a major park entrance. As of 4:30 pm, there wasn’t a soul.
The Prop J campaign scheduled rallies in the Inner Sunset and Cole Valley. At Cole and Carl streets, four Yes-on-J’ers waved signs and chanted for the riders of an N-Judah that had just pulled up.
In the Inner Sunset, two Prop J backers were on the corner of 9th Avenue and Irving Street when Denise O’Sullivan rolled up and joined them, noting that SF’s slow streets have made her feel safe enough to bike.
Put a stamp on it
4:30 pm: A few things to note about the Election Department’s latest data as of yesterday:
- 27 percent of 501,000 ballots have been mailed back, which will certainly rise as late ballots arrive. But it might foreshadow a lot less use of mail-in than previous big elections. In the main 2018 and 2020 elections, the final mail-in tallies were 78 percent and 68 percent.
- Elon Musk is advocating for Republicans on Twitter. So, for the record: SF has 33,500 registered Republicans, or 6.7 percent. The highest percentage, by district, is 9.7 percent (District 2) and 9.2 percent (District 4). The lowest are 4.3 (District 9) and 3.2 (District 8).
- Democrats dominate SF voter registration at 63 percent. The next highest party isn’t a party. No preference or unknown comes in at 27 percent.
Just a little patience
3:29 pm: There’s plenty of early and mail-in voting, but a reminder here that election staff can’t start counting votes until polls close. Other factors such as same-day registration and late-arriving ballots can slow the process, which means close races that might otherwise be called quickly could take a while. This is not a secret, and, despite the best efforts of election deniers and conspiracy theorists, our officials know how to deal with it.
CalMatters has a great summary of how it all works.
Breed lauds election workers
2:57 pm: At the weekly Board of Supervisors meeting, Mayor London Breed appeared virtually to take questions. (Something she does once a month.) She started the session with a shout out to SF’s election workers: “we have faith” in the process and the outcomes, unlike in so many other places across the nation these days.
Some context: Breed also likes our election schedule the way it is. She has come out swinging against Prop H, which would shift SF’s elections for mayor, district attorney, and three other offices from odd years to even in an attempt to boost turnout. This would give Breed, up for reelection in 2023, an extra year in office, but she has worried publicly that it would shift power to the city’s progressive wing — and away from her.
Voting is one of the four things we flagged earlier today, as we like to do before an election, that give us some optimism about San Francisco. (With caveats, of course.)
How long will this take?
2:07 pm: If you’re finishing work — or whatever you do in the afternoon — and curious how long the wait might be at your polling place, the city has an app — or a map — for that. If you haven’t registered yet, no problem! California allows same-day registration.
Another Newsom housing promise
1:52 pm: After voting in Sacramento, Gov. Gavin Newsom says he’ll focus on housing in his second term, according to the Chronicle. He also promised to focus on his housing in his first term — remember the famous pledge of 3.5 million new homes? It’s been hard to live up to.
Turning out the turnout
Nov. 8, 1:09 pm: This is a midterm election. As of Sunday night, turnout via early voting was lower than the 2018 cycle at the same point. Here are SF’s final turnout numbers for the previous three midterms:
The SF Department of Elections will drop its first preliminary report at 8:45 tonight.