election

Taylor leads Thao in Oakland mayor's race with thousands of votes still to count

ByAnser Hassan KGO logo

Friday, November 11, 2022

Taylor extends lead in Oakland mayor's race

Oakland City Council member Loren Taylor leads with 53 percent of vote in the mayor's race ahead of Sheng Thao.

OAKLAND, Calif. (KGO) -- The race for Oakland mayor hasn't been decided but the latest numbers released Thursday evening have Oakland City Council member Loren Taylor in the lead with 53 percent of the vote, ahead of Oakland City Council President Pro Tem Sheng Thao, who has 47 percent.

These numbers are based on ranked-choice voting.

Since early results were released Tuesday night, Taylor has consistently held a small lead against Thao, but often by just around 2,000 votes.

Taylor's current 22,240 votes account for a total of 41,715 ballots counted thus far. For comparison, 158,000 total ballots were cast in the 2018 Oakland mayoral election.

The Alameda County Registrar of Voters Tim Dupuis says not all the ballots have been counted, and they still don't know how many ballots are left.

"Those (ballots) that were dropped off very close to Election Day haven't been counted yet, and those are what we are starting to process right now," he said Thursday afternoon.

Dupuis anticipates 40-50 percent voter turnout countywide, which he says is about average for a midterm election.

The vote for Oakland mayor is done by ranked-choice voting, which adds to the process.

VIDEO: Confused about ranked-choice voting? Here's how it works

Those second and third choice selections in ranked-choice voting could become really important in an election.

In ranked-choice voting, the person will the fewest number of votes is eliminated. Voters whose candidate is eliminated, then have their second choice counted. The process continues with third, fourth, or fifth votes until a candidate reaches a majority.

"Those votes are going to come in, and then we are going to run the algorithm on the ranked-choice votes, and we will see then who appears to be winning at that point of the election. But we still have a lot more votes to count," says Dupuis.

Dupuis says his team will be working through the weekend. He says they hope to have a big update on Monday, adding that the figures released on Monday will likely be closer to the final count.

Stay with ABC7 News for the latest election news here.

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