Updates on the Ranked Choice Voting Results

November 7, 2024 · by Paul Manson · in EVIC News

In a previous post we dove into the initial election results from Portland’s Ranked Choice Voting elections. Each night the Multnomah County Elections office is updating their RCV election results page dand we will update visualizations here.

Things to Keep an Eye Out For

We don’t know how the remaining 130,000 ballots (as of 7:00am on November 7) will change results. They are being processed in the order they were received, and so we are unsure if there is a geographic or any other pattern. But here are the things we are looking out for:

Do candidate rankings make big moves?

So far there have not been any dark horse candidates that make a surge in late rounds to move from the brink of elimination to a final winning spot.

Are preliminary results stable or do later cast ballots have an influence?

Nationally we know there can be shifts in voting totals as ballots are counted. These “blue shifts” or “red mirages” reflect partisan dynamics in vote mode and timing. I suspect we will not movement based on partisan or similar dynamics in our elections. But we might see more motivated or engaged voters casting ballots sooner and then making up more of the initial results. Those that waited longer might rank fewer candidates or have a different pattern of rankings. We do not know if processing of ballots will capture this – but we are looking out for it.

When does it end?

From an election administration perspective, elections are done when they are certified almost a month after the election on December 2. But traditionally candidates concede or news outlets call races. We do not know how those dynamics will play out for Council races this year. Oregon Public Broadcasting called the Mayor’s race for Keith Wilson the night after the election when Rubio and Gonzalez conceded.

Updates below will have a comment each night. The visualizations below the discussions are all current for the most recent update.

November 7 Updates

The new data release on November 7 at 5:10 added 14,825 ballots to the district races (and 20,706 to the mayor’s race that has been called.) No new ballots were added for District 4.