It's not exactly officially official, but after weeks and weeks of cautious waiting, this LA Weekly blog post has gone ahead and called it. Kamala Harris has defeated Steve Cooley to be the next attorney general of California: Kamala Harris Defeats Steve Cooley For California Attorney General. It sounds like LA Weekly got impatient and said enough already. Several weeks after the election with still no final ballot count, they've crunched the numbers, and according to their calculations and projections, everything shakes down in favor of Harris. I'll go along with it:
In order to win the race, Cooley would have to win the remaining uncounted votes by a margin of 66-26. (Update at 2:50: Cooley would now have to win by 72-20.) The likelihood of that happening is extremely close to zero. One of his best counties was Orange County, and his margin there was only 60-31.Everyone else is still playing it safe and hovering around the too-close-to-call zone, but as Harris' lead becomes more significant, other outlets are starting to circle to make the call: Harris edges closer to being next attorney general.
If we knew nothing about the remaining ballots, you might say that Cooley has at least a chance. But we do know where the ballots are coming from -- they're mostly from counties that favored Harris -- and we know that they're mostly provisionals, which have also favored Harris.
We'd expect Harris to win the remaining votes by a tally of about 50-42. That's just based on geography and doesn't factor in her advantage from provisionals.
We now have much more information about how this race will end up than the AP and the L.A. Times did when they called the governor's race for Jerry Brown at the stroke of 8 p.m. on Election Night.
It's time to call it. Harris has won.
If she is indeed the winner, Kamala Harris is the first African American woman and first Asian American attorney general in California, and the first Indian American attorney general in the United States.
UPDATE: Okay, now it's official. In one of the closest statewide races in California history, Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley has conceded defeat. Kamala Harris is the new Attorney General of California: Kamala Harris wins attorney general's race as Steve Cooley concedes