About these results

How the numbers get here

Source. Every figure comes from the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk's public results feed (results.lavote.gov). This site checks the feed on the county's published update schedule. Each time the county posts a new release, the site saves a copy and compares it with the previous one.

When results change. The county posted the first results shortly after polls closed at 8 PM on election night (November 3) and added more through the night. Since then it has posted updates on a schedule while it counts mail, drop-box and provisional ballots, ending when it certifies the results (planned for November 27). Standings can change during that time, especially in close races.

Totals by race.

"Winning" means currently winning. Blue marks candidates in a winning spot (the top vote-getters, as many as there are seats), or measures above their threshold, in the latest count. None of it is final until certification.

Projections: where the count is heading

The Santa Monica race and measure pages, and the LA Mayor page, show where each contest could finish once every ballot is counted. The Malibu City Council and State Senate District 24 pages don't have a projection. This is arithmetic on stated assumptions, not a statistical forecast, and it carries no odds.

1. How many Santa Monica votes are left. LA County publishes an estimate of ballots still to be counted after each update, but only for the whole county. We assume Santa Monica's share of the uncounted ballots is the same as its share of the votes counted so far. The results feed reports votes rather than ballots, so Santa Monica's share is votes on its largest city measure divided by votes for the countywide contest with the most votes (Governor this year). The county's estimate is in ballots, so we first convert it to Governor votes at the current rate of Governor votes per ballot counted (about 0.98). Santa Monica's share of that gives its remaining votes on that measure, which we scale to each contest by how many votes it has drawn so far compared with that city measure.

Before the county's first estimate (usually the day after the election), we assume the election-night count is 47% to 59% of Santa Monica's final vote. Those were the shares in 2022 and 2024. This gives a range of remaining votes, not one number.

For the SMMUSD and Santa Monica College contests, which include Malibu, we assume Malibu's remaining share matches Santa Monica's.

The LA Mayor page uses the same method for the City of Los Angeles, with votes in the mayor's race as the city's share of the count. It has no election-night assumption (the 47% to 59% range is Santa Monica's history), so its projection appears only once the county has published an estimate.

2. How the remaining votes split. We use two scenarios. In the first, the remaining votes split the way the most recent votes did: the latest releases, pooled until they cover at least 5% of the votes counted so far in that contest, so one small release can't decide it. In the second, they split the way everything counted so far did. The projected range covers both scenarios (and both ends of the remaining-vote range, when there is one). A candidate shown in blue finishes in a winning spot in every scenario, one in plain gray misses in every scenario, and one in bluish slate gray could go either way, depending on the scenario.

3. Limits. Ballots counted late can split differently from both scenarios. Late ballots include provisional ballots and mail ballots that arrive up to seven days after election day if postmarked by then. The county's estimate leaves out mail ballots it hasn't received yet, and it changes as counting goes on. We copy each estimate from the county's update news releases, and the page shows the date of the one in use.

LA Mayor: low, middle and high finish

Once the county has posted an estimate of ballots left, and the county's ballot counter covers at least three releases since election night, the LA Mayor page replaces the two-scenario projection with three cases: low, middle and high. Each case is plain arithmetic: the final vote is the votes counted so far plus the votes still to count, split a given way. There are no odds and no error bars, and everything is recalculated from the county's numbers with every release and every new estimate. The margin is shown in points: the leader's share of the two-candidate vote minus the runner-up's.

Ballots left countywide. The county's latest estimate, less the ballots it has counted since, from the county's ballot counter. If the latest release has no counter yet, the ballots counted since the last counter are estimated from Governor votes.

Los Angeles's share of those ballots. The ballot counter shows, for each release, how many ballots were counted countywide and how many had the mayor's race on them. That share changes from batch to batch, so the cases use three readings of it: every ballot counted since election night; the latest releases, pooled until they cover at least 5% of the race's ballots (a release without a ballot counter is pooled with the next one); and a straight line through the batch shares, weighted by batch size, read at the middle of the ballots still to count. That is, the trend reading assumes the share keeps moving the way it has been. Votes left = ballots left × that share × the votes cast in the race per ballot since election night.

How the votes left split. The same three readings of the leader's share of each release's new votes: everything since election night, the latest releases (pooled the same way), and the release-by-release trend line read at the middle of the votes left. One case pairs the two "since election night" readings, one the two "latest" readings, and one the two trend lines. The labels Low, Middle and High rank the three by final margin, so they follow the numbers: which pairing is "High" can change from one release to the next.

The 10-point question. The page also gives the leader's share of the votes left that would produce exactly a 10-point margin: (0.10 × (votes now + votes left) − lead now + votes left) ÷ (2 × votes left). It also shows what happens if the county finds as many extra ballots as its largest upward revision so far. That is not a ceiling: a later revision could be bigger.

What it can't see. Election night ends with the last release before 4 AM on November 4. In-person (CVR) and provisional ballots are a small part of what's left. Only a few thousand of them are in the releases since election night, which are mostly mail ballots, so they may split differently. The county can revise its estimate, and some ballots are rejected or cured.

Cost per vote (City Council)

The City Council page divides the money spent to help each candidate by the votes they have received so far. "Money spent to help" is the candidate's own campaign spending (Form 460, line 11) plus independent expenditures by outside groups supporting them, as compiled by this site's Follow the money section. Outside spending against a candidate is listed but not counted in their figure. The vote count is the latest county release, so the figure goes down as more ballots are counted.

The two kinds of spending cover different periods. Candidates' last pre-election reports end on October 17; their spending after that appears in reports due January 31, 2027. Outside groups report within 24 hours near an election, so their figures run through Election Day. The page states the dates in use. Before each update, the numbers are checked: every council candidate must match between the two sections, the outside-spending rows must add up to each candidate's totals, and the race total must equal the one on Follow the money; otherwise the page keeps its previous figures.

How the data is checked

The county is the only source for live results, so nothing here can be confirmed against an independent count until the county certifies. These checks catch mistakes in how the site collects, copies and publishes the county's numbers.

Each time the site collects results:

Each new release is compared with the earlier ones. The comparison flags any candidate or choice whose vote total went down since it was last reported, and any that first appeared after counting began. Totals should only go up while the county counts, so a decrease points to a county correction or a collection error. The release is still published, because the county's numbers are the official ones, but the affected race or measure is marked Pending review, with the totals involved, until a person checks it. If a race, measure or candidate disappears from the county's latest release, the site doesn't publish that release: the last good version stays up until a person checks.

Before each update goes live:

Ballot counts (ballots cast in each race, ballots left blank, and the countywide mail and vote-center ballot totals) come from the same county results site: they're the counts its own results page displays. They're available from November 4 on. A release's counts are used only if they add up: each contest's fully voted, partly voted, blank and overvoted ballots must equal its ballots cast; its candidates' votes must equal the results feed's totals for that release; and countywide, mail plus vote-center ballots must equal the total. Counts that fail are left off rather than shown.

Precinct totals (for the precinct maps): for contests voted on only in Santa Monica, the site compares the precincts' combined totals with the results feed. The precinct file reader also checks that each precinct's in-person and mail votes add up to its total. For contests entirely within Santa Monica, it also checks that the precincts add up to the county's grand total. It was tested on the certified November 2024 precinct files, and its totals matched the county's exactly for City Council, the school board, District Attorney and Measures F, K, PSK and QS.

Names are copied from the county's ballot list. Only the capitalization is changed, so the names match the campaign finance pages.

What isn't checked: no one reviews each release by hand before it's published (only decreases are flagged), and the projections depend on the county's estimate of ballots still to count, which the site copies from the county's news releases.

Precinct maps

The county publishes precinct-level returns as PDF and Excel files, usually starting the day after the election, and updates them less often than the main results feed. The precinct map and the maps on the regional pages use the newest file, drawn on the county's 2026 precinct boundaries. Each map says which results release the file matches. The first file this election matches the election-night count (the 3:11 AM release on November 4), so until the county posts a newer one, the maps' totals and turnout are lower than the race pages', which include every update since. Streets on the map come from OpenStreetMap (© OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL).

Beyond Santa Monica

The LA Mayor, Burbank, Malibu City Council and State Senate District 24 pages use the same county feed and the same checks as the Santa Monica pages: saved copies of every release, flags on any total that goes down, and no publishing if a contest or candidate disappears. Their totals cover the whole city or district, not just the part that overlaps Santa Monica.

Their precinct maps come from the county's precinct files. For Los Angeles and the senate district, a few ballots in those files aren't assigned to any precinct (a few dozen out of hundreds of thousands), so a map's precincts can add up to slightly less than the race's total for the same release. Each map lists any precincts in the file that aren't on the boundary map.

Only the LA Mayor page has a projection (see above). The Burbank, Malibu and senate district pages show the count so far. The Burbank page has every Burbank contest on the county's ballot (City Council, City Clerk, City Treasurer, the Burbank Unified Trustee Area 3 seat and Measures C, CC and CD). Its precinct map covers the contested races and the measures, one at a time, from the same county precinct file; the school board map shows only the four precincts in Trustee Area 3.

Money. For who paid for each race, see .