Viewer Guide

Tips for Election Night

• Start with the Dashboard — the county filter and candidate bar let you quickly zoom in on the geography or candidates you care about most
• Track your contests on the Digest — one page for all of them, a PDF to share, and alerts for the races you need to watch
• Switch to Changes view — when a new import drops, Changes mode immediately shows which counties just reported and how much moved
• Watch the trend arrows — a green ↑ on a candidate means the latest batch ran above their average; a red ↓ means the opposite
• Check the Method column in Estimates — a county showing "No data" should be read with more skepticism than one with "PRET full"
• Outstanding ≠ automatic margin shift — outstanding ballots don't all break the same way; the projection model is your best read on how they're likely to split
• Refresh the page to pick up the latest import; the SOS feed auto-imports every few minutes on election night. If your administrator has turned on live refresh, a “New results are in” bar offers the refresh, or the page updates itself and says when

What the App Does

The tracker pulls live results from the California Secretary of State every few minutes, organizes them by county and contest, and uses demographic data to estimate how the remaining uncounted ballots are likely to split between candidates.

Think of it as two things running at once:

• What we know — actual counted votes, updated as counties report
• What we project — estimated final totals based on who has returned ballots but hasn't been counted yet

Navigating the App

At the top of every page:

• Search (far left) — finds a contest by any word of its name, its jurisdiction (Statewide, a district, a county) or a candidate's name, in any order and ignoring accents: "Karen Bass" finds the Los Angeles mayor's race. Click a result, or use ↑ ↓ and Enter, to open it.
• Contest selector (beside the search) — switches between races: Governor, Attorney General, and others. The Dashboard, Counties, Estimates, and Head to Head pages update to show the selected contest.
• Page links — Dashboard, Digest and Head to Head, then two menus: Deep Dives (Counties, Estimates, Demographics) and Outstanding (Schedules, Remaining). These are the pages available to all viewers.
• Election (the bar under the menu) — switches between the live election and archived ones, such as the June primary. An archived election shows a yellow banner with a link back to the live one.
• Your name (beside the theme button) — opens your Account page, where you can change your password. Changing it signs you out on every other device. Forgot it? Use Forgot your password? on the sign-in page: it emails you once with a link that lasts one hour, which you use to set a new password.
• Theme button (beside Logout) — switches between following your device, light and dark. Your choice is remembered on this browser.
• Preferred candidates — your organization may mark a candidate in a contest with an eye (or its own icon) beside the name. Hover over it to see whose mark it is. Org managers set them on the Organization page.

The Dashboard, Counties, Estimates and Head to Head headings have a time control. Point reconstructs the race as it looked at any past hour (an amber "Viewing as of …" banner appears); Range shows what changed between a From and a To hour, with projections hidden; Livereturns to the latest data. The choice carries across pages. Estimates offers Point only, since projections belong to one moment; a range shows there as its To hour. The control lists only the days and hours in which the contest's count changed: an update at 9:17 PM is offered as 10:00 PM, the count as it stood then.

Dashboard

The Dashboard is the main election night view. Everything on the page reflects the contest selected in the nav bar.

County Filter

In the top-right corner of the heading, a county filter lets you scope the entire page to one or more counties. By default it shows statewide totals. Click it to open a checklist, select individual counties, and the stat cards, charts, and tables will all update to reflect only the selected counties. Click "Statewide (all)" to reset.

Candidate Bar

Below the nav, a row of candidate buttons controls which candidates are shown on the page. The app pre-selects the top vote-getters by default. Click any candidate to add or remove them, or click Show all to display the full field.

Ballot Counting Cards

Four cards show the current statewide ballot picture:

Running Totals

One card per candidate showing their current counted votes and share of the total. These are real, reported numbers — not projections. A small arrow on each card compares the candidate's share of the latest reporting batch with their overall share:

• ↑ Green — outperforming their average in the latest batch
• → Gray — tracking their overall average
• ↓ Red — underperforming in the latest batch

Hover the arrow for the numbers and the batch's time. It is hidden until the contest has a batch to compare.

Pace to catch up

For candidate races, a strip below the running totals reads each head-to-head matchup: On pace when the trailing candidate nets enough of the remaining vote at the recent trend to overtake, Holding when they fall short, and Out of reach when the lead is larger than the projected remaining vote. It links to the Head to Head page.

Projected Finals

A collapsible section below the pace strip projects the final vote total across the full expected remaining pool (click the arrow beside its title to show or hide it). Each card shows the projected vote, the projected share ± an uncertainty band (~90% interval, wide early and narrowing to nothing as counting finishes), and a projected top-two margin with a "lead exceeds band" / "too close to call" flag.

The Projection Options bar above the cards sets how the remaining ballots are assumed to break — Demographic model, Recent trend, or Blended (the default, most accurate in backtesting) — plus a turnout-scale slider. The chosen mode also drives the projected-vote columns on the County Breakdown, Counties, and Estimates tables.

Share of the vote

Below the projected finals, each selected candidate's share of the vote at every report since counting began, then a cone from the latest report to the projected final share and its roughly 90% band (up to 8 candidates). The cone shows while votes remain to count; once counting is complete only the lines remain. It follows the time control and the county filter, and is hidden in window mode.

Charts

Two charts show how ballot counting and vote totals have evolved over time. Two toggle groups sit above the charts:

• Cumulative / Changes — Cumulative shows running totals at each point in time; Changes shows how much was added since the previous report, useful for seeing which hours had the most activity.
• By Hour / By Day — By Hour (default on election day) shows one data point per clock hour (PDT); By Day shows one data point per calendar date, useful for tracking multi-day counting.

Outstanding Ballots by County

A horizontal bar chart of the counties with ballots still to count, by outstanding ballot count (the top 20 while more than 20 have ballots left). Once every county has finished counting, the chart is hidden. Color indicates how far along each county is:

• Green — 90% or more counted
• Amber — 70–89% counted
• Red — less than 70% counted

County Breakdown Table

A table at the bottom of the page showing every county's outstanding count, % counted, last report time, and per-candidate vote totals. Sorted by most outstanding ballots first.

District Races and Justices

US House, Assembly, State Senate and Board of Equalization races show one district at a time, with a breakdown by the counties it crosses. Judicial retention works the same way, one justice at a time, with Yes and No votes.

While votes remain to count, a Projected final panel shows each candidate's projected share ± a range and projected votes, with a call: the projected winner in a general, whether the top two are set in a primary, or whether a justice is projected to be retained. Each county's remaining ballots are apportioned to its part of the district by the votes counted there and split like that part's recent and overall votes. The range covers about 90% of outcomes, calibrated on June's county results. The All Districts and All Justices tables add the projected leader and call.

Below it, a Share of the Vote chart shows the district's results at every report and, while votes remain, a cone to the projected final share and its range, as on statewide contests.

County Contests

Choose a county in the contest bar's County menu to see its local contests: county offices and measures, cities, schools, special districts, and the county's part of state and federal district races. They come from the county's own results site, so a county appears once its November site is posted, and its contests show no votes until polls close. Each contest page shows its results, a projection where one can be made, and a Share of the Vote chart with each choice's share at every report, plus the cone to its projected final while the contest is projected.

Counties Page

A simpler table view showing the latest snapshot per county: ballots received, counted, outstanding, % counted, and vote totals. Useful for quickly checking the status of a specific county without the chart overhead. In Range mode it shows what each county added between the From and To hours. Long county tables scroll inside their card with the header row and county names pinned.

Estimates Page

The Estimates page shows the same projections as the Dashboard but with full county-level detail.

County Table

Below the Projection Options panel, each row is a county, with each candidate's projected final for the active projection mode. The Method badge indicates the quality of the projection for each county:

Head to Head Page

A focused comparison of the top candidates that ties the live count to the projection.

It covers statewide offices, propositions, countywide county contests, and US House, Assembly, State Senate, Board of Equalization and judicial retention races. A district race shows one district (or justice) at a time, with a picker. Its projection is the district's Projected final (each county's remaining ballots apportioned to its part of the district), its range is the district's wider one, and its county tables list the district's part of each county. The Dashboard's district results link to it.

Matchup cards

The leader vs the runner-up, and — in Primary mode — the runner-up vs 3rd place (the race for the second advancing spot). Each card shows current and projected shares, the vote gap, the net rate the trailing candidate must win the remaining vote by to catch up, the rate the model's recent trend gives them, the projected margin ± band, and a favored / too-close-to-call call.

What the count added

The votes actually counted lately: the latest update, the last hour and the last 24 hours (each ending at the newest change), against the full count. For each window: the votes added, each candidate's share, and the trailing candidate's net, green when it meets the rate they need. In Range mode a Selected range row shows the From → To window.

Path to catch up

For the selected matchup: a pace verdict ("on pace" or "short by S votes"), and when short, the shortfall allocated across counties — showing each county's required additional net (votes and margin-points on its remaining vote). Weight it by Headroom(where the candidate has room to grow: below their best county's share plus 5 points, so their best county still takes some) or Analyst (spread only across counties you mark as in play — uncheck the ones that aren't winnable and their share redistributes). No county is asked for more than the candidate winning all of its remaining vote; the excess goes to the others. A selector switches the race; the table sorts and scrolls across all counties. It is a scenario, not a forecast.

Where the remaining vote is

A sortable table of every county with remaining ballots, with the current and projected vote margin for each matchup — so you can see where the outstanding vote sits and which way it is projected to break.

Digest

The Digest puts the contests you track on one page, each with what changed in the last 24 hours. Each user has their own list, per election.

Tracking contests

• On the Dashboard, a district's page or a county contest, + Add to tracked contests adds it. On a statewide contest it saves the candidates selected in the candidate bar.
• On the Digest, the two + Add menus add a statewide office, proposition, district or county contest, or search for one by contest, jurisdiction or candidate.
• Each contest has a Candidates menu (the top 4 by votes unless you pick, up to 12), ↑ ↓ to reorder, and Remove.

What each contest shows

• Votes counted, and the votes added in the last 24 hours.
• Running Totals — each candidate's votes and share, their gain in the 24 hours and share of the new votes, and the latest-batch trend arrow.
• Share of the vote — each candidate's share at every report since counting began, then a cone from the latest report to the projected final share and its roughly 90% band. The cone shows while votes remain to count; once counting is complete only the lines remain. Hover for the share at any report, or the projection at the cone.
• Pace to catch up (statewide offices) and Projected final (district races, while votes remain).
• Top counties, last 24 hours — up to 5 counties that counted the most votes in the contest, with each candidate's gain and share of that county's new votes.

For an archived election, each contest shows its own last 24 hours of counting.

Filters

Hide called hides contests whose projected lead safely exceeds the uncertainty band, and district races with nothing left to count. Only close shows only contests whose deciding margin is within 1, 2 (the default), 3 or 5 points: 1st vs 2nd; 2nd vs 3rd in a top-two primary; the last winning seat vs the first loser in a vote-for-N contest; Yes vs its threshold for a measure. A line under the header says how many contests are showing, and Show all clears them.

Rewind

Add ?asof= and a Pacific date and hour to the address, for example /digest?asof=2026-06-06T18, to see each contest as it stood then, with the 24 hours before it. The filters and Download PDF follow the same time.

Download PDF and Email & alerts

Download PDF saves the Digest as a PDF in one click, under your organization's name and logo. Email & alerts opens the email settings:

• Email digest — your Digest by email once a day at a time you choose (Pacific; 7 PM to start), with the PDF attached, for the contests ticked Include in my email digest. Skip days with no new votes leaves out quiet days; Send me one now sends it straight away.
• Alerts — tick Alert when this contest changes on a contest for an email when an update could matter: its first results, a new leader, a change in who holds the deciding place, a measure crossing its threshold, a projection call or pace change, or new votes enough to close a third of the deciding gap, 5% of the votes counted, or a 1-point move. Alerts gather a reporting batch for 5 minutes and come at most once every 30 minutes, with every contest that changed in one email. Send me a test alert shows what one looks like.

Emails cover the live election. Every digest email has an unsubscribe link, and every alert a stop-all-alerts link.

How Projections Work

The projection model answers one question: of the ballots that haven't been counted yet, how will they likely split between candidates?

It does this in three steps:

1. Who returned those ballots?

Each day, the state publishes a breakdown of ballot returns by county — how many came from Democrats, Republicans, young voters, older voters, men, women, different racial groups, and so on. For ballots already returned but not yet counted, we know the demographic composition of the people who sent them in.

2. How does each demographic group tend to vote?

The projection can break the remaining ballots three ways, chosen in the Dashboard's Projection Options. Blended is the default — it was the most accurate in backtesting across every contest:

• Demographic model — applies each demographic group's support rate (from the live count, plus a pre-election poll when one exists) to the composition of the remaining ballots
• Recent trend — projects the remaining ballots to break like the most recently counted batches (momentum)
• Blended — a damped recent-trend anchored to the demographic/current-count rate. This captures the late-ballot drift the demographic model alone misses, without the instability of raw recent trend. It needs no survey, so it works on contests with no poll.

3. Apply the rates to the remaining pool

Multiply the chosen support rates by the estimated remaining ballot pool (the voter-universe model early in the count, the SOS official estimated-remaining once available), and add the result to the already-counted votes for the projected final.

Demographics Page

Under Deep Dives. For one county, compares who has returned a ballot so far with who is expected to vote: each group's share of the ballots returned (party, age, gender, race) against its share of the selected voter universe. A positive difference means the group is returning ballots ahead of its share; a negative one means more of its ballots are still outstanding.