California Recall Election 2021: when will the results be official?

On Tuesday Gov. Gavin Newsom secured a resounding victory in the California recall election which aimed to oust him from office. By the early hours of Wednesday morning the race had been called in Newsom’s favour, ensuring that the Democrats avert the worst-case scenario of losing control of one of the most left-leaning states in the country.

However although Newsom’s comprehensive early lead gave the Associated Press (AP) the confidence to call him as the victor the final results, and the margin of the incumbent’s victory, have not yet been confirmed.

When will the California recall election results be announced?

In one of the largest and most populous states, an election of this size was a huge undertaking and with 22 million active, registered voters it could take some time for every single vote to be counted. Stephen Ohlemacher, election decision editor at AP, which has counted the vote in every American election since 1848, said: “Be prepared to wait.”

He continued: “Just because you see the lead switching back and forth, that doesn’t necessarily mean something wrong is happening. And just because it takes several weeks to count all the votes after Election Day, that’s very typical in California.”

Typically Democrats are more likely to use mail-in voting, which was on offer for all Californians for this election due to the pandemic. A poll conducted last week by the Berkeley Institute of Governmental studies found that 77% of those planning to vote in person on Election Day were in favour of recalling the governor.

However now that AP have called the race for Newsom it is just a matter of waiting to see how big his margin of victory was. County election officials have until 14 October to complete their vote counts. The Secretary of State will then issue a statement of the final vote count and certify the results by 22 October.

What is the current vote count?

The margin of victory will continue to fluctuate in the coming weeks but by the early hours of Wednesday morning it was clear that the incumbent had built an insurmountable lead. As of 2:15am, 64% of the 9,127,817 votes counted were in favour of Newsom remaining in office.

The governor had to secure at least 50% of the total vote to keep his job and with 71.8% of the 2018 California election already accounted for, he should do this comfortable.

As expected it was Republican talk show host Larry Elder who streaked away with the second question on the ballot, asking who should replace Newsom. As of Wednesday morning he had secured 46.9% of the second question vote.