SF district attorney’s race tightens, Loftus lead shrinks to 879 votes

The lead for San Francisco’s Interim District Attorney Suzy Loftus in the district attorney’s race has shrunk significantly in the last 24 hours. As of Thursday at 4 p.m., Loftus is only ahead of candidate Chesa Boudin by 879 votes. 

The race has been a roller coaster since Tuesday’s election night when early counts had Boudin ahead of Loftus by less than 2,000 votes. However, after other candidates were eliminated and ranked choices were accounted for, Loftus had made a small comeback by midnight Wednesday. By the end of Wednesday, the Department of Elections reported Loftus was up by 2,205 votes.  

Boudin currently has 67,037 votes while Loftus has 67,916 votes, but 38,000 ballots have yet to be counted, according to Department of Elections Director John Artnz.

Of the remaining ballots, 24,800 are mail-in ballots voters returned through Election Day, 12,500 are provisional ballots and 500 are conditional voter registration ballots. Arntz said he expects the department to finish counting the majority of mail-in ballots Friday. Processing of provisional and conditional ballots is expected to begin Saturday. 

In another close race, Breed-appointed Supervisor Vallie Brown is trailing behind candidate Dean Preston. Preston leads Brown by just 35 votes as of Thursday.

Of the 12,500 provisional ballots still to be counted, approximately 1,880 are from District 5.

Jerold Chinn

Jerold serves as a reporter and San Francisco Bureau Chief for SFBay covering transportation and occasionally City Hall and the Mayor's Office in San Francisco. His work on transportation has been recognized by the San Francisco Press Club. Born and raised in San Francisco, he graduated from San Francisco State University with a degree in journalism. Jerold previously wrote for the San Francisco Public Press, a nonprofit, noncommercial news organization. When not reporting, you can find Jerold taking Muni to check out new places to eat in the city.