SD 34 Update: Daucher Lead Sildes to 302!

This may just be the BEGINNING OF THE END of the "GOP Takeover" of Central Orange County! After the counting of damaged absentee ballots that had to be duplicated and rerun through the machines, Lou Correa continued to catch up with Lynn Daucher... Here are the latest tabs from the OC Registrar of Voters:

STATE SENATOR, 34th District
Completed Precincts: 377 of 377
Vote Count Percentage
LYNN DAUCHER (REP) 51736 50.1%
LOU CORREA (DEM) 51434 49.9%

EdVoice's Paul Mitchell has more analysis on what we can expect (via Red County/OC Blog):

Correa gained back 59 votes on Daucher, placing the gap at 302. In today’s counting, he led her by a margin of 51.1% to 49.9%. Correa needs to win the remaining ballots by a margin of 52/48 in order to prevail. There are still 12,260 absentees outstanding county-wide. Using previous counts, it can be assumed that this means there are 1,500 absentees to be counted in the 34th. The registrar has increased the likely number of Provisionals outstanding to 5-6,000 in the 34th, meaning that 25%+ of the provisionals were from this district, even though it is only 18% of the registration in the county, and about 14% of the votes on Election Day. The registrar also suggested that only half of these 5-6,000 would ultimately count. This is a much lower rate than in 2004 when only 16% of ballots were rejected. Even though there are two wildly different ways of approximating the number of provisionals to be counted, both methods get you to about 2,500. With a projected 1,500 absentees and 2,500 provisionals to count, it can be expected that we have 4,000 more votes to tally...
The Correa campaign has suggested all along that they will perform very well in the provisional ballots – something that is supported by previous elections. If Correa wins the remaining provisionals and absentees by the same percentage as his election day counts, he will win by 62 votes.

Now I'm not planning to take this as Gospel, just as much as I didn't cry on my bed when another local blogger declared Daucher to be the outright winner on Saturday. I'm simply suggesting that we ALL take a deep breath, and wait for the final results next week. I remain hopeful that Lou can overtake the now very-slim Lynn lead, but I'm NOT EXPECTING ANYTHING!

This is truly the unresolved race that will not end! ; )