New vote totals posted Thursday and Friday have pushed a city of San Diego sales tax hike further from approval, casting doubt on predictions by ers that late-counted votes would help the tax hike .
Measure E — a 1-cent sales tax increase that would generate about $400 million annually — was trailing by 8,410 votes in the vote totals posted Friday evening.
That’s a larger deficit than the 7,032-vote gap posted Thursday night and the 5,262-vote gap posted early Wednesday morning — the last of four vote total updates posted during Election Day and the morning after.
ers said Wednesday they expected Measure E to sur the simple majority it needs for approval because of city voting trends in recent years and a rush of late spending by ers on ads and mailers.
More conservative, anti-tax voters in the city have previously tended to return their ballots early, while liberal voters less opposed to tax hikes have tended to return their mail ballots later.
That trend helped 2022’s Measure B, a city ballot measure that asked voters to let the city begin charging a fee for trash pickup at single-family homes.
Measure B trailed by 2,017 votes the morning after Election Day and ended up getting approved by a margin of 3,839 votes.
Measure B also got off to a rocky start during the first two post-Election Day updates posted in 2022, losing ground in both. But that measure started to rapidly gain ground with the third update.
That makes it vitally important, from the perspective of ers, for Measure E to gain ground in the Saturday vote update.
Election officials’ Friday update didn’t include any significant changes to other city races.
Incumbent Mayor Todd Gloria and incumbent City Council Sean Elo-Rivera and Stephen Whitburn maintained their significant leads, and Deputy City Attorney Heather Ferbert maintained her sizeable lead over Assemblymember Brian Maienschein.
Whitburn’s opponent, Coleen Cusack, and Maienschein have conceded. Elo-Rivera’s opponent, Terry Hoskins, and Gloria’s opponent, Larry Turner, have not conceded.
Two other city measures — one to skip primaries in San Diego Unified School District races with two or fewer candidates, and one to bolster the Ethics Commission’s independence — were ing by wide margins.
