of polls. If these mythical polls that you allude to actually existed, and IF they showed Lee's lead declining, then you can bet that Lee's opponents would be publicizing them.

I have real polls supporting my position. You have alleged, mythical polls supporting your POV. Hmmm . .

We want you, David Chiu!!!

We need you, David Chiu!!!

SF people support Chiu~

Thank you, Longtime Lurker, for consistently pointing out facts to the SFBG lunatic fringe.

There's one additional point that needs to be made, now that the die is cast for a comfortable Lee victory.

Progressives never managed to align on a coherent, winnable RCV strategy. The Daly-Peskin-DCCC-SFBG "machine" tried to rally behind Avalos, Herrerra and Yee, but the progressive troops never bought into Herrerra or Yee, rightly viewing their voting records and electoral histories as far too moderate. Indeed, the only "progressive" point in their favor is their mild independence from the dominant Brown-Pelosi-Newsom power nexus that will continue to run this town for four more years under an elected Mayor Lee.

Interesting that progressives, the main proponents of RCV, have been outplayed by moderates once again.The biggest beneficiary of RCV in this election is Ed Lee, who has the first place votes of around 30% of the electorate, and who would be only a mild favorite in a run-off.

The only way a progressive can win a city-wide, non-gerrymandered election in SF is by (1) truly exciting the center-left electorate, bringing in casual and first time voters and (2) running against a candidate with major negatives among mildly liberal and working class swing voters. Neither of those circumstances were evident this year.

I reluctantly voted for Lee-Dufty-Chiu, only because the alternatives were even worse. I would love to see a strong mayor who could bring this city together and reform our budget, pension and tax systems to encourage job creation, housing development, transportation reform, and effective social programs. But instead, we'll get four more years of Willie Brown.

Paul Noe Valley

Yes, unlike most folks, I'm special in that I effectively get several votes. Once for me, and then again for my extended family. Mind you, I don't do anything illegal- no stencil like Ed Lee, and I don't actually mark their ballots for them like Ed Lee's campaign workers. I just go over the ballot pamphlet, they might have a pick for some big national office, but they always go my way on the local stuff, because they don't care to get involved in local politics. Makes for some interesting combinations, like voting for George Bush and down-the-line progressive locally.

So anyway, here's how I voted:
#1 Avalos. It was tough to decide between two good candidates, but I went with Avalos because he seems to be surging in the polls and may have the best chance of catching Lee, and he came out early and strongly in support of the Occupy movement. Add to that his history of fighting for the rights of the working class, the people who have the least, those who actually make our economy run but don't receive the benefits -he'd make a fantastic mayor.

#2 Leland Yee -not as progressive as I'd like, but he's the one moderate I know who's able to listen to all sides, and I mean really listen -not based necessarily on who can deliver him the most votes. He's a true independent, and he'd clean house in room 200, something we sorely need with all the filth and corruption going on

#3 I really had to hold my nose on this one. I went with Jeff Adachi because of his progressive history, and his views on criminal justice. I was wavering till the end because of his deeply right-wing ideological approach to balancing budgets on the backs of the working class, but I promised someone that I'd vote for Adachi 3rd if they voted for Yee 3rd, and I kept that promise.

For my relatives I reversed #1 and #2, partly because I really do think either Yee or Avalos would make a fine mayor, and it was just easier to justify Yee-Avalos than Avalos-Yee, to people who are a lot more conservative than I am. They were feeling pretty positive about Yee anyway, and when I discussed all the corruption of the Brown machine, that pretty much sealed the deal. I had them leave 3rd blank, because even Adachi is so marginal that I don't think he'd be much of an improvement over Lee, and his campaign left a really bad taste in my mouth.

Hey dude, way to go, Chicago style !!!

C, D, E, and F, are all abominations, attacks on both 'workers' and the will of the people.

They were in M&R the other day - 80% of the anticipated Chinese voters have already cast their abs. This has been over for weeks. Sorry folks.

Here's how it will go down tonight:
At 845pm, the tallied abs will be released and Ed will handily take the lead. Staff at campaign parties will say its early and will cheer every time their candidate gets a little bump. Yay!

But each time a tally is released, as the other candidates bob up and down, Lee's going to inch closer to the magic number. So while Bevan surges in the Castro and Dennis beats Michela and Joanna in Pac Hts (or something along those lines), Lee's going to be adding to his totals.

At some point, the nervous guy by the computer at the campaign party is going to see that his candidate has no chance and is going to be eliminated in a run-off round.

By midnight, it should be clear who's still standing and by looking at the way the numbers have come in, we should have a pretty good sense of whether Avalos, Herrera or Yee can catch Lee. Anyone below 10% at this point is toast.

I don't see how Lee won't get a large enough share of # 2 & 3s to win as the "corruption" charges simply never stuck. There wasn't enough reasons to vote against the guy to keep him from earning the needed share of second and thirds.

Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if Lee wins tonight. Polling for a mayor's race is tricky when you have major registration and GOTV efforts focused on a large, group of new and irregular voters. Polling models don't account for those voters, many of these voters won't or can't participate in polls.

It's unlikely but possible.

The only interesting question is how many rounds to make 50%. Not too many when you've got 40% and the next highest challengers are lapping up the rear at 10%. Even assuming many of the mail-in ballots are from Chinatown and other targeted Ed Lee voters (what an amazing GOTV absentee voter effort by the Chinatown Development Corp folks by the way), obviously no one will even come close to catching Mayor Lee.

Decent showings by Avalos, Herrera and Chui should mean we have three respected leaders to provide some balance and occasional push-back to Mayor Lee's governing agenda when needed. Not a terrible result at all considering 90% of city government is on auto-pilot with previously negotiated labor contracts, and the only big questions are who and what gets cut as pension and retirement payouts absorb more and more of the city's budget. Boring, yet nasty negotiations.

Any guesses on how Chris Cunnie's votes get split? "Anyone but Ross" or a more even split? That's an interesting race, but hope it's not Mayor Lee who gets to pick the next D5 supervisor since that would be an otherwise important election next year for vaious progressive subsets to organize and camp[aign. Beating an incumbant is almost impossible if the incumbant has any legitimacy and voter base in the district. One of the few political missteps by Mayor Brown during his reign of terror. Juanita Owens? Berceril?

And what happens again if both C and D win? I know absentees and mail-in ballots often have very different voting atterns, but it looks like those measures might pass with such a strong initial showing.

And many thanks to the voters for rejecting (apparently, hopefully) the .5% regressive sales tax. It looks like the voters are far ahead of The Guardian opposing regressive taxes. That's one good outcome from this election.

The pothole tax looks like it could be in trouble too. Nothing like bond financing to give more interest income to the 1%ers - just ask The Guardian management and city unions who seem to adore bond financing rather than taxing gross rents or gross receipts to raise much-needed revenue for long-term funding streams. Apparently the city family doesn't want wealthy landlords or big businesses to chip in for any of the city's funding needs when they can tax homeowners instead, especially newer homeowners who pay 5-10 times more tax than long-term homeowners. Who cares about fairness when the only argument allowed is "we need the money" and "big landlords and big businesses are the financial backbone of the Democratic Party so we can't try to tax them!"

It looks like the school bonds will pass - the 55% threshold helps there -but voter rejection of 2 out of 3 regressive taxes is still a decent outcome. Welcome mayor Lee. Let's both have a good laugh together when the clueless "progressives" start the recall campaign since we all know how effective that will be after such a lopsided win. The recall campaign worked wonders to topple Sophie Maxwell too, and kept some of the progressives busy with their fury and more nonsense.

Too bad Arthur's not here to savor another moment where we watch the election outcomes when progressives - once again - act as their own worst enemy. Some things never change.