1) There's nothing new about progressives doing well "on the day". Matt beat Gavin "on the day". But in this town, we count all the votes. No one vote is any better than any one other vote.

2) Lee support didn't drop off at all. Every opinion poll i saw had Lee at 30%-33% and he came in yesterday at 31%. Your constant claims that his support was dropping proved to be totally wrong.

I'm more shocked that A and B passed, but at least the sales tax prop failed.

Lee started the campaign at 30% and ended the campaign at 31%. Doesn't seem like the last few months changed his numbers at all.

Avalos and Baum were the only progressive candidates in this election, and collectively they received about half the ballots that Tom Ammiano won as a write-in in 1999, and barely a third of what Alioto, Ammiano and Gonzalez won in 2003.

Avalos' showing more accurately demonstrates how weak progressives have become over the past several election cycles.

Avalos deserves credit for running a positive campaign and rallying the progressive base. That got him to 20%. He was assisted by terrible campaign tactics from Yee and Herrera, who focused more on attacking Lee than putting forth a believable vision for how they would govern the city.

Progressives always do better on election day - this is a structural factor that has more to do with the large percentage of moderate voters who are permanent absentee voters than any campaign dynamics.

This was in the bag for Lee from the day he announced. Sorry.

I'm glad to see Tim saying something about how progressives need to improve their vote by mail organizing (in his other posts, not this one). Its something that progressives hopefully will finally be forced to confront and while talking about "on the day" feels good for those of us who worked hard to get Avalos elected it is really a distraction to think about it that way.

Does anyone have any ideas? For one, the DCCC and the Guardian slate cards don't go out until a few days before election day. I think the biggest hurdle to overcome is that people don't start coming out of the woodwork to walk precincts/phone bank until just a couple weeks until election day. The Avalos office in late Sep. early Oct. was a pretty quiet place relative to a week ago. When everyone starts engaging a week before the election we always get this great feeling of momentum and surging in the polls but it is often not enough for how badly we are outworked in vote by mail. This is understandable, but with the prevalence of vote by mail voters (50% of us now and I'm one) this is not good enough to win elections.

I'd like to answer the above comment to say that in my opinion the votes "on the day" represent the most current information about the candidates and so are in fact "better" votes.

The reason the 'elites' try so hard to get mail in ballots is because not as much information is out there about their candidates as there is by the day of the election, for instance the source of some of the funding or the campaign tactics being used.

So true. Ed Lee also waited until the last minute.

All of us who are trying to make sense of the numbers are scrambling right now, since the final votes aren't in and we don't have precinct breakdowns or anything. So lighten up on the harshness; I'm posting this stuff as I think of it, and I'm happy to hear other opinions. Quit whining and chip in -- what do YOU think it all means?

And Ed Lee is going to be the mayor for the next four years. Almost 62% of the vote to Avalos' 41% after round 1 of RCV.

Avalos had not much more to offer than thin statements like si se puede and whose city? our city! yet he got 41%. Sad.

Typical Redmond comment; he's all for vote suppression when it favors his cause

It's good to read the articles here, in the bay citizen and in other papers around the bay but there's significant trolling going on, and that really breaks the REAL debate that can occur in the comments, as well as the additional INTERESTING point of views.

Many papers are taking action on trolling all over the place, Europe including. It's very simple. Most of the trolling come from the same people all the time, and most of them from the same IPs. It's time to block those users from polluting the internet comments.

Please help us clear the noise. We badly need it.

@LL. As someone who for over 50 years has been about as far left as you can be without completing the circle and becoming aTeaParty troll, you make some observations that I have been trying to disseminate for decades, maybe 'they' will wise up and listen to you.

People either put him first or not at all.

You need broad support to win city-wide. Pandering to just the left is a suicide pact.