So, a real-world story about how Ranked Choice voting by successive elimination (as implemented in San Francisco) is weird. Many following SF politics saw the initial results for Mayor last night, when only the early vote-by-mail ballots had been counted. Breed was winning.

Many also saw the later updates, late last night and today, with Leno winning. As of this afternoon (Preliminary Report 5), Mark Leno is barely ahead, thanks to RCV. (The election is still wide open, since there are a ton of vote-by-mail ballots still to be counted.)

What hasn't been seen much is the difference between those: the election day ballots. If you count *only* the election day ballots, Breed also wins, with Kim second. The fact that Kim eliminated Leno allows Breed to win by beating Kim; she can't beat Leno in these ballots.

Two weird things here: First, you can add two sets of ballots that both have Breed winning, and produce a result where she doesn't win. Second (& more serious), the RCV in the election day ballots eliminates Leno early when he could have beaten Breed had he stayed another round.

One clarification on the data: these are the election-day voting and vote-by-mail totals as of Preliminary Report 5, so there are some additional vote-by-mail ballots relative to the early report on election night.

is the difference in the number of ballots in each round from people not making a 3rd, 4th, etc choice?