they are absentee only. Republicans always lead in early absentee returns
In my experience of watching the last dozen or so elections, this tends to be the case.
As this is the primaries, the major races may or may not fluctuate much from that fact.
Propositions are a different matter though. Generally, liberal props tend to gain ground as the night moves on, and conservitive ones sink a bit. (usually if a lib starts over 50 it's a good bet, and vice versa for conservative ones.)
At this point (13% of votes counted) 81 - Library bonds - is down 44.6 to 55.4. Rough guess, I give it a 50-50 chance of passing.
82 - tax the rich for preschool, is down 40.8-50.2. I give it a 1:3 chance of closing and crossing the gap.
I think those are a little optimistic on the liberal side. Last year SoCal suburban counties reported relatively early, while LA county held until almost the very end, along with big chunks of Alameda and a couple other Bay counties. This time it looks like LA county and the Bay area have already reported in large numbers, and they arent all that favorable to the propositions.
While I think absentee do generally lean GOP, in the previous CA-50 primary as SamSpade pointed out Busby also achieved about exactly 42.9% and ended up at 43.7%. And that was with another Democrat in the race. Now she is the only Democrat and only pulling the same numbers. Kerry got something like 45% in this district?
I think, the bottom line is, the Democrats still need work on GOTV and moderating the party's stances, but most of all GOTV and fundraising. Plus, when the LA Times doesn't endorse your liberal propositions (like they didnt endorse 82), theres clearly a problem on the PR front.
