Since 2010, the cities of Oakland, Berkeley, and San Leandro have joined San Francisco in
the use of an instant runoff
process to elect its mayor and council members. This way, voters rank their choices
on one ballot,
rather than vote for one candidate in one election and then another in a
separate runoff election. Here, you can see results for those contests with
more than one round, and try Ranked Choice practice polls.
Rank the candidates you support, in order of preference.
Candidate
1st choice
2nd choice
3rd choice
Lou
Bob
Kim
Your vote will count for your highest-ranked candidate, but some candidates
may be eliminated.
Your vote counts for Bob, your first choice. Nobody has a majority mandate from voters.
50%
Kim
Lou
Bob
So we eliminate Bob, and recount.
Kim gets enough of Bob's second choices to get a majority.
50%
Kim
Lou
In this count, because Bob was eliminated, your vote counted for Kim, your second choice.
Try practice polls for the competitive 2022 East Bay RCV contests!
In the preliminary results, the Oakland and San Leandro mayoral contests are very close in all rounds. In
Oakland, Sheng Thao takes the lead in Round 8 and wins in Round 9. Juan Gonzalez III takes the lead in Round 3 in
San Leandro. Rashi Kesarwani needs two rounds to win Berkeley District 1.
Celina Reynes needs two rounds to win San Leandro District 1. Nick Resnick needs two rounds to win Oakland
school board district 4, as does Valarie Bachelor in district 6. All other single-winner contests were
resolved in the first round. For the Albany Board of Education, the top three in the first round won seats,
with the third candidate winning after surplus transfers in the second round. For Albany's city council, Robin
Lopez pulled ahead of Jennifer Hansen-Romero in round 3, and won the second seat in round 4. (John Miki won the
first seat in Round 1.)
There are about 17 ranked-choice contests held every two years in Alameda County.
The contests that are not shown here had a first-round winner.
In the 33 multi-round contests between 2010 and 2020, there were 1,117,821 votes that counted in at least the first
round.
First-round results from 2020 differ slightly from those published by the county. If a ballot's first choice is blank or for an invalid
write-in, but also has lower choices other than an invalid write-in, the county calls it a "suspended" ballot and does not count it
until round 2.
In some years, the 'exhausted ballots' in the results published by the county include those of voters who did not
cast a vote at all in the
ranked-choice contest, but voted in other contests such as president or senator.
The results released by the county separate out all "overvotes" (more than one vote
in the same column), whereas the DemoChoice software treats them as votes for "none of
these". Ballots with first-round overvotes are ignored in the results shown here.
** indicates contests where the winner overcame the leading first-round candidate in later rounds.
* indicates contests where a candidate who was not one of the top two in the first round was in the top two in the final round.
