What Portlanders Should Expect on Election Night

Fourteen elected positions at the city of Portland are up for grabs on election night this Tuesday—that’s turnover of all city leadership. The positions include 12 City Council seats, mayor and city auditor. All 14 of those positions are being determined this election by ranked-choice voting. As such, election night results will look a little different this year than in prior years.

Here’s a guide to what to expect on election night.

8 pm Tuesday, Nov. 5: The Multnomah County Elections Division will release a ranked-choice voting report that includes preliminary results of all 14 races, including all four City Council districts and mayor. That’s the early returns, run through a computer to process the ranked votes on each ballot.

The report (a sample of which can be found here) will operate as if the votes counted at that time are all of the votes cast. That means votes will be redistributed in rounds until three candidates in each City Council district reach the 25%-plus-1 threshold needed to tentatively win a seat.

Same for the mayor’s race: The Tuesday evening report will count and redistribute votes as needed for a candidate to reach the 50%-plus-1 vote threshold.

Keep in mind: The candidates that cross the threshold in the Tuesday night report are not necessarily the winners. In fact, a lot can change as more votes are counted and the Elections Division retabulates results in subsequent reports.

On Wednesday evening, and in the following days, the Elections Division will produce a once-daily report that reflects additional votes counted. Every daily report will retabulate the results using the same process of reallocating votes until three candidates reach the 25%-plus-1 threshold for council races and one candidate crosses the 50%-plus-1 threshold for the mayor’s race.

Unlike elections in past cycles, the City Council and mayoral races will not have updated results as Tuesday evening wears on. The only results voters will see on Tuesday night for the city races will be from the single report. In statewide and legislative races, you’ll see the usual updates arriving later on election night.

As of Monday morning, the Elections Division reported receiving 43% of registered voters’ ballots—expect to see those ballots reflected in the first report.

6 pm Wednesday, Nov. 6 (or earlier in the day): The Elections Division will publish a second report with all of the updated results. Once again, the report will count votes in rounds until candidates cross the threshold needed to tentatively secure a seat.

Once again, the leading candidates who cross the threshold could change in coming days as additional reports are generated.

The reports will be posted here. Use the arrows on the reports to toggle to prior rounds to see how votes were redistributed.

6 pm Thursday, Nov. 7: The Elections Division will generate another RCV report. At this point, over 85% of the votes cast are expected to be counted. That means the results in Thursday’s report, while not final, will give a stronger sense of who the winners are likely to be.

Monday, Dec. 2: Results of city races are finalized. While the winners will likely be decided by this coming weekend, nothing is official until next month.

Check wweek.com on election night to receive updates on all of the city, county, state and congressional races.