Campaign 2012

Also: Measure J, the transit tax extension, ends with 66.11 percent of the vote, and needed 66.66 percent to pass. How close did it come? If you take the 2,863,951...

Richard Bloom leads Assemblywoman Betsy Butler by 1,705 votes in this afternoon's essentially final update on the Nov. 6 election from LA County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan. Bloom posted a resignation message on Facebook.

The percentage of yes votes keeps going up, but not fast enough to make passage likely. There are only so many votes left to count.

Really, America? Tomorrow is three weeks from the election, and they're still counting votes. For the first time — these are not recounts, folks.

At least one high-spending SuperPAC achieved its goal in the November election. That SuperPAC belongs to Michael Bloomberg, the media mogul and billionaire mayor of New York City. It spent $3 million to defeat Rep.Joe Baca.

Analysis by Gallup and UCLA Law's Williams Institute suggests that the gay and lesbian vote for Obama was big enough to matter. That would certainly add to gay political clout if the belief takes hold.

One of the remaining unsettled California congressional contests has been won by Democratic challenger Ami Bera. Dan Lungren, the former Long Beach area lawmaker who has also been the state's attorney general and the Republican nominee for governor, lost by more than 5,000 votes. The margin on election night was fewer than 200 votes.

Men by a wide margin opposed requiring condoms on porn actors in LA County. Women, by an equally large margin, favored condoms. Blacks favored condoms. Whites opposed the new rule, strongly. Voters in the city of West Hollywood also rejected the condom mandate for porn films.

I know that it's already Thursday night and the election post-mortem period is all but over. But my wonky side is still eating up the numbers and inside analysis.

Here are the stats from the Registrar-Recorder of Los Angeles County:

With 100% of the precincts counted, but not all of the ballots, Santa Monica mayor Richard Bloom leads Assemblywoman Betsy Butler by 218 votes. That's out of 138,342 votes already counted. The county hasn't said how many provisional and uncounted ballots it thinks it has.

California voters went 59 percent for President Obama, 39 percent for Mitt Romney. It's largely, but not totally, a coastal thing. But Obama lost 2.7 million voters in California since 2008.

The measure to extend the transit sales tax beyond our lifetimes in order to pay for projects now got almost 65 percent of the vote, but needed 66.67 percent. LA County Democratic Party chair Eric Bauman blamed the loss on "the special interests and conservative forces."

Howard Berman and Laura Richardson lose their seats in Congress, Councilman Tony Cardenas goes to Washington, Jackie Lacey wins DA of Los Angeles County, Prop. 30 leads, the death penalty stays, three strikes as we know it goes, and from now on LA porn actors have to cover up. Plus more.