Loren Taylor greets supporters at his election night party on Nov. 8, 2022. Credit: Amir Aziz

Loren Taylor maintained his leading position in the Oakland mayor’s race after the county registrar of voters posted the latest election results on Thursday at 5 p.m.

So far, Taylor has received 16,380 first choice votes. Sheng Thao is in second place with 13,734 first choice votes, followed by Ignacio De La Fuente who has 5,886.

Taylor tweeted this evening that he’s “honored by the confidence that thousands of Oaklanders have shown in me with their votes,” but added that “there are many ballots yet to count and the outcome of this race remains unknown.”

Here’s the results for all candidates up to this point.

Thursday evening’s update added another 9,500 votes bringing the total number of votes cast so far in the mayor’s race to about 47,000. There are likely tens of thousands more ballots for Oakland mayor that remain uncounted, according to data from the registrar’s office.

The registrar has already run the counted ballots through the ranked-choice voting process, and while the results aren’t final and could change as more ballots are processed in the coming days, they might offer a preview of who will win and how they’ll patch together more than 50% of final votes.

Sheng Thao addresses her supporters on Nov. 8, 2022, shortly after polls closed. Credit: Saskia Hatvany

According to an RCV tabulation conducted by the registrar Thursday evening, Taylor appears to be benefitting from two things: not only is he receiving the most first-choice votes, he’s also a popular second-choice among voters who supported other candidates who are in the top five of the 10 candidate field. 

Taylor is gaining the most votes in instant runoff from supporters of Hodge, Reid, and Ignacio De La Fuente.

So far, Thao only managed to edge out Taylor among supporters of Allyssa Victory.

Darwin BondGraham

Before joining The Oaklandside as News Editor, Darwin BondGraham worked with The Appeal, where he was an investigative reporter covering police and prosecutorial misconduct. He has reported on gun violence for The Guardian, and was an enterprise reporter for the East Bay Express. BondGraham's work has also appeared with KQED, ProPublica and other leading national and local outlets. He holds a doctorate in sociology from UC Santa Barbara and was the co-recipient of the George Polk Award for local reporting in 2017.