District 6 Supervisor Chris Daly was declared the winner this afternoon, according to the San Francisco Department of Elections. With all late absentee and provisional ballots counted, Daly led the pack at 48.18% -- initiating four rounds of Ranked Choice Voting. After four of his seven opponents were eliminated and their second choices distributed, Daly was declared the winner when he hit the 50% mark. Daly edged out his nearest opponent, Rob Black, by a 1,236 vote margin. During the RCV vote distribution, Daly gained 186 additional votes � whereas Black gained 168.

In the hotly contested District 4 race in the Sunset, Ed Jew defeated Ron Dudum by 624 votes after three rounds of Ranked Choice Voting � allaying fears that a non-Asian candidate would win in a heavily Chinese-American district. Jew picked up 2,965 votes in the RCV distribution, whereas Dudum only gained 2,294. Jew was trailing Dudum until candidates Doug Chan and Jaynry Mak were eliminated � implying that Chinese-American voters who selected Chan or Mak were far more likely to pick Jew as their second or third choice than Dudum. According to a poll of District 4 voters conducted by the Asian Law Caucus in seven languages, 66% of Asian respondents found RCV �helpful� � and 82% of voters used up all three of their choices.

Ed Jew was once an elected official on the Republican County Central Committee, but quit the party and re-registered as an independent. As a neighborhood activist, he was not considered a �downtown� candidate � and Mayor Newsom cannot count on him to vote with him consistently. Whether Jew builds an alliance with progressives on the Board the way that Tony Hall cultivated a relationship with Matt Gonzalez remains to be seen. No Republican has served on the Board of Supervisors since Annemarie Conroy lost re-election in 1994. With the re-election of BART Board Director James Fang, San Francisco still has just one Republican elected official. Because Jew left the Republican Party, Fang can still be called the �last Republican in San Francisco.�

In other races, School Board candidate Kim-Shree Maufas maintained a 1,662-vote lead over Bob Twomey � confirming that the School Board will have three women of color and a solid majority of progressives. In the Community College Board race, Sierra Club activist John Rizzo defeated incumbent Johnnie Carter by 2,549 votes. Along with the first-place win for School Board candidate Jane Kim, it was a surprisingly strong election for local progressives � especially in education politics.