These are the early returns from absentee ballots only. The showing for Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is so low, given that he outspent all his competitors by orders of magnitude that are positively Hubble Telescopian, and got gushing, glowing free media coverage from both the Los Angeles Times and Los Angeles Daily News in the past few days, I thought his 54% was an error.

I have spent about 45 minutes trying to confirm that the Los Angeles city elections division has this right, and apparently they do. How embarrassing for the Villaraigosa Machine. Apparently absentee voters are not impressed. Here are the numbers for his competitors:

Walter Moore 23.16%
Gordon Turner 9.52%
Zuma Dogg 3.58%
Bruce Darian 3.16%
Dave Hernandez 2.07%
Craig X. Rubin 1.80%
(plus a few percentage points scattered among remaining candidates) 

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