Here’s what we know about the primary election results so far.

Tajha Chappellet-Lanier here, a bit groggy after a long night of election coverage. 

If you checked the first results early in the night and then went to bed, you won’t be surprised. Early vote by mail results, released by Monterey County Elections shortly after polls closed at 8pm on Tuesday, June 7 set the tone for the night—there were no major changes in subsequent reports. The final report (for now) came in just before midnight—per the Elections office, its next update will happen by the close of business on Friday, June 10. 

So for now, here’s how things stand. Glenn Church, who celebrated on election night at his family’s Christmas tree farm in Royal Oaks, leads the busy District 2 supervisor field with 33 percent of the vote. That’s not enough to net him the win outright, which means the most attention is on the second-place finisher, currently a tight race between Salinas Mayor Kimbley Craig (21.7 percent) and Salinas Valley Memorial Healthcare System Board Member Regina Gage (19.9 percent). The two top vote-getters will be in a run-off election in November.

In the bid to become Monterey County’s next sheriff Marina Police Chief Tina Nieto took an early, strong lead. She currently sits at the top of the board with 48.6 percent of the vote. This doesn’t look like it will be quite enough to win her the election outright, though—if Nieto does not cross the 50-percent threshold, she will go to a runoff with the second-place finisher, Joe Moses, a current captain in the Sheriff’s Office. As of midnight on Wednesday, he was trailing 6,677 votes behind Nieto, with 28.1 percent of the vote.

In other local races, Annette Yee Steck leads in her bid for the Monterey County Board of Education Area 1 position and in Del Rey Oaks just 10 votes put the “no” on Measure B camp ahead of the “yes.”

At the State Assembly level, Morro Bay City Councilwoman Dawn Addis has the lead in the redrawn District 30 while Robert Rivas enjoys a solid 66 percent of the vote in District 29. Finally, incumbency held the day in the Districts 18 and 19 Congressional races. (These state and federal level results were last updated just after midnight on Wednesday, June 8.)

That’s enough of the horse race side of things.

As anticipated, unfortunately, this primary was characterized by low voter turnout overall. Monterey County Elections’ most recent report represents the votes of just 16.69 percent (34,758) of the county’s 208,274 registered voters. This includes vote by mail (the vast majority), early voting and Election Day polling place voting. These numbers will increase somewhat as more ballots are counted, but we’re not off to a strong start. 

In contests like Measure B, given that Del Rey Oaks has only 1,216 voters on a good day, low turnout means tiny margins. Four hundred and forty eight people (which, ironically, is actually the highest voter turnout percentage in a local race—37.75 percent) are recorded as having voted in that election thus far. With only 10 votes separating the two sides, that’s an election that could easily swing if there are more ballots out there, yet to be counted. As my colleague David Schmalz has extensively reported, the final results will have an important impact on the fate of the 28-mile Fort Ord Regional Trail and Greenway.

In keeping with Monterey County, turnout was low in general across the state. “It was kind of an election about nothing,” one Democratic strategist told the Sacramento Bee, by way of explaining the phenomenon.

But this election “about nothing,” the final results of which will be certified by July 7, has and will shape our ballot choices come November. We at the Weekly will be following the local campaigns, and digging into the primary data some more, over the coming weeks and months. Stay tuned.

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Get your primary election results here. Where are all the ice cream entrepreneurs?