If California was made up of just these 35 counties, Gavin Newsom would have been recalled

Imagine a California where Gavin Newsom was recalled. For that California to exist, votes from 23 of California’s 58 counties would have to have gone uncounted.

As of Tuesday morning, an estimated 97% of statewide votes in the recent recall election had been processed, with most county-level estimates over 90%, according to CNN. A handful of counties still have a large share of unprocessed votes, but these tend to be small counties with few registered voters, so their remaining votes will not significantly change the final results.

Using the county-level data, the Chronicle imagined scenarios that could have led to a different statewide result. Which counties, if they made up all of California, would have led to Newsom being recalled? Without the Bay Area counties — some of which have the highest shares of “no recall” votes — would Newsom no longer be in office?

The chart above shows counties sorted by the share of “yes” votes in decreasing order. Lassen County, with 84% of “yes” votes, is listed first; San Francisco County, with 14% of “yes” votes, is last. Starting with Lassen County, we combined its results with those from the next county on the list to create a cumulative vote share for each group of counties.

The first iteration combines just two counties, Lassen and Modoc, for a cumulative vote share of 83% “yes” and 17% “no.” In other words, 83% of the votes from Lassen and Modoc counties are for the recall, and 17% are against it. The next iteration adds Tehama County’s votes to the previous two-county result, creating a cumulative vote share for three counties. The process continues in this way until the last county is included.

Because the counties are sorted in decreasing order by its “yes” votes, the cumulative “yes” share decreases with each additional county. Therefore, we can determine which county, once its votes are included, changes the cumulative majority from “yes recall” to “no recall.”

That county is Ventura County, where 57% of the roughly 320,000 votes were against the recall. Without Ventura County, combined votes from 35 counties result in 50.2% voting “yes”, but once Ventura County’s results are added, the “yes” share decreases to 49.8%. In other words, if California were made up of the 35 counties listed before Ventura County, Newsom would have been recalled.

Viewed another way, once Ventura County is included, results from the remaining 22 counties are unneeded to reach a cumulative “no” majority. These 22 counties include Los Angeles, Sacramento and all nine Bay Area counties, where large majorities voted against the recall.

The early results show exactly half of the 58 counties with a majority “yes recall” result. But the counties with a “yes” outcome have far fewer votes than the “no” counties. The “yes” counties have an estimated 2.3 million ballots, while the “no” counties have an estimated 11 million votes — nearly five times more.

Los Angeles County is projected to have the most “yes” votes — over 895,000 — though this amounts to a minority (29%) of all votes in the county because of how many more “no” votes were cast. The other counties with many “yes” votes are also highly populated counties in southern California. Orange County ranks second with over 575,000 “yes” votes (48% of all votes). San Diego and Riverside counties follow, with about 530,000 (43%) and 380,000 (51%) votes, respectively.

As of Wednesday morning, 12.6 million votes have been processed statewide. The Secretary of State estimates over 13 million cast ballots, which would mean 59% of the 22 million registered voters participated in the election.

Nami Sumida is a San Francisco Chronicle data visualization developer. Email: nami.sumida@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @namisumida