> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.raincrossgazette.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Riverside Council, School Board Races Tighten as Count Continues - URL: https://www.raincrossgazette.com/riverside-council-school-board-races-tighten-as-count-continues/ - Published: 2026-11-05T03:15:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-11-05T03:49:51.000Z - Description: About 455,000 mail ballots remain uncounted countywide, with results not expected to be certified until December. - Author: Micaela Ricaforte - Tags: Politics, 2026 Election, #herald-40fef165-d2ee-81ea-9c58-ddaca1b09088 Riverside's Ward 2 City Council race grew tighter Wednesday, Nov. 4, as [Riverside County kept counting ballots](https://www.raincrossgazette.com/p/d7d85d37-1e58-4f4a-b5e0-196899f2e15f/) — while Ward 4 Councilmember Chuck Conder widened his lead over challenger Rich Vandenberg. Gracie Torres led Aram Ayra 51.7% to 48.3% in Ward 2 as of the county's [5 p.m. Wednesday report](https://voteinfo.net/sites/g/files/aldnop371/files/ElectionResults/2026/Nov04/ElectionSummaryReportRPT-9%5F0.pdf?ref=raincrossgazette.com), a lead of 3.5 percentage points. That was down from 4.1 points in the first results Tuesday night. In Ward 4, Conder led Vandenberg 53.6% to 46.4%, a 7.3-point lead — up from 5.9 points Tuesday night. Both races are runoffs from the June 2 primary, so the candidate with more votes wins the seat. Neither has been decided. Votes counted so far equal 22.6% of registered voters in Ward 2 and 25.4% in Ward 4. In school board races, Riverside Unified School District (RUSD) Trustee Noemi Hernandez Alexander kept a double-digit lead in Trustee Area 1\. The Alvord Unified School District Trustee Area 4 race tightened to a near tie, with Trustee Norma O. Berrellez ahead of Jamie Walden 974 votes to 969. ## Ward 2: Ayra gains ground The Ward 2 seat is open. Councilmember Clarissa Cervantes is running for the California State Assembly in District 58. Torres has led in all nine county reports since polls closed, but her margin has moved back and forth. It slipped from 4.1 percentage points Tuesday night to 3.7 by 10 p.m., then recovered to 4 points by the county's 4:07 a.m. Wednesday report. The 5 p.m. report brought it down to 3.5 points, its smallest yet. Most of the ballots added to the Ward 2 count Wednesday were cast in person. Ayra won more of those, 173 to 155, while Torres won more of the mail ballots added, 67 to 56. The runoff is a rematch of a close June primary. Torres finished first with 38% of the vote and Ayra second with 35.7% — a 2.3-point gap that was the tightest in any Ward 2 race since at least 1997, according to the Gazette's analysis of county results. Ayra also ran for the seat in 2021, finishing third with 13% in the race Cervantes won. On [Tuesday night](https://www.raincrossgazette.com/torres-conder-lead-riverside-council-runoffs-as-counting-continues/), Ayra told the Gazette that he was grateful to Ward 2 voters "for getting out to make their voice heard." "I’m also grateful for County staff who are working hard to ensure every vote is counted," he said. "There are still thousands of ballots to process and we look forward to seeing the results as they come out.” ## Ward 4: Conder's lead grows Conder's lead held between 5.9 and 6.3 percentage points through Tuesday night and early Wednesday. The 5 p.m. report widened it to 7.3 points — 4,255 votes to Vandenberg's 3,679. Conder won both kinds of ballots added Wednesday. He took 220 of the mail ballots to Vandenberg's 200, and 140 of the in-person ballots to Vandenberg's 48. Conder, first elected in 2017, led the June primary with 45.6% of the vote but fell short of the majority needed to win outright. Vandenberg finished second with 28.3%, ahead of Jessica Qattawi's 26%. ## New lines, little history Both races are being decided under ward boundaries that have been used only once before. The city adopted a redrawn ward map on June 13, 2023, after the 2020 census, and the June primary was the first election held under it. That makes past results an imperfect guide. Conder's 2017 and 2021 wins, and Cervantes' 2021 win in Ward 2, came under the old lines — so they reflect different territory than the wards voting now. Runoffs are also rare in both wards. Neither had gone to one since January 2006, when Andy Melendrez defeated Ruben Rasso in Ward 2 and Councilmember Frank Schiavone won reelection over Samuel Cardelucci in Ward 4. That short track record limits how much past counts can say about where these races are headed. The Gazette's analysis of county results includes only five past runoffs with more than one count on record, too few to say how much late ballots typically move a runoff. ## School boards The Alvord Trustee Area 4 race is the closest of the four. Berrellez led Walden 50.1% to 49.9% in the 5 p.m. report, a margin of 0.3 percentage points. Her lead had grown to as much as 0.8 points overnight after starting at 0.1 points in Tuesday's first report. Walden won more of the in-person ballots added Wednesday, 64 to 37, while Berrellez won more of the mail ballots, 36 to 19\. Votes counted so far equal 16.8% of the area's registered voters. In RUSD Trustee Area 1, Hernandez Alexander had 52% of the vote to Duffy Atkinson's 39% and Jinane Annous' 9%. Her lead has stayed between 12.5 and 13.1 percentage points in every report since Tuesday night, and stood at 13 points Wednesday. She is just above the 50% mark, but the race isn’t settled. In the county’s past school board races, late counting has moved results by more than her current cushion. In a statement to the Gazette Wednesday, Hernandez Alexander thanked her volunteers and supporters for what she called “a people-powered campaign” and thanked voters for reelecting her, though the race has not been called. “It is a true honor to serve the kids and families of Riverside as their trustee,” she said. In a statement to the Gazette late Tuesday, Annous offered her congratulations to “the winner” and said she would keep supporting RUSD students, teachers and classified employees. “It’s not about who wins,” she said. “It’s about all of us working together ... ensuring that our children will always come first in any decision we make.” ## What's left to count The [Riverside County Registrar of Voters](https://www.raincrossgazette.com/p/97cb3ccf-7d07-4395-a8b1-ef89541d3251/) estimated Wednesday evening that 455,000 vote-by-mail ballots and 11,000 Conditional Voter Registration (CVR) ballots remain to be counted countywide. That estimate covers all of Riverside County, not just the city. Its next estimate is due by 6 p.m. Thursday. Past counts suggest the totals in these races could still grow. In the county's six past even-year November general elections, final vote totals ended up between 1.30 and 3.18 times the count at this point, one to two days after the election. Leads can still change hands. In 21 past races from those elections that were still being counted at this stage, the gap between the top two candidates widened by the final count in 18, narrowed in three and flipped in two. The county begins its official canvass Thursday, Nov. 5\. Mail ballots postmarked by Election Day will be counted if they arrive by Nov. 10, and counties must finish counting nearly all ballots by Nov. 16\. Voters have until Nov. 25 to fix signature problems on mail ballots, and the county must certify results by Dec. 3.