I spoke with OC Registrar Neal Kelley a few minutes ago, and asked him if there was any prediction of what percentage of the 80,000 absentee ballots in AD72 will actually return their ballots.

Neal said 15,494 had been returned as of today, but the number had been declining every day since peaking on Tuesday. If the trend continues, he thought final turn-out among vote-by-mail voters would be around 40%, or about 32,000 ballots.

If that projection bears out, then about 48% of the vote-be-mail ballots in this election that will be cast have already been cast.

A comparison with another recent special election might be helpful. In 2005's CD48 special election, 111,000 vote-by-mail ballots were issued. 57,200 of those -- or 51% -- were returned.

Even assuming the ultimate turnout among vote-by-mail voters is closer to 50%, one can downgrade that 48% to 38%. Either way, it's pretty clear we are entering the terminal phase of the campaign. Given the complete dominance of VBM voters in this contest, the election likely be all-but-over by next weekend.

Whatever the election's outcome, we'll know what it is pretty quickly. Neal Kelley said the VBM results will be posted in the round of results at 8:00 p.m. on Nov. 17, and the first precinct results should be up by 9:00 p.m. All the results should up before Election Night is over.