San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has his eye on a big prize: Governor of California. With the 2010 election in the seedling stage, Newsom is aiming to raise his profile in Southern California, and has set his sights on the youth vote and the liberal leanings of Los Angeles for his local visit this week, explains the LA Times.

As of 2:00 p.m., the LA County Registrar-Recorder's Office said that an estimated 48.55%, or 2,087,650 people, of the 4.3 million registered voters have voted already today. This number reportedly does not include the more than 647,000 people who voted by mail or participated in early voting (though, over a million early vote requests were made). "A comparative sample turnout for the 2004 Presidential General Election showed 43.62% for the same time period," an advisory stated. " Samplings from previous year General Elections for the time period ranged from 20.71% in 2002 to 35.69% in 2000."