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LYDIA KIM/daily bruin (From left) Lizzie Dodd, a third-year history student, Sonja Weaver-Madsen,

In the marquee battle on Tuesday’s statewide primary election ballot, state Treasurer Phil Angelides held a slight edge over Controller Steve Westly for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination as election results trickled in Tuesday night.

As of 10:52 p.m. Tuesday with 30.3 percent of precincts reporting, Angelides had garnered 47.4 percent of the vote to Westly’s 43.6 percent and appeared to be headed for a showdown with incumbent Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in November’s election.

“It’s early in the evening but things are looking good,” Angelides said in a televised speech from his campaign headquarters in Sacramento Tuesday.

Despite trailing as the early results came in, Westly remained hopeful.

“I’m feeling cautiously optimistic,” Westly told reporters in a televised statement Tuesday night.

The election, which flirted with record-low voter turnout numbers, also decided candidates for positions including attorney general and lieutenant governor.

Oakland Mayor and former Gov. Jerry Brown held a large lead over Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo for the Democratic nomination in the attorney general race.

In the race for the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor, state Sen. Jackie Speier and Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi were in a virtual tie Tuesday night. On the right side of that race, state Sen. Tom McClintock easily won the Republican nomination.

In the gubernatorial race, Angelides and Westly capped their campaigns with last-minute stumping up and down the state.

Making use of a chartered plane, Angelides held rallies at San Diego, Burbank, Oakland and Sacramento on Monday. Meanwhile, Westly travelled around Los Angeles to make his late-game appeal to local voters.

Angelides has overcome significant deficits in polls in recent weeks to take a slight lead in most polls.

This lead seemed to prove fatal for Westly, who has taken criticism for what some have characterized as an excessively negative campaign.

Westly’s campaign refused to pull a particularly controversial television advertisement that suggested Angelides was responsible for the dumping of sludge into Lake Tahoe in 1989. There is no evidence Angelides had any knowledge of the event.

Angelides has also run several TV advertisements with negative portrayals of his opponent.

The vitriolic fight between the two has failed to garner much interest among voters. Prior to Tuesday, election officials predicted near-record low voter turnout.

Only voters registered as Democrats and those not registered with a political party were eligible to vote in the Angelides-Westly race.

Since this race was the most-hyped item on the ballot, there was considerably less incentive for non-Democrats to vote and this could have contributed to the low voter turnout, said Political Science Professor Joel Aberbach.

In the weeks leading up to Tuesday’s election, newspapers repeatedly ran stories predicting record-low turnout among “weary” California voters. A Field Poll released Tuesday predicted 34 percent of registered voters would turn out, which would break the current record low of 34.6 percent from the 2002 gubernatorial primary.

Gracelyn Valdez, a first-year sociology student working at the polling station in the De Neve dorm on Election Day, said Tuesday afternoon that few students had visited those polls.

Among the few students who voted in De Neve, first-year political science student Tristan Schulhof said he only voted in the gubernatorial primary race.

“I wanted to select the governor contender that I thought was most qualified,” he said.

In a case of political musical chairs, a number of state politicians campaigned for new positions after term limits forced them out of their current seats.

Outgoing Attorney General Bill Lockyer won the Democratic nomination for treasurer and termed-out state Sen. Joe Dunn was trailing John Chiang for the Democratic nomination for controller. Republican state Sen. Abel Maldonado was in a virtual tie with former legislator Tony Strickland in the Republican race for controller.