[2] Ed Lee was appointed by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to finish the balance of Newsom's mayoral term and was sworn in on January 11, 2011.

Lee initially pledged not to seek election, although an active movement arose to draft him into the race.

[6] The mayoral election was run using instant runoff voting, which was adopted by a referendum in 2002.

[7] There were sixteen candidates running:[8] The following table shows a summary of the instant runoff for the election.

Municipal elections in California are officially non-partisan, though most candidates in San Francisco do receive funding and support from various political parties.