What you need to know about California’s primary election

SACRAMENTO — Democrat Xavier Becerra holds a major advantage over Republican Steve Hilton as the race for California governor heads toward the November election, a new poll shows.

The two candidates topped a crowded field of gubernatorial hopefuls in the June 2 primary, earning them the opportunity to face-off in the general election.

Supporters of a new Los Angeles County half-cent sales tax rallied Wednesday to celebrate what they framed as a historic win for the region’s cash-strapped healthcare system.

After a rocky election night that showed the tax lagging, supporters claimed victory Tuesday after the latest vote tally pushed Measure ER further over the 50% margin needed to pass. The measure would impose a new half-cent sales tax countywide, with the proceeds going toward local hospitals and clinics hit by federal funding cuts.

Republican Steve Hilton, who will face Democrat Xavier Becerra in the race for California governor, said he’d be open for Spencer Pratt to serve in his administration.

Speaking on Fox 11, Hilton praised the reality TV star’s unsuccessful run for mayor of Los Angeles, citing his innovative use of social media and plans for turning around the city.

Asked whether he’d be open to working with Pratt if he was elected governor, Hilton said: “Of course — like a shot! My door would be open.”

Democrat Xavier Becerra Tuesday issued a statement after Steve Hilton advanced to face him in the governor’s race.

He told Californians that a vote for Hilton in November would be a vote for Trump.

“Here’s what we’re fighting for: a California where every child gets a great education, every family can afford a home, and no one loses their health care because of where they were born or how much money they have,” Becerra said. “This November, voters will choose between a governor who will fight for that future and one who would hand Sacramento to Donald Trump. California will not be his next casualty.”

Read more here.

Tom Steyer emailed supporters Tuesday expressing gratitude for their efforts backing his campaign, endorsements and votes.

“Together, we fought for a California that belongs to the people who keep it running every day, and we insisted that they do not have to settle for a system that protects corporate profits at the expense of working people,” he wrote. “I’m proud of how we never compromised our values or lowered our sights for what California can and should be.”

He pointed with pride at major corporations such as Chevron and Meta spending heavily to oppose his bid, and said their tens of millions of dollars spent attacking him shows the flaws in the electoral system. And he acknowledged that may be part of the reason some voters were skeptical of voting for a billionaire.

“I’m proud of the enemies we made,” Steyer said. “This campaign proved that business-as-usual depends on politics-as-usual, and there is no going back. We must continue to fight for a system where democracy serves Californians, not corporations — and where you do not have to be a billionaire to run on single-payer, or on breaking up monopolies, or on calling out a corrupt system when you see it. Because people are fed up with a system rigged to benefit billionaires and leave them behind.”

Read more here.

Californians couldn’t escape billionaire Tom Steyer’s political ads — during newscasts, sitcoms or sporting events; on streaming services, YouTube, influencers’ social media feeds; or in their mailboxes. Even the Puppy Bowl.

Yet despite spending a record-shattering $216 million of his wealth on his run for governor, the Democrat failed to win enough votes in last week’s primary to advance to the November general election to replace termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Rep. Young Kim (R-Anaheim Hills) advanced to the November runoff election Tuesday evening and will face Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Corona) in a red-on-red battle for California’s 40th Congressional District.

The recently redrawn district encompasses areas of Orange and Riverside counties that the two incumbents currently represent and was designed under Proposition 50 to consolidate two GOP-leaning districts into one heavily red district.

Calvert is a 17-term congressman who represents the neighboring 41st Congressional District, which became significantly more Democratic when it too was redrawn earlier this year. He decided to run in the safely Republican 40th and advanced to the November runoff last week.

Kim was initially elected to Congressional District 40 in 2020 by narrowly defeating the Democratic incumbent in what was then considered a swing district. She re-won the seat in 2022 and 2024.

The primary battle has generated sharp competition between Kim and Calvert, who have collectively raised more than $13 million and traded jabs over who is most loyal to President Trump. Thus far, the president has not endorsed either candidate.

Though Gov. Gavin Newsom declined to endorse anyone in the lead-up to the primary, he quickly backed Becerra Tuesday evening.

“Congratulations to Xavier Becerra on his hard-fought victory,” Newsom posted on social media. “The son of immigrants, Xavier has spent his career fighting for California families and underserved communities. He has the experience and grit California needs.”

Newsom’s endorsement came shortly after Republican Steve Hilton, a former Fox News commentator, clinched one of the top spots in California’s gubernatorial primary on Tuesday, earning him the right to challenge Becerra in the November election.

The outgoing, term-limited governor promised a smooth transition if Becerra wins and praised him as a person who will “stand up to Donald Trump, defend our families and keep California moving forward.”

Supporters of a half-cent sales tax proposed to help fund health services in Los Angeles County declared victory Tuesday after days of steadily gaining ground as more ballots were counted.

The latest results show the “yes” camp ahead by a slim margin, with just more than 50% of the vote. The measure needs a simple majority to win.

Steve Hilton, who will face Xavier Becerra in the November election for California governor, is perhaps best known to Americans as a Fox News commentator.

But Hilton had a lost history in British politics before coming to California.

Dubbed a “barefoot revolutionary” for his habit of striding around Downing Street without shoes, Hilton was credited with pulling the Conservatives into the 21st century and ushering in a more green, socially liberal strain of British conservatism. He helped turn around their image by highlighting climate change and supporting gay marriage.

His campaign for governor was as a critic, saying California is a failed state in need of radical reform. He won the endorsement of President Trump.

Here is a profile from the Times’ Jenny Jarvie.

The Associated Press called the following California congressional races:

• Democrat Samantha Mota advances to the general election for U.S. House in California’s 37th Congressional District.
  
• Independent Kevin Kiley and Democrat Richard Pan advance to the general election for U.S. House in California’s 6th Congressional District.

Spencer Pratt has thus far opted out of issuing a statement of defeat and is instead letting a picture say 1,000 words in his first online post since losing the race for L.A. mayor.

But what exactly those words are is up for debate.

Just less than 24 hours after the Associated Press projected that Nithya Raman had defeated Pratt for a place in the November mayoral runoff, the social-media-savvy campaigner shared a caption-less photo on X of a duck on a lake.

People immediately rushed to discuss the meaning of the cryptic photo in the comments.

Many people speculated that Pratt was referencing himself as a “sitting duck” when it comes to election fraud.

A misreading of voting data in the Los Angeles mayoral race late on election night has contributed a false narrative that President Trump and other Republicans have pushed in recent days that Democrats were cheating. Trump has taken to Truth Social to claim that the California primary election was “crooked” and that “Two great Republican Candidates are being cheated,” but failed to provide any evidence to back up these allegations.

Former “Mighty Ducks” star and major Pratt supporter Brock Pierce recently announced a $1-million award for evidence of election fraud in the mayoral race.

Other people in the comments guessed that Pratt was trying to say the election results were affecting him “like water off a duck’s back,” meaning the loss has no impact on him.

The duck does appear to be coasting on the water rather serenely.

A third theory posited by commenters is that Pratt is like a duck who appears calm on the surface but is paddling intensely beneath the surface, working hard toward future goals.

The former “The Hills” star has made memes and viral content a cornerstone of his election campaign. He continues to spark strong online engagement in his defeat.

Republican Steve Hilton, a former Fox News commentator, clinched one of the top spots in California’s gubernatorial primary on Tuesday, earning him the right to challenge veteran Democratic politician Xavier Becerra in the November election to determine the state’s next governor.

The contest offers voters two starkly different politicians. Hilton was endorsed by President Trump and has wooed his MAGA supporters, blaming Democratic policies for California’s homelessness crisis, high cost of living and other entrenched ills. Becerra campaigned as a battle-tested warrior against the Republican president and a champion of affordable healthcare. He could make history as the state’s first elected Latino governor.

Republican Steve Hilton, whose endorsement from President Donald Trump pushed him to the front of the gubernatorial field, said he has not seen any evidence of the impropriety the president has alleged about in California’s election results.

“We’re very, very focused on making sure that everything’s okay,” Hilton told reporters outside the Los Angeles County elections headquarters on Tuesday. “We’ve got teams standing by, we’ve got lawyers standing by, very focused on that. We don’t want to let anyone down, we don’t want to let anything slip away, and we’ve seen nothing.”

While Democrat Xavier Becerra nabbed the top spot in the June 2 primary and will advance to the November general election, Hilton has not officially been declared as his opponent. Hilton, however, appears on the cusp of clinching the pivotal second spot on the ballot.

Billionaire Democrat Tom Steyer remains in third place, and the odds of him overtaking Hilton appear increasingly unlikely.

“I’m very pleased to say that we remain confident that I will make it into the top two and that California will have a real choice for change in November, whether they want to keep going with the policies that have brought us the highest poverty rate, the highest unemployment rate, the highest cost of living in the country, if they want more of that with Xavier Becerra or if they want to go in a new direction,” Hilton said. “We’re not popping the champagne yet, but we’re very confident.”

The former Fox News commentator and British political strategist called for electoral reform, including supporting a voter identification requirement that will appear on the November ballot. Hilton also wants to discontinue sending mail-in ballots to every registered voter, no longer counting ballots received after election day and increasing resources at county vote-counting centers.

“Voter ID [is] not the only thing, but it’s the biggest, quickest, simplest thing we can do to restore faith in the system and to have these elections completed quickly in a way that inspires confidence, and that’s why I hope that Xavier Becerra will join me in campaigning for it, so we can have a united front,” Hilton said.

California’s slow vote counting process — still underway and causing friction after last week’s primary — may be forced to change before November’s midterm elections, as the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to rule on whether mail ballots must be received by election day to count.

Whether those changes will speed things up — and help tamp down baseless claims from President Trump and others that the slow count is evidence of fraud — will depend on a variety of factors, election experts said, including how the high court rules, how state lawmakers and local elections officials respond, and whether they push any additional steps to quicken the count.

A San Francisco proposal to tax high-paid CEOs appears to have been rejected by voters.

Prop. D was backed by labor unions but opposed by business groups.

According the the New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle, Prop. D was trailing.

First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli said Tuesday that he expects his office to file election fraud charges within a couple of months as it continues to investigate allegations that California Democrats cheated in the state’s primary election.

“We are looking for any sort of wide-scale conspiracy, if you will,” Essayli said in a podcast interview with conservative commentator Glenn Beck. “Right now, our investigation is more into individual actors.”

Essayli acknowledged that a successful prosecution of widespread election fraud would face significant hurdles. Thousands of voters would need to be charged to demonstrate that any misconduct changes the outcome of the California election, unless investigators find evidence of a coordinated, wide-scale fraud scheme, he said.

“We are looking if there is anyone with inside information,” Essayli said. He then asked listeners to report any suspicious activity to a tip line that his office has set up.

When pressed on whether his office has found any evidence of widespread fraud, he said his office is “doing the best we can in the circumstances” and blamed California’s voting system for making it hard to discern whether there is a widespread problem. Essayli also criticized the media for saying there is no evidence of election fraud.

“Of course there is evidence of fraud, just do a google search,” he said. “What they always default to is that there is no evidence it is widespread and that is a very interesting and clever statement because they design a system to not be able to detect the evidence through the system easily.”

Essayli did not provide any evidence of election fraud during the interview, but his remarks echo claims House Speaker Mike Johnson and President Trump have made in recent days to cast doubt over California’s election results.

“I am not saying it is rigged, I am saying it stinks to high heaven and everybody knows that,” Johnson told reporters on Monday. “Look, some of these efforts are so diabolical and so far up upstream it’s impossible to prove. But I think everybody knows instinctively that something is wrong here.”

Vice President J.D. Vance has joined President Trump in raising unsupported doubts about the results for L.A. mayor.

His comments come as Democrat Nithya Raman, a progressive city council member, moved on to face Mayor Karen Bass in the November election after beating out Republican TV personality Spencer Pratt.

Pratt was in second place for days, but Raman surged passed him as more votes were counted.

Speaking on Fox News, Vance said he was suspicious of the votes breaking for Raman.

“The way that they’re coming in just so happens to work out such that the Republican is getting kicked out of the final two, so it’s a Democrat versus Democrat runoff, that seems pretty shady to me,” he told Fox.

SACRAMENTO — Even before President Trump’s latest wave of unfounded claims of election fraud in California, a significant share of voters in the state expressed concerns about federal interference in the electoral process, according to a new poll.

Trump on Monday claimed on his social media site that the race for Los Angeles mayor was a “Rigged Election,” an allegation that came after Democrat Nithya Raman overtook Republican Spencer Pratt for second place in the ongoing primary election vote count.

Will Republican Steve Hilton be the one challenging Democrat Xavier Becerra in November to become California’s next governor?

That appears very likely, but one week after the June 2 primary Hilton has still not clinched a spot on the ballot. The Associated Press declared Becerra a winner Friday night but has yet to proclaim Hilton to be the second place finisher.

Others have already given Hilton the nod, and both he and Becerra have events planned in Southern California Tuesday as they launch their general election campaigns. (The Times usually relies on the Associated Press to declare winners.)

Under California’s primary system, only the two candidates who receive the most votes in the primary advance to the November general election, regardless of their party affiliation.

Democrat Tom Steyer, a hedge fund founder turned climate change activist, remains in third place in the gubernatorial vote count. Steyer has been gaining ground on Hilton as the statewide vote count continues but still faces long odds to catch him.

In a CNN interview on Monday, Hilton said he remains very confident that he’ll secure a spot on the November ballot, saying, “Tom Steyer is just not getting the numbers he needs to catch up with us.”

Still, Hilton has criticized California’s slow vote-counting process, saying the delays “breed confusion, frustration, speculation, and distrust.”

While the mayor’s race has understandably received a lot of nationwide buzz, another local election deserves just as much attention for what it says about the past, present and future of the metropolis.

South L.A. still conjures up images of Black L.A. in the popular imagination — understandable, since it’s the historical and political heart of the community. But its demographic reality changed a generation ago. Today, the region is majority Latino, and its District 9 — which stretches from LA Live in downtown to the outskirts of Watts — is easily the most Latino council district in the city, at 78% of its residents.

The top two vote getters right now in that race are Jose Ugarte and Estuardo Manzariegos, and most of the coverage focused on how District 9 will have its first non-Black council member in 63 years, which will also mean it’ll be the first time since 1963 that L.A. won’t have three Black council members.

Instead, District 9 will once again have a Latino representative.

South L.A.’s demographic shift

From 1949 to 1963, its council member was Edward Roybal, L.A.’s first Latino council member in modern times. He pioneered the rise of multiracial coalitions to bring equity to City Hall, a template followed by one of his campaign volunteers, future L.A. council member and Mayor Tom Bradley.

But what’s so fascinating about the District 9 battle isn’t just that two Latinos will run against each other but the type of Latinos Ugarte and Manzariegos represent.

For too long, “Latino” in L.A. has been synonymous with “Mexican American” — understandable, since the community makes up about 75% of Latino Angelenos and the community’s most influential political and cultural brokers have long been of Mexican heritage. But South L.A. shows the breadth of Latino diversity more than any other region of the city.

As I wrote in 2022 for a Times package on the 30th anniversary of the L.A. riots, you’re just as likely to find pupuserias and the blue-and-white color schemes of some Central America flags painted on businesses as you are taquerías and the Mexican tricolor. District 9 in particular has become a landing point for Indigenous people from Mexico, especially people from the southern Mexico state of Oaxaca. Recent migration has brought in Venezuelan and Colombian migrants to the area, as well.

Ugarte and Manzariegos reflect this reality.

Two immigrants vie for District 9 seat

The two are immigrants — Ugarte was born in Oaxaca while Manzariegos is from Guatemala — which makes it the first time two immigrants from Latin America will face off for a council seat in the general election. If Ugarte wins, he would become L.A.’s first Oaxacan council member — a significant achievement given that some of L.A.’s most powerful politicos ridiculed his community four years ago when the infamous City Hall audio leak upended politics in the city.

A Manzariegos victory would make him the first Central American immigrant to serve on the City Council and just its second member of Central American heritage, after former councilman Kevin de León. He would also be the second Latino in modern times to represent South L.A., following in the footsteps of his fellow Guatemalan American, current Assemblymember Sade Elhawary.

Expect the Oaxacan and Central American communities to rally hard for their respective trailblazers, who both grew up in South L.A.. Achieving historical ethnic firsts isn’t all that makes the District 9 race so fascinating, though.

Ugarte was a longtime staffer for District 9 Councilmember Curren Price, who is leaving office because of term limits. That connection won him early support from the district’s Black establishment and labor unions, mainstream connections he will no doubt lean on through election day. Manzariegos, meanwhile, has the endorsement of the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, which counts three current council members as members and a fellow traveler, Councilmember Nithya Raman, looking like she’s going to face off against Mayor Karen Bass in the general election.

That’s going to look like a walk through Griffith Park compared with the desmadre Ugarte versus Manzariegos will unlock. Gonna be fun!

Democrats Jane Kim and state Sen. Ben Allen will advance to the November general election in the race to become California’s top insurance regulator.

Kim leads the progressive California Working Families Party. She was a San Francisco supervisor from 2011 to 2019. She served as California political director for Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential run and is endorsed by Sanders.

Allen is a state senator who has represented portions of the Westside since 2014. A Santa Monica native and resident, Allen authored bills aimed at providing relief to fire victims.

The Associated Press declared Kim and Allen to be the top two finishers in the June 2 primary. In California, only the first- and second-place finishers in the primary advance to the general election.

Neither Allen nor Kim won the Democratic Party’s endorsement earlier this year.

The usually obscure position has come under scrutiny in the wake of the Eaton and Palisades fires in 2025, with some fire victims calling for current Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara’s resignation. Lara, who took office in 2019 and was reelected in 2022, cannot run again because of term limits.

City Councilmember Nithya Raman said she was “incredibly honored” to make the runoff for Los Angeles mayor and invited Angelenos who are “frustrated by the broken status quo” to join her campaign.

“For too long, City Hall has prioritized giving political advantage to powerful interests that fund elections. Meanwhile, working people pay the price in higher rents, depleted services, and a city that has stopped working for them,” she said in a statement.

Raman will face Mayor Karen Bass in November.

Read more here.

The Associated Press called two more congressional races Monday.

• Republican Scott Meyers advances to the general election for U.S. House in California’s 30th Congressional District.
  
• Republican Houston Brignano advances to the general election for U.S. House in California’s 36th Congressional District.
  

Nithya Raman’s advance to the mayor’s runoff against Karen Bass caps a swift rise in Los Angeles politics.

A graduate of Harvard and MIT, Raman spearheaded significant legislation during her six years on the City Council, including initiating the city’s Tenant Anti-Harassment Ordinance in 2021 and leading the push last year to update the city’s Rent Stabilization Ordinance, which lowered the annual maximum allowable rent increases.

But she has sometimes clashed with her council colleagues.

Here is some reading material:

Raman says she’s running for mayor because L.A. is headed in wrong direction (2026)

Councilwoman Nithya Raman’s reelection is a crucial test for L.A.’s progressive movement (2024)

Nithya Raman inspires progressives as she holds significant lead in L.A. council race (2020)

A proposed sales tax to help fund county hospitals, local clinics and other health services for five years was slightly ahead in the latest count.

The proposal, known as Los Angeles County Measure ER, was ahead 946,757 to 933,753 as of Monday.

Faced with dramatic federal funding cuts, the county supervisors put a half-cent sales tax on the ballot. The money — a half-penny of every dollar spent in the county — would go to prop up local hospitals and clinics.

Officials say it would pull in $1 billion annually to help plug the budget holes hitting local hospitals and clinics.

So how did Nithya Raman make it into the runoff with Mayor Karen Bass, defeating Spencer Pratt?

She attended nearly 100 community meet-and-greets, her political team said. Those included numerous sessions with restaurant owners, including one in Echo Park, a “Families for Nithya” event in South L.A. and a comedy show at Upright Citizens Brigade.

This did not get as much attention as Pratt’s social media blitz, but experts said it yielded results.

“[Pratt] made a lot of noise and did a lot of television and got a lot of social media amplification, while she was out actually campaigning, meeting with voters, canvassing,” said Mike Bonin, a progressive former city councilmember who now runs the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at Cal State L.A. “That matters.”

Read the whole analysis of how Raman did it from David Zahniser and Noah Goldberg here.

Nithya Raman had 115 days to make her case to Los Angeles voters.

The City Council member made a surprise late entry into the mayor’s race, the last of the major candidates to file for the primary. That left little time for her to form a campaign team, build her name recognition and persuade voters that she would be the best choice to lead the city.

Spencer Pratt on Monday spoke out after new vote counts showed him falling to third place in the ballot for L.A. mayor.

“Folks, we’re dealing with a fraction of a percentage point difference, there’s still hundreds of thousands of votes outstanding, and LA officials have given us the next 3 weeks to count! Let’s git-r-dun!,” he wrote on X.

Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman now sits in second place with Pratt in third, according to the latest vote count from the Los Angeles Registrar-Recorder. Raman had 27.1% of the votes counted so far, and the television personality had 26.7%.

One race to watch is playing out in Northern California.

Under Proposition 50, Democrats reconfigured the nearby 3rd Congressional District to unseat Republican Rep. Kevin Kiley.

Kiley, in response, quit the Republican Party and became an independent, and ran instead for the neighboring 6th Congressional District, despite the seat also being designed to favor a Democrat.

As of Sunday, Kiley was at 25.4%, Democratic candidate former state Sen. Richard Pan at 22.8% and Republican candidate Michael Stansfield at 21.2%

The primary race has not been called.

So where do we stand in the vote count for L.A. mayor?

The basics

• Karen Bass has already secured a spot in November election.
• Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman now sits in second place with Pratt in third, according to the latest vote count from the Los Angeles Registrar-Recorder. Raman had 27.1% of the votes counted so far, and television personality Spencer Pratt had 26.7%.

What the candidates are saying

• “We are encouraged by the latest vote count and remain grateful to the thousands of Angelenos who have powered this campaign,” Raman said in a statement issued by her campaign.
• Bass campaign spokesman Alex Stack said that if Raman maintains that position, the mayor would “look forward to winning a contest against an opponent who allows encampments near schools and fights against hiring more cops, yet is MIA on saving Hollywood jobs and fighting back when ICE invades L.A.”

What’s next

• Mail-in ballots with a June 2 election day postmark will continue to be accepted by county election officials through Tuesday. Election officials estimated there are still about 368,000 ballots left to process countywide.

What pundits are saying

• Political strategist Michael Trujillo, who did not work for any of the mayoral hopefuls, voiced strong doubts on Sunday that Pratt can claw his way back into second place. “He’s close to flatlining at this point,” he said.
• “The odds have shifted dramatically in Raman’s favor,” said Zev Yaroslavsky, a former council member who runs the Los Angeles Initiative at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. “The trend is clear. She has been gaining on Pratt for the last three or four days. There’s no reason to believe that will change. It is still close, but she is at this point more likely to be in the runoff than Pratt is.”

Read more here

President Trump amplified baseless claims of election fraud in California early Monday morning, pointing to the most recent Los Angeles mayoral results as alleged evidence of a cheating narrative he began pushing days ago.

Trump declared early Monday morning on Truth Social that there was “no way” Democrat Nithya Raman could have secured the second spot in the L.A. mayoral primary over Republican Spencer Pratt, writing: “Rigged Election!”

Though Raman has taken a lead over Pratt, the Associated Press had not called the primary’s second winner as of Monday morning. Trump was responding to a post from Decision Desk HQ, which projected Raman as the winner on Sunday evening. He reposted a post from Rep. Abe Hamadeh (R-Ariz.), who used the projection of Raman’s win to call for the federalization of elections.

Late Sunday night, Trump also sought to cast doubt on the integrity of California’s election in a post that labeled it “CROOKED.”

“Two great Republican Candidates are being cheated, and so is America, which if the Dumocrats are able to fulfill their mission, great trouble and consternation will follow. Watch this ‘Election’ closely!!!” Trump wrote in an 11 p.m. post.

Trump did not provide evidence for those claims. Over the weekend, The Times fact-checked an inaccurate claim of election fraud in the mayoral race spread in conservative online spaces after a lag in an electronic update of voting data published by the Associated Press caused confusion.

Because California’s ballot count takes time, one candidate can appear to be in the lead, as Pratt initially did, before another overtakes them once more votes are in, as Raman has.

Trump and his allies have used that feature of the state’s elections process to allege cheating. The day after the election, Trump claimed without evidence that Democrats were trying to “steal” the gubernatorial and L.A. mayoral primaries. The next day, he alleged that California Democrats had “found” mail-in ballots and were “rigging the election” with them.

Times staff writer Kevin Rector contributed to this report.

SACRAMENTO — Winning elections — or achieving any success — often is about being in the right spot at the right moment. Getting lucky and capitalizing. Xavier Becerra is a textbook example.

Becerra’s moribund campaign for California governor was flatlining in early April when he got a shocking break. Five women publicly accused the Democratic front-runner, Rep. Eric Swalwell, of sexual misconduct, including rape. He denied the allegations but quickly quit the race and Congress.

The first rule of a primary election is: Don’t make too much of the results.

The intrepid folks who bother to cast a ballot in these first-round races are largely a group of engaged voters, and drawing conclusions from such a narrow minority is a losing game.

Los Angeles County Measure ER, which would enact sales tax for five years to fund county hospitals, local clinics and other health services, remains locked in a tight race.

As of Sunday night’s counting, the “no” vote was 860,873 and the “yes” vote was 849,337.

Faced with dramatic federal funding cuts, the county supervisors are putting a half-cent sales tax on the ballot. The money — a half-penny of every dollar spent in the county — would go to prop up local hospitals and clinics.

Officials say it would pull in $1 billion annually to help plug the budget holes hitting local hospitals and clinics.

Early returns showed ER headed for defeat.

Two days after Democrat Xavier Becerra secured one of the top spots in the California governor’s race, Republican Steve Hilton remains highly favored to join him on the November ballot — but as of Sunday evening has yet to clinch.

The Associated Press declared Becerra a winner Friday night, three days after the June 2 primary election. As votes have been counted throughout the weekend, a second-place finish for Hilton appears extremely likely.

Democrat Tom Steyer, a hedge fund founder turned climate change activist, remains in third place in the gubernatorial vote count. Although he has gained some ground on Hilton over the weekend, the likelihood of him overtaking the Republican appears remote.

Under California’s primary system, only the two candidates who receive the most votes in the primary advance to the November general election, regardless of their party affiliation.

The Associated Press called this California congressional race:

• Republican Brian Burley advances to the general election for U.S. House in California’s 42nd Congressional District.

Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman surged past reality television personality Spencer Pratt in the city’s mayoral primary election Sunday, capping off a five-day turnaround after she fell behind Pratt on election night.

Raman now sits in second place with Pratt in third, according to the latest vote count from the Los Angeles Registrar-Recorder. Raman had 27.1% of the votes counted so far, and Pratt had 26.7%.

When Nithya Raman stepped up to a podium on the night of L.A.’s mayoral primary election, she thanked her supporters for standing up to the “powerful interests” who spent millions of dollars trying to “preserve this city’s broken and unjust status quo.”

“At a time when so many people have written Los Angeles off or have lost hope in the future of this incredible city,” the democratic socialist L.A. mayoral hopeful said, “you are proof that Angelenos are hungry for change.”

The votes are still being tallied but the result of Tuesday’s top-two primary election in California seems pretty clear.

Despite an uptick in his performance, hopes for third-place finisher Tom Steyer are fading along with the number of uncounted ballots, suggesting Democrat Xavier Becerra and Republican Steve Hilton will face off in November.

The Associated Press called two more congressional race in California Saturday:

• Republican Chuong Vo advances to the general election for U.S. House in California’s 45th Congressional District.
  
• Republican Ritesh Tandon advances to the general election for U.S. House in California’s 17th Congressional District.

Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman cut deeper into the lead of reality television personality Spencer Pratt on Saturday, as his lead slimmed to just a single percentage point.

Pratt fell to just over 27% of the vote while Raman jumped up to slightly over 26%, according to the results from the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder. Pratt now leads Raman by just 7,494 votes.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta is pushing back against investigations into reports of election fraud by the U.S. attorney’s office.

“There are no details, there is no specifics, there is no specific allegation of any individualized act of voter fraud,” Bonta told MS NOW Saturday. “And every count, recount, hand count, court case and audit has shown time and time again — not just in California, but throughout this country — that there is no widespread voter fraud.”

His comments come after First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli said his office “has multiple election fraud investigations underway,” in coordination with the FBI in Los Angeles.

He claimed the fraud allegations are “only a figment of the imagination of Trump and others who follow that conspiracy theory.”

Proud boy expelled from Pratt’s party

Spencer Pratt’s election night party at Don Antonio’s Mexican restaurant in West Los Angeles included a few uninvited guests, and it wasn’t just members of the news media.

Democrat Xavier Becerra advancing to the November election puts him one step closer to making history.

Becerra could make history by becoming the first Latino to be elected governor — and the first to lead the state in more than 150 years. The last time a Latino held the office was in 1875, when then-Lt. Gov. Romualdo Pacheco was elevated to fill a vacancy and served for 10 months.

“California has made history. Xavier Becerra’s advancement to the general election is a defining moment both for the state, and for the millions of Latino families who have been instrumental in shaping the state’s future,” said Voto Latino Executive Director Beatriz Lopez. “As home to the nation’s largest Latino population, California will once again demonstrate the decisive power of Latino voters.”

Though Latinos make up about 40% of the state’s population and are California’s largest ethnic group, they historically have lower turnout in elections and are underrepresented in government. While Becerra often cites his upbringing as a child of working-class Mexican immigrants, he must demonstrate that he can deliver for these communities, said Christian Arana, vice president of civic power and policy at the California-based Latino Community Foundation.

“There’s a lot of excitement about the representation side,” Arana said. “You can have Latino representation, but whether or not that will actually lead to tangible outcomes for Latino communities, that’s what people want to know.”

Read more here.

Mayor Karen Bass ran the table in South Los Angeles, Spencer Pratt found strong support from his Westside base, and Nithya Raman racked up votes in Echo Park and other neighborhoods with a concentration of renters, according to a Times analysis of partial precinct-level results from this week’s primary election.

The Times analysis, based on an estimated 62% of the ballots counted so far, found that Pratt was favored in many of the same neighborhoods that voted for mayoral candidate Rick Caruso in 2022, while Raman made inroads in progressive areas dominated by Bass four years ago.

The Associated Press has made calls in three additional California races:

• Democrat Fiona Ma advances to the general election for lieutenant governor in California.
  

• Democrat Tessa Hodge advances to the general election for U.S. House in California’s 23rd Congressional District.

• Republican Joe Males advances to the general election for U.S. House in California’s 25th Congressional District.

Ron, a West L.A. resident, thinks he knows why former reality TV star and political newcomer Spencer Pratt won so much support in his run for mayor.

People are frustrated, frightened and angry about homelessness “and the crime associated with it,” Ron said in an email. He added that he voted for Mayor Karen Bass, but “almost everything Pratt said about the homeless resonated with me. … The homeless run wild here, without consequence.”

Since election night in California, a single theory of election fraud has taken root like no other among online conspiracy theorists, bot accounts, conservative influencers and people close to President Trump. It proved to be a simple misreading of the voting data.

Late on election night, an update of vote counts in the Los Angeles mayor’s race appeared on election results pages of various media outlets including the Los Angeles Times. It showed leading Democrats Mayor Karen Bass and Councilmember Nithya Raman receiving tens of thousands of new votes, and leading Republican former reality TV star Spencer Pratt receiving no new votes.

Veteran Democratic politician Xavier Becerra won one of the top two spots in California’s primary for governor, according to the Associated Press, a finish that puts him in a prime position to win the November general election and make history as California’s first elected Latino governor.

“The people of the great state of California, in the greatest nation on earth, have spoken — loudly and proudly,” Xavier Becerra said in a statement Friday. “We will not be bought. We will not be bullied. And we are never backing down. November, here we come.”

Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman closed in on reality TV personality Spencer Pratt, cutting his lead to about 3 percentage points, as both vie for second place in the mayoral primary, according to the latest results released Friday.

Raman has steadily carved into Pratt’s margin over three days of election updates. She now trails him by 20,672 votes in the race to compete against Mayor Karen Bass in the Nov. 3 runoff election.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton, who has repeatedly criticized California’s slow ballot count, said Friday that he thinks Gov. Gavin Newsom should mobilize state resources to deliver verified election results by June 11.

By Thursday evening, 5.6 million ballots had been processed in the state, with an estimated 3.6 million ballots remaining, according to information provided by the secretary of state.

Hilton and Democratic candidate Xavier Becerra are leading the race for governor, but the election remains too close to declare them winners. Under California’s primary system, only the first and second place finishers in the primary advance to the November general election, regardless of their party affiliation. Billionaire progressive Tom Steyer trails in third place

“This shambles is absolutely shameful for our state,” Hilton said at a press conference Friday morning. “India counts over 640 million votes in a day. California cannot count less than 10 million votes in a month.”

In his remarks, Hilton blamed Democrats for turning California into a “national and international laughingstock.”

The governor’s office dismissed Hilton’s comments, saying he lacks an understanding of how California elections are conducted.

“It’s concerning that a candidate for Governor doesn’t know the Governor has nothing to do with counting ballots,” Brandon Richards, Newsom’s deputy director for rapid response, said in a statement.

Under state law, local elections officials are responsible for administering elections and counting ballots. Elections are overseen by the secretary of state, California’s top elections official.

“Governor Newsom wishes the vote count moved faster, too,” Richards said.

California’s vote count is slow because voters have many avenues to cast ballots, The Times has reported. California allows voters to cast ballots by mail up until election day — and then has to count those ballots, which can number in the millions and are subject to manual signature verification. Under state law, election officials must give voters a chance to fix signature issues, further slowing down the process.

On Wednesday, Hilton told a crowd of supporters at the California Republican Party headquarters that he was waiting for races to be called, but expects to move on to the November general election.

“[Just] looking at the numbers, we’re very confident that at this point it’s not going to be possible, certainly in my race, for two Democrats to overtake our vote,” Hilton said Wednesday.

President Trump claimed without evidence that Democrats are “cheating” to win California’s primary elections on posts on his social media platform Truth Social late Wednesday.

“Why the vote counting DELAY???,” Trump wrote.

First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli, a Trump loyalist, said Friday morning his office “has multiple fraud investigations underway” in coordination with the FBI in Los Angeles.

The November runoff for state schools superintendent will pit two school board presidents — one a union-friendly liberal and the other a Trump-aligned conservative — against each other.

Republican, Sonja Shaw finished in first place in this week’s primary with 24.5% of votes counted through June 4. Democrat Richard Barrera had 19.3%.

First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli on Friday morning said his office “has multiple election fraud investigations underway,” in coordination with the FBI in Los Angeles.

Essayli’s remarks, posted to X, seemed to be in response to President Trump alleging in his own social media post late Wednesday that Democrats in California were “cheating” in the state’s primary election, and that there was an investigation underway in Essayli’s office.

Democratic Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis and Republican Jennifer Hawks will advance to the November general election in the race for state treasurer.

Kounalakis, a former businesswoman, is finishing her second term as lieutenant governor of California. She was the first woman elected to the office in 2018. She launched a campaign for governor in 2023 but dropped out of the race in August to run for treasurer. She is endorsed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, former Vice President Kamala Harris and outgoing state Treasurer Fiona Ma, who is finishing her second term and is running for lieutenant governor.

Hawks is a retired businesswoman. She serves as president of Palo Alto Republican Women Federated, a women’s political club. She is endorsed by the Californian Republican Party.

The Associated Press declared Kounalakis and Hawks to be the top two winners in the primary election for state Treasurer. In California, only the candidates who finish in first and second place in the primary advance to the November general election.

The slog of tallying up votes in California continued Friday as some races hang in the ballots.

Here is where we stand:

After the 2022 Los Angeles mayoral primary, developer Rick Caruso looked to have a surprising, and sizable, lead over then-U.S. Rep. Karen Bass.

The morning after the polls closed, Caruso was ahead by 5 percentage points — 42% to Bass’ 37% — and the former Republican called the early results “a victory story.”

But that lead did not last as the vote count continued. By the time all votes were tabulated two weeks after election day, Bass had come out on top, with 43% of the vote compared with Caruso’s 36%.

Welcome to the postelection vote-count slog in California, where tight races are often impossible to call even when the initial results seem clear-cut.

The last time Angelenos sacked an incumbent city attorney in the primaries, almost 30% of them were unemployed.

That was May 2, 1933, the nadir of the Great Depression, when sprawling encampments blanketed downtown, King Kong ruled movie theaters and violent crime reached a fever pitch not seen again for nearly half a century.

There are an estimated 3.6 million ballots remaining to be counted in California’s primary election, according to information provided by the secretary of state at 6 p.m. Thursday.

These millions of untallied ballots, made up primarily of by vote-by-mail ballots, have the potential to shift the outcomes in several undecided races.

So far, around 5.6 million ballots have been processed in the state. In L.A. County, around 1.4 million ballots have been counted, while some 700,000 still need to be processed, according to the secretary of state.

Vote-by-mail ballots postmarked on or before election day and received by the county elections official no later than seven days after the election will be counted.

County election officials are required to provide the secretary of state with an updated tally of unprocessed ballots starting two days after election day and continuing every day until the count is complete.

Election watchdogs have urged patience for the results of this week’s primary, which includes tight races for governor and Los Angeles mayor, and they have stressed that the slow count points not to problems or fraud, but to an accurate tally.

“We allow people lots of different avenues to vote, and as a result it takes longer to count up all the votes,” said Jessica Levinson, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University. “And that’s how it should be. ... It’s an argument in favor of making sure the process runs correctly — not quickly.”

The latest vote count in the California governor’s race shows Republican Steve Hilton holding steady with 27% followed by Democrats Xavier Becerra at 26% and Tom Steyer with 20%.

Los Angeles County, the state’s biggest population center, was among the counties releasing updated numbers on Thursday. The county, which has an estimated 688,000 votes left to count, will release more results Friday.

The top two vote-getters will advance to the November election.

Despite Hilton and Becerra holding on to their top positions, the race remains fluid. The Associated Press has yet to call the race.

Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman has narrowed the gap with reality TV personality Spencer Pratt in the race to make the Nov. 3 runoff against Mayor Karen Bass, according to the latest election update posted Thursday.

Raman remained in third place, trailing Pratt by just under six percentage points, the results showed. On Wednesday afternoon, she was about seven points behind. When county workers finished tabulating votes on election night, the gap between the two was eight percentage points.

In the race for Los Angeles mayor, incumbent Karen Bass and City Councilmember Nithya Raman will face each other in the Nov. 3 runoff.

Los Angeles County elections officials certified the results of the 2026 primary Friday, with the final tally for mayor coming in north of 850,000 votes.

A clearer picture is emerging of how Orange County will shape up come November.

Here’s where we stand as of Wednesday in the races for three congressional races — in the 42nd, the 45th and the 47th districts.

Read the full story here.

Well, that didn’t take long.

A day after California’s primary election, President Trump took to social media with baseless claims of election fraud — predictable, but also dangerous.

Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson pushed back against a claim by Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt that if he’s elected, L.A.’s homeless population would move to Seattle to take advantage of that city’s drug laws.

Pratt made the comment during an interview with ABC’s Josh Haskell, in which he claimed the city’s more than 40,000 homeless were choosing to live on the street.

Los Angeles voters were giving thumbs down to a measure that would raise the city’s hotel bed tax ahead of the 2028 Olympics, while also extending the tax to short-term rentals booked through companies like Airbnb and Expedia.

Buoyed by a new congressional map favoring their party, California Democrats eyed Tuesday’s primary elections as a critical first step toward flipping a handful of House seats and taking back power in Washington.

As of Wednesday, the results were a mixed bag — with Democratic candidates advancing to November’s general election as expected in several districts that were redrawn in their favor as a result of last year’s Proposition 50 ballot measure, but early results in another race considered critical to their majority aspirations caused unease.

The bottom line: There are still a lot of votes to count before a clear picture emerges.

Proposition 50 — which Californians passed with nearly 65% of the vote a year ago — was California Democrats’ response to Texas Republicans redrawing their state’s congressional maps in the GOP’s favor, at President Trump’s behest. It was also the only major Democratic counterpunch in the wider mid-decade redistricting brawl that has spread across the country in the last year.

Experts expect the redistricting battle to deliver a net gain of a handful or more House seats to Republicans. But Democrats could gain even more ground given Trump’s lousy approval ratings and the long history of midterm election losses for the president’s party.

Here’s the latest from Kevin Rector.

As former reality TV star Spencer Pratt and City Councilmember Nithya Raman wait for the vote tally to see who advances to the November election, let’s take a look at what polling says about potential match-ups against Mayor Karen Bass.

In a showdown between Bass and Pratt, the incumbent mayor was ahead, 47% to 29%, among the city’s registered voters, according to the poll by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, which was co-sponsored by The Times.

In a race between Raman and Bass, the city councilmember was ahead 32% to 28%, with 15% undecided and 25% choosing neither or saying they would not vote, the poll found.

The UC Berkeley poll was conducted online in late May and has a margin of error of around 3% in either direction.

A day after the polls closed, there were still 85 races with uncertain outcomes.

The Times is tracking updates for all races in which no candidate received a strong majority.

If a race has tight margins or a high expected volume of last-minute mail-in ballots, it can take days or weeks to call. The Associated Press projects winners using vote returns and other data.

To the surprise of few, President Trump has once again claimed without evidence that Democrats are somehow cheating to win California’s primary elections — writing on social media late Wednesday that federal prosecutors in Los Angeles are investigating the matter.

“The Dumocrats are at it again! They are trying to STEAL THE GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA PRIMARY, AND THE MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES, PRIMARY, AWAY FROM TWO GREAT REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES. Here we go with the very late and massive numbers of MAIL IN BALLOTS,” Trump posted to his social media website.

“There’s BIG cheating by the Dumocrats in California. Votes are all tied up. May not be in for weeks. Under investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles,” he wrote in a second post. “Why the vote counting DELAY???”

A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles — run by Trump loyalist First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli — declined to comment Thursday morning on Trump’s claims of an investigation.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass took office four years ago with a reputation as a coalition builder — someone capable of bringing competing factions together to achieve a common goal.

On Wednesday, that goal became Bass’ reelection this fall. In a bruising primary campaign, a broad coalition of supporters assembled by the mayor helped her secure a spot in the Nov. 3 runoff, even as her top two rivals — reality TV personality Spencer Pratt and City Councilmember Nithya Raman — battled for the second spot on the ballot.

President Trump made unfounded accusations about California’s vote count in a Truth Social post.

“Here we go with the very late and massive numbers of MAIL IN BALLOTS,” he wrote, suggesting without evidence the Democrats were trying to “steal” the governor and L.A. mayor’s race from Republicans.

It is part of a pattern by the president of sowing doubt about election results that he disagrees with. He falsely claimed he won the 2020 election after voters elected Joe Biden.

California’s ballot count takes an unusually long time.

Ballots in California are accepted for up to seven days after the election if they are postmarked on or before election day, and the official count can take up to 30 days.

Voting by mail (or drop box) has become the favorite method among Californians since universal vote-by-mail was implemented in 2021: more than 80% of ballots have since come from absentee, or vote-by-mail ballots, according to the California Voter Foundation’s analysis of the last four vote counts in California. In 2022’s primary it was as high as 91%.

Democrat Rob Bonta advances to the general election for attorney general in California, the Associated Press projected.

Bonta, seeking reelection as California attorney general, centers his campaign on fighting Trump administration lawsuits while addressing the state’s affordability crisis.

Two Democratic candidates — Rep. Jimmy Gomez of Los Angeles and community advocate Angela Gonzales-Torres — will advance to the November general election, according to the Associated Press.

The results following a tumultuous election day in which Gomez acknowledged that he is under investigation by the House Ethics Committee over sexual misconduct allegations.

Gomez has denied that he broke any ethics laws, but admitted in a statement that he made “personal mistakes” that caused his family pain.

Gonzales-Torres is a Pasadena City College counselor who has the backing of the progressive Justice Democrats.

The 34th Congressional District includes downtown and several neighborhoods on the city’s Eastside.

Republican candidate Steve Hilton continues to pace the field in the race to replace Gavin Newsom as California’s governor, according to the latest election returns released Wednesday afternoon.

Democrat Xavier Becerra remained in second place, though he closed the gap slightly on his rival as more ballots were counted.

Democrat Tom Steyer continued to trail behind the pair. The top two vote-getters, regardless of political party, will advance to November’s general election.

Politics

2026 primary election: California’s statewide races and congressional districts

Track real-time 2026 California primary results for governor, statewide offices, Congress and the legislature, with top two candidates advancing to November.

June 2, 2026

While Hilton and Becerra are pacing the field, neither has yet garnered enough support to officially advance, according to the Associated Press. It is unclear how many ballots remain to be tallied.

While the results of many California races were clear by Wednesday morning, officials have warned tight ones could take days or weeks to resolve. That’s because California election laws emphasize voter convenience and accessibility, meaning it takes more time to receive, verify and count ballots.

In the latest election returns Wednesday afternoon, the gap between reality TV personality Spencer Pratt and City Councilmember Nithya Raman slightly narrowed, but Pratt continues to hold a sizable advantage as the two vie for the right to challenge incumbent Mayor Karen Bass in the Nov. 3 general election.

Bass, who has already secured her position on the November ballot as she seeks reelection for a second term as L.A. mayor, saw her lead over Pratt expand in the latest results, but continued to lead the field.

A controversial citizens’ initiative in Shasta County that would dramatically reshape local elections — by requiring ballots to be hand-counted, in apparent violation of state law, among other changes — was on track to be approved, according to early results from Tuesday night’s election.

Ballots were still being tallied, but results released early Wednesday by the Shasta County registrar’s office showed that Measure B was leading.

Measure B would amend the county’s charter to require elections to be held in-person on a single day, limit voting by mail only to “the infirm, military, and U.S. citizens living overseas,” and require voters to show identification at polling places (as would a statewide ballot measure that voters will decide upon in November).

If the measure passes, both opponents and supporters expect the county to be sued over it.

Cathy Darling Allen, the former longtime Shasta County registrar and current board chair of the nonpartisan California Voter Foundation, said Measure B violates multiple state and federal election laws.

In 2023, Darling Allen clashed with the Shasta Board of Supervisors, which voted to ditch the county’s Dominion voting machines based on unfounded fraud claims and opted to hand-count ballots (quickly prompting a new state law that banned them from doing so).

Because of California’s long, complex ballots, she reported then, a full manual tally during a presidential election year would have required the hiring of at least 1,255 temporary employees, at a cost of more than $1.6 million, to meet reporting deadlines.

The ACLU of Northern California and the League of Women Voters said in a joint statement that Measure B “plainly violates state law” and that its elimination of most voting-by-mail will disenfranchise Shasta County voters.

Richard Gallardo, a leader of the citizens’ group Save Shasta Elections, which wrote the measure and collected thousands of signatures to get it on the ballot, said in an interview that Measure B is meant to protect the local election process from fraud.

“We don’t like the state laws,” said Gallardo, who is running for election to the Board of Supervisors. “We want to enact our own local election reform. … There’s a lot in there, so, yes, we do expect the state to sue us.”

The California secretary of state’s office declined in an email to comment on whether state elections officials would challenge the measure in court.

Sonja Shaw — a Trump-aligned Republican whose public profile rose as she became identified with culture-war causes, including banning transgender athletes from girls’ sports — has emerged as the leading vote-getter in the June primary for California’s superintendent of public instruction.

With all precincts at least partially reporting Wednesday, Shaw, with 24.9% of the tallied votes, was well ahead of Democrat Richard Barrera, who had 18.9% of the votes. Even with vote-counting ongoing, that lead would be difficult to surmount.

A huge, waning moon glimmered over Los Angeles on election night, a metaphor for a trend that emerged in early returns.

The city’s political establishment seemed to be on the retreat in favor of populist insurgents from both the left and the right.

President Trump has congratulated his favored Republican California gubernatorial nominee Steve Hilton, whose campaign received a boost when Trump endorsed him in April.

With 55.8% of the expected votes in, Hilton was leading with 27.8%, followed by Democrats Xavier Becerra with 25.4% and Tom Steyer with 19.6%.

Still, even if Hilton does advance to the runoff, his path to the governor’s mansion is anything but assured. While a crowded field of Democratic primary candidates split liberal voters, they will face vastly fewer options in November. California last elected a Republican governor in 2006.

Republicans appear to have over-performed in early vote counts, but for a variety of reasons, experts believe the ballots will lean more Democratic as the latest vote-by-mail ballots are counted. This could benefit Democrats and progressives in close races, but by how much remains an open question.

On election day, Trump posted on Truth Social that federal money would flow to California if Hilton is elected and suggested a Democratic governor would not get such kind treatment.