Results are rolling in after polls closed across California at 8 p.m. in Tuesday’s primary election.
While among Californians most eyes are on the race to replace Gov. Jerry Brown and challengers to Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s seat, a slew of competitive House of Representatives races could reshape which party controls Congress as Democrats aim to tip the balance of scales.
A number of statewide executive offices, all 80 state Assembly seats and half the seats in the state Senate were also up for grabs, and five propositions qualified for the ballot.
The top two finishers in Tuesday’s results will advance to the Nov. 6 general election. In many races, it may take days for enough votes to be counted to declare the final general election slate.
Click here for complete California election results from the Secretary of State’s Office.
Full results for each county can be found through their respective registrar’s offices:
• Los Angeles County results
• Orange County results
• Riverside County results
• San Bernardino County results
• Ventura County results
Because the state’s primary is nonpartisan, two candidates from the same party can advance to the final race. Because neither the Republicans nor Democrats were able to agree on a gubernatorial or U.S. Senate candidate to endorse at their respective annual conventions, many are unsure what to expect.
Although that led Republicans to worry they would finish without a candidate in the governor’s race, the Associated Press determined Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, would be facing off against Republican businessman John Cox in November.
Early results indicated former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a Democrat, would finish third with a little more than 11 percent of the vote. Another Republican, state Assemblyman Travis Allen, was close behind.
Click here for complete results and updates from the Los Angeles Times.
In the U.S. Senate race, Sen. Dianne Feinstein had already secured a spot on the final slate by 8:25 p.m.
But the competition among her 31 challengers remained tight, with no clear second place finisher emerging from a tight race between state Senate President pro Tempore Kevin de León and Republican James P. Bradley. Both were hovering around 10 percent of the vote Tuesday night.
Vote splitting among many different candidates of the same party is the big fear for Democrats in three Republican-held districts: 39 (where Ed Royce is retiring), 48 (where Dana Rohrabacher is running for re-election) and 49 (where Darrell Issa is retiring). These are all districts Hillary Clinton won, so they’re seen as big Democratic pickup opportunities.
More than 19 million Californians registered for the election, a little more than three quarters of the state’s eligible voters, according to the Secretary of State’s Office. But whether they all turned out was still unclear.
Of the registered voters, about 44 percent are Democrats, while a quarter are Republicans, and another quarter have declared no party preference. There are about 83,500 more independent voters registered in the state than there are Republicans.
California was among eight states voting in primaries Tuesday as the nation gears up for the Nov. 6 midterm election.