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Election Live Updates: Races Are Close in California With Many Votes Still to Count
Xavier Becerra, a Democrat, and Steve Hilton, a Republican, were leading in the governor’s race. The reality TV star Spencer Pratt could secure a spot in a runoff with Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles.
Source: Associated Press
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Jill Cowan and
The fate of California’s primary election for governor was unsettled Wednesday, with election workers yet to count millions of ballots and three leading candidates holding out hope that they would win one of two available spots in the general election.
Steve Hilton, a Trump-endorsed Republican, and Xavier Becerra, a former Biden administration official, led in incomplete results in the nonpartisan primary for governor, but Tom Steyer, a progressive billionaire, told supporters late Tuesday that he was “going to give democracy time to work.” In deep-blue Los Angeles, Mayor Karen Bass, a Democrat, was forced into a runoff that could pit her against a Republican reality TV star.
California’s ballot counting process is slow, with batches of votes landing through the day that could trigger a race call — or a concession. Many more Democrats than Republicans typically hold onto their ballots until the last minute, meaning those still being counted on Wednesday are likely to favor Democrats.
California wasn’t the only state where Tuesday’s races were being sorted out on Wednesday.
In Montana, Sam Forstag, a former smoke jumper and union leader, won the Democratic primary for a House seat and will face Aaron Flint, a local radio host backed by Mr. Trump, in November. His candidacy will test a liberal theory that progressive politicians running in Republican strongholds can do better than moderates have done historically.
And in South Dakota, Gov. Larry Rhoden, who ascended to the office last year when former Gov. Kristi Noem resigned to join Mr. Trump’s cabinet, advanced to a runoff against Toby Doeden, a businessman, in July. None of the candidates in the crowded field garnered more than 35 percent of the vote.
But much of the attention was on California, where the counting will continue for days to come.
In Los Angeles, Ms. Bass held a lead but became the city’s first sitting mayor since 2005 to fail to earn the 50 percent of votes required to avoid a runoff. The strong showing by the Republican, Spencer Pratt, suggested that voters harbored frustrations with the city’s leadership on issues including homelessness and the handling of last year’s devastating wildfires.
Mr. Pratt was in second place with counting far from complete, but as of Wednesday morning it was still possible that another candidate, a progressive City Council member, Nithya Raman, could secure the other spot in the November runoff.
Here’s what else we’re covering:
Key races: Four other states — Iowa, New Jersey, New Mexico and South Dakota — had primary contests on Tuesday. In Iowa, Republican voters halted President Trump’s run of primary endorsement victories by narrowly rejecting his choice for governor. Zach Lahn, a first-time candidate, won the Republican nomination, defeating Mr. Trump’s preferred candidate, Representative Randy Feenstra. In New Jersey, a progressive won in a crowded Democratic field for a congressional district. See results of key races ›
House races: In another closely watched California race, Scott Wiener, a state senator, and Connie Chan, a San Francisco supervisor, were the top two finishers in the open primary to represent San Francisco in Congress after Nancy Pelosi retires. Primaries across the country offered clues in the battle for control of the House. Read more ›
Iowa Democrats: In the Democratic primary for Senate, Josh Turek, a Paralympic gold medalist who was backed by a group allied with Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, coasted to victory over a progressive who campaigned against the party establishment. Read more ›
New Mexico: Deb Haaland, a former interior secretary, won the Democratic nomination for governor and will face off in a general election with Gregg Hull, a former three-term mayor of an Albuquerque suburb, according to The Associated Press.
June 3, 2026, 9:44 p.m. ET
Voters in Monterey Park, Calif., appear to have overwhelmingly approved a ban on data centers, becoming what is believed to be the first city in the nation where residents passed a measure permanently prohibiting the warehouses.
The referendum in favor of a ban, Measure NDC, which was winning with more than 86 percent of the vote on Wednesday in an unofficial total, was in response to a proposal for a data center that drew fierce opposition in the city just east of downtown Los Angeles.
“We were all hoping for big numbers,” said Steve Kung, a co-founder of the group behind the measure, No Data Center Monterey Park.
The vote reflected increasing resistance around the country to data centers, the warehouses that fuel the artificial intelligence industry. Opponents say they create incessant noise, drive up electricity rates because of the power required, don’t provide enough good-paying jobs and can worsen shortages of water, which is essential to keeping the machines cool.
Proponents say they’re a good source of tax revenues for municipalities; that they provide jobs for the community; that concerns about noise pollution and electricity rates are overstated; and that data centers can overall be good for society.
Cities, counties and states have enacted pauses or bans on data centers, but Monterey Park is thought to be the first to do so permanently at the ballot box — a place where Californians have a long history of effecting change.
The opposition in Monterey Park took hold in January, when hundreds turned up to a City Council meeting to oppose the proposed 247,000-square-foot data center. The meeting drew so many speakers that it carried on past midnight. Soon, yard signs saying “No Data Center” in English and Chinese began sprouting up around in a community that is predominantly Asian American and has long been a hub for Chinese immigrants in Los Angeles.
While Silicon Valley is the focal point of artificial intelligence development in the country, the data centers needed to fuel the boom are far from California. Often, they are in less populated communities in states like Virginia, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, West Virginia and Texas, where land is cheaper.
That made Monterey Park a surprising choice for the proposal last year by HMC StratCap, an Australian-owned investment firm. Though it was relatively modest in scope for a data center, about the size of four football fields, the property backed up to a park, where youth softball games take place on the weekends, and homes that are valued at more than $1 million.
“Data centers typically target rural and poor and economically disadvantaged areas because a lot of them are desperate for the revenue,” said Mr. Kung, who lives within a couple blocks of the proposed site. “Monterey Park isn’t that type of city. We’re solidly middle class. There’s a lot of density with housing.”
Still, the data center was projected to bring in $5 million to $7 million annually in tax revenue for the city, and would have been a much-desired anchor for a mostly vacant business park, said Vinh T. Ngo, a city councilman whose district includes the proposed site but who was not in favor of it.
At City Council meetings this year, some union workers spoke in support of the data center, citing the jobs it would create, according to local news media reports. But they were outnumbered, and the Council, which unanimously opposed the project, voted in March to add the measure to the city ballot for Tuesday’s statewide election.
Several weeks later, HMC StratCap notified the city that it would abandon the project.
Bernard Mokam contributed reporting; Susan C. Beachy contributed research.
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June 3, 2026, 5:10 p.m. ET
Politics reporter
Eric Swalwell, buffeted by accusations of sexual misconduct, suspended his campaign for governor of California in mid-April, saying that he would fight the allegations but relinquish his quest for the state’s most powerful office.
Some Californians were not ready to give up on his candidacy. On Tuesday, Mr. Swalwell, a Democrat once seen as a front-runner, won more than 18,600 votes in far-from-complete primary returns, nearly enough to fill the arena during a Los Angeles Lakers game.
Mr. Swalwell’s tally was still a tiny share of the overall vote in America’s largest state, accounting for about a half percent of the ballots that had been counted as of Wednesday afternoon. As of 1:30 p.m. Pacific on Wednesday (4:30 p.m. Eastern), nearly five million ballots had been counted in the nonpartisan primary. Ten candidates had received more votes than Mr. Swalwell.
Still, his share showed that at least a small sliver of Californians had not written off Mr. Swalwell after the scandal, which also forced him to resign from his House seat in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Days before Mr. Swalwell ended his campaign and gave up his seat, The San Francisco Chronicle reported that a former staffer accused him of sexually assaulting her in a New York City hotel room after an awards event in 2024. That same day, CNN reported that four women, including one who appeared to be the same former staffer, had described sexual misconduct by Mr. Swalwell.
Mr. Swalwell’s endorsers promptly began withdrawing their support, and the Manhattan district attorney’s office said it was opening an investigation into the allegations. After he resigned, a woman said he had raped her in a West Hollywood hotel; his lawyer denied the allegation.
Mr. Swalwell said he faced the threat of an expulsion vote in Congress if he did not resign.
In a statement, he denied what he said was a “serious, false allegation” against him, but he also said he was sorry for his “mistakes in judgment.”
June 3, 2026, 3:26 p.m. ET
It’s only the primary — the general election will take place in five months — and the California governor’s race is already the most expensive for a state’s top office in American history, based on an analysis of advertising spending by the tracking firm AdImpact.
A total of $315.8 million has been spent on TV, streaming and digital ads by 30 different groups pushing for or against a candidate for California governor.
The vast majority of those dollars were spent by one man, the analysis found: Tom Steyer, a former hedge fund manager who is running as a progressive Democrat, spent $201.2 million, making him responsible for 64 percent of the total spent on ads in the race.
A PAC opposing Mr. Steyer, funded by the California Chamber of Commerce and other businesses, was the second-largest advertiser in the race, spending $30.9 million, according to the analysis.
Ad spending by other candidates and their supporters paled in comparison to Mr. Steyer’s.
Matt Mahan, the Democratic mayor of San Jose, benefited from $35.1 million in total spending by his own campaign and an independent committee supporting him. And $24.4 million was spent on ads supporting Xavier Becerra, a Democrat and former California attorney general, by his campaign and two other PACs.
The $315.8 million spent on the California governor’s race so far makes it the fifth most expensive nonpresidential race on record, according to AdImpact.
Georgia, Ohio and Pennsylvania have had more expensive races for Senate seats. The only other California contest that made it into the top 10 most expensive nonpresidential campaigns was the 2022 fight over Proposition 27, which sought to legalize sports betting in the state. Voters rejected it overwhelmingly.
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June 3, 2026, 1:33 p.m. ET
Gov. Larry Rhoden and Toby Doeden, a businessman, advanced to a runoff election for South Dakota’s Republican nomination for governor, The Associated Press said on Wednesday.
Facing a large and competitive field that also included Representative Dusty Johnson and Jon Hansen, the speaker of the South Dakota House of Representatives, none of the candidates cleared the 35 percent threshold necessary to avoid a runoff. With the vast majority of ballots counted, Mr. Doeden was running ahead of his competitors.
The runoff between the two Republicans will be held on July 28, and the winner of that race will emerge as the overwhelming favorite in the general election in November.
For a race that includes an incumbent governor, South Dakota Republicans have had an unusually crowded and cantankerous primary.
Mr. Doeden, who has a number of business ventures, has noted his status as a political outsider and sought to point out parallels that he said he sees between his life story and President Trump’s. On his campaign website, he pledged to be “the fiercest ally to President Trump in the nation.” He also called for reducing and eventually eliminating the state’s property tax.
“I will be the most pro-business governor this state has ever seen,” Mr. Doeden said in a recent South Dakota Public Broadcasting debate.
Mr. Rhoden is running without some of the traditional advantages of the incumbency, having ascended to the governorship only last year, when former Gov. Kristi Noem resigned to join Mr. Trump’s cabinet. Ms. Noem, who was the first woman to serve as South Dakota’s governor, was fired as secretary of homeland security in March after facing bipartisan criticism.
Mr. Rhoden, a rancher who spent six years as lieutenant governor, tried to forge his own political brand over the past year and a half. He toured the state, announced the return of Fourth of July fireworks at Mount Rushmore and took on some of the state’s most pressing issues, including a long-stalled plan to build a new prison.
“Being governor isn’t about being a smooth talker, it’s about delivering results,” Mr. Rhoden said in that debate. “And I’ve proven my ability to do that.”
With the exception of a tight race for governor in 2018, South Dakota Democrats have shown few signs of electoral strength in recent years. No Democrat has held the governorship since the 1970s. Dan Ahlers, a former state legislator, will run on the Democratic Party’s ticket in November.
With only a handful of Democrats in the State Legislature, the dividing lines in South Dakota politics are often drawn within the Republican coalition.
While the candidates for governor agreed on many issues, they diverged at times, including on land usage and taxes. The candidates also presented contrasting styles and experiences.
Mr. Johnson won South Dakota’s only U.S. House seat in the 2018 election, and he has won re-election every two years by overwhelming margins. On the campaign trail, he talked about his experience in Washington and his alignment with Mr. Trump on border security and tax policy. He promised to make the state’s education system his top priority as governor.
Mr. Hansen described how his Christian faith shaped his policy views, and often noted his opposition to eminent domain for carbon pipelines, an issue that split the Republican establishment.
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June 3, 2026, 1:30 p.m. ET
Sam Forstag, a union leader and smoke jumper backed by big-name progressive leaders, won the Democratic primary on Tuesday in a U.S. House district in western Montana, The Associated Press reported on Wednesday.
Mr. Forstag’s candidacy is seen as a test for left-leaning politicians such as Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who have argued that the party should support working-class candidates running on more populist platforms.
Mr. Forstag defeated three other Democrats, including Ryan Busse, a former candidate for governor, and Matt Rains, a rancher and U.S. Army veteran, both of whom had run as moderates.
Mr. Forstag will face the Republican nominee, Aaron Flint, a local radio host backed by President Trump. They will be seeking to replace Representative Ryan Zinke, a Republican who is not running for re-election.
The Republican-leaning district has not been held by a Democrat this century, though it includes the liberal cities of Bozeman and Missoula. Mr. Trump won the district in 2024 by 12 percentage points.
Still, Mr. Forstag, 32, injected new energy into national efforts to change how the Democratic Party tries to compete in solidly Republican regions. He said during the campaign that instead of putting up middle-of-the-road candidates who have struggled to gain traction in past elections, Democrats should focus on issues that cut across party lines, such as affordable housing, health care and child care.
Mr. Forstag spent four years as a smoke jumper, a specialized type of firefighter for the U.S. Forest Service who parachutes in to fight wildfires. He said he was compelled to run for office last year when the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency, led by Elon Musk, fired thousands of Forest Service workers.
In April, Mr. Forstag spoke at a rally in Missoula with Mr. Sanders and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez that drew nearly 7,500 people.
June 3, 2026, 12:45 p.m. ET
Politics reporter
Democrats awoke Wednesday to disquieting early returns in a solidly blue congressional district in Northern California. None of their candidates in the nonpartisan primary was in the top two positions, raising the question of whether they could get shut out of the general election.
Much of the vote was still uncounted in California’s Sixth Congressional District, near Sacramento. Strategists in both parties agreed that those ballots were likely to skew toward one of the Democrats, Dr. Richard Pan, and lift him into the top two.
Still, the closeness of the returns at daybreak made for a nerve-racking morning for Democrats. It also illustrated the potential for unusual outcomes in California’s nonpartisan primaries, in which Republicans, Democrats and independents all compete together, sometimes splitting their respective party’s votes and elevating an unexpected candidate.
As of midmorning on the West Coast, Representative Kevin Kiley, a former Republican running as an independent after his district was redrawn to favor Democrats, was in the lead. Michael Stansfield, a Republican with no known campaign website, was in second. Six Democrats had split the rest of the early returns, which accounted for a majority of the ballots that had been counted.
Mr. Stansfield said he had run to spread a pro-Palestinian message and that he had not purchased a single campaign sign or advertisement. “This wasn’t meant to be a candidacy where I get to office,” he said Wednesday.
Jon Fleischman, a former executive director of the California Republican Party, described the situation as fluid. He said he expected Dr. Pan to be boosted by the uncounted ballots.
Steven Maviglio, a Democratic strategist based in Sacramento, predicted that Dr. Pan would make the general election. But he added that the race could remain a “nail-biter for a couple weeks” in California, where most voters use mail ballots and vote counting is notoriously slow.
“I think he’s going to eke it out,” Mr. Maviglio said. “But it’s going to be close.”
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June 3, 2026, 12:14 p.m. ET
Far-right Republicans in Montana, looking to end the party’s penchant for compromise, scored victories in some, but not all, key primaries on Tuesday over center-right legislators who had occasionally worked with Democrats.
Montana has long prided itself on straying from the nation’s conservative midsection on hot-button issues such as abortion. Some Republicans in the state legislature have teamed with the Democratic minority on issues such as expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. That bipartisan bloc has stymied conservative priorities such as making judicial elections more partisan and weakening labor unions.
So in Tuesday’s Montana statehouse primaries, an ascendant right tried to challenge that tradition, offering Republican voters a choice: stick with Montana’s maverick conservatism or embrace the Trumpian tides of national politics?
The results were a split decision.
In an open State Senate race, State Representative Ed Buttrey, an architect of the state’s Medicaid expansion last year, was routed by former State Representative Steven Galloway, the right-wing candidate. And in the House, another compromiser, State Representative John Fitzpatrick, was beaten badly by Trish Schreiber, a conservative school choice proponent.
Only one member of the moderate Republican bloc was up for re-election, and she lost. State Senator Shelley Vance, who represents a fast-growing suburb of Bozeman, was trounced by State Representative Caleb Hinkle, a hard-right legislator.
But traditional Republicans notched big wins, too.
In the most high-profile race, State Representative Llew Jones, who has been called the state’s most powerful legislator, edged a hard-right House colleague, Zack Wirth, to win an open Senate seat in a district which stretches 177 miles from Helena, the state capital, to the Canadian border.
In Great Falls, State Representative George Nikolakakos easily defeated Randy Pinocci, an ultraconservative member of the Public Service Commission, for an open Senate seat, while State Representative Melissa Nikolakakos, another voice of moderation, also fended off a primary challenge for re-election. The two are married.
And in a surprise, State Senator Barry Usher, a Freedom Caucus member who was slated to be the next president of the National Conference of State Legislatures, lost to Chris Rindal, a political newcomer who runs an oil business.
Art Wittich, the Montana Republican Party chairman and an advocate for a conservative takeover, called the results on early Wednesday morning “better than a draw.”
“We’re generally pleased,” he said.
Shannon O’Brien, chairwoman of the Montana Democratic Party, said “many of these newly elected Republicans have built campaigns around division instead of solutions, and that should concern anyone who wants a legislature that actually works.”
June 3, 2026, 12:00 p.m. ET
No Democrat has won the governorship of Iowa since 2006. No Democrat has held a Senate seat here since Tom Harkin retired in 2014. All four of the state’s House seats are held by Republicans.
Yet the combination of a struggling economy, President Trump’s policies and frustration with state leadership has Democrats hopeful of turning the Republican state back into the battleground it was when Barack Obama won it twice.
Democratic primary voters on Tuesday chose the more moderate candidate running for Senate, Josh Turek, a former Paralympian, and elevated the only Democrat holding statewide office, auditor Rob Sand, to run for the office of the retiring governor, Kim Reynolds.
Republicans rebuffed Trump’s endorsement of Representative Randy Feenstra for their party’s nomination for governor, picking a businessman and farmer, Zach Lahn, after a chaotic primary fight that revealed the state G.O.P.’s deep divisions.
In other years, Iowa might not even be on Washington’s radar. The state voted three times for Mr. Trump, and its leaders have enacted some of the most conservative policies in the country on education, abortion and transgender rights.
But the state’s economy has faltered over the past two years, and many voters say they want change. Mr. Trump’s tariffs raised the cost of tractors and fertilizers and upended the state’s vast soybean industry, which lost a critical trading partner in China during the trade war. Tariffs on steel and aluminum also hit manufacturers hard.
Then, prices of gas and fertilizer rose further after the United States attacked Iran in February. And labor has grown scarcer in agribusinesses, including in meatpacking plants that rely heavily on foreign-born workers who Mr. Trump has targeted.
“We are tired of the way Trump is handling our country,” Jacqueline Bradley, 71, who voted in the Democratic primary, said on Tuesday.
Ms. Reynolds is preparing to leave office after nine years with the lowest approval rating of any governor in the country, as rural voters sour on her conservative policies.
Thomas Nash, 65, said he voted for Mr. Trump in the last election but decided to cast his ballot in the Democratic primary on Tuesday.
“It seems like things have turned worse,” said Mr. Nash.
Voters on both sides of the aisle have been critical of Ms. Reynolds’ school vouchers, which use tax dollars to pay for private school tuition. Since the program began in 2023, Iowa’s public schools have lost more than 13,000 students, about 3 percent, and several have closed. That has hit hardest in rural areas, which do not have private schools to use the vouchers on.
Catherine Bloom, a Republican business owner, said she sent her children to public schools and worried they would be drained of funding if the voucher program were expanded.
Iowa is also struggling with rapidly growing rates of cancer, an issue that Mr. Sand has made a focal point of his campaign. Mr. Sand has spoken out against agriculture companies’ efforts to protect themselves from health-related litigation, including accusations that chemical companies failed to warn people about health risks like cancer.
“I don’t think it’s right that rural Americans are getting cancer because of what’s going into our water systems, and that’s tied to the fertilizer companies, and that’s tied to industrial agriculture,” said Charles “Randy” Frescoln, 70, who said he voted Republican but expressed frustration that the party was not addressing the issue.
Those issues, along with the leftward tilt of cities like Des Moines and Iowa City, could make for a powerful combination for Democrats in November. However, as of May 1, Republicans still had nearly 200,000 more registered voters in the state than Democrats.
Ann Hinga Klein contributed reporting from Norwalk, Iowa.
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June 3, 2026, 7:10 a.m. ET
Before his house burned down in last year’s Palisades fire, Spencer Pratt’s time as a celebrity seemed to have come and gone. After waging an outsider campaign for mayor of Los Angeles based on his advocacy after last year’s wildfires, he is back in the limelight.
Mr. Pratt, a Republican, had a strong showing in Tuesday’s primary and was in second place as votes were being counted. If he remains there, he will face Mayor Karen Bass in a November runoff.
A former reality TV star, his move into politics began with blistering criticism of Ms. Bass and Gov. Gavin Newsom, whom he routinely accuses of “letting his neighborhood burn down” in the wildfires. In a series of interviews last year, he appeared to have no aspiration for politics and said he was focused only on his Pacific Palisades neighborhood.
In the months since he announced his run for mayor, Mr. Pratt has tried to broaden his platform, talking about Los Angeles’s problems with homelessness and drugs. Though he is thin on policy, his outraged tone has resonated with frustrated voters.
On election night, reporters waited for hours to speak to Mr. Pratt before he emerged in front of Don Antonio’s Mexican restaurant on Pico Boulevard.
Outside his campaign party, which was closed to the media, a dozen or so television crews filled airtime by interviewing supporters of Mr. Pratt: celebrities, like the television host Billy Bush; Norm Langer, known for Los Angeles’s Langer Delicatessen; and a motley collection including live streamers in top hats and silvery suits holding “Pratt for LA Mayor” signs.
A black curtain was erected in front of the restaurant to prevent a view of Mr. Pratt, his wife Heidi Montag, and celebrity supporters like Mr. Bush and the comedian Adam Carolla. The waiting supporters and news crews created a raucous scene outside that was occasionally broken up by delivery robots and pedestrians confused about why a crowd had gathered in front of a restaurant with 3.7 stars on Yelp.
Supporters repeatedly said on Tuesday night that they knew that Mr. Pratt was not a typical candidate but that they were willing to take a risk on an outsider with no political experience.
When he emerged to talk to reporters, he was focused on a longer race and talked about trying to reach out to Democrats who might be leery of a Republican who has become a hero to right-wing influencers.
“I think this idea that I don’t represent Democrats and Republicans and independents, anyone that’s just a Los Angeles citizen and wants basic quality of life, I’ll be able to show that in five minutes,” Mr. Pratt said. “I’m going to show everybody that I’m their mayor.”
June 3, 2026, 6:24 a.m. ET
Luke Vrotsos and
In California, Election Day often stretches into Election Week or even Election Month because of the time it takes to count the state’s high volume of mail ballots. That process, combined with the fact that many Democrats waited until the last minute to return their ballots this year, could lead to a long wait for a call for many races in the state’s nonpartisan primaries.
Typically, more than 80 percent of ballots in California are cast by mail. Ballots that had been returned well ahead of Election Day were processed as they were received, and counties posted those votes shortly after polls closed on Tuesday night. But ballots received close to or on Election Day — as well as those postmarked by Election Day and received within seven days — can take up to 30 days to be counted.
Those later ballots, referred to as the “late mail” vote, often determine the outcome of races. And this year’s primaries are further complicated by a marked climb in the share of ballots returned by registered Democrats in the lead-up to Election Day.
Four weeks ago, about 40 percent of the ballots cast by mail came from registered Democrats. In the week leading up to Election Day, the Democratic share of returned ballots was over 50 percent, meaning that the mail ballots counted in the days and weeks after Election Day could be significantly more Democratic than those reported so far.
In the 2022 primaries, by contrast, the partisan makeup of mail ballots remained relatively stable throughout the early voting period, at about 53 percent Democratic. Even then, the ballots that were counted after Election Day shook up candidate standings in some races.
In the 2022 Los Angeles mayoral primary, Karen Bass had received about 37 percent of the reported vote by the end of election night, compared with the more conservative Rick Caruso’s 42 percent. By the time all the ballots had been counted, Ms. Bass had risen into first place with 43 percent of the vote, and Mr. Caruso had fallen to 36 percent.
California Democrats are returning their ballots later
Party registration of ballots returned each week before Election Day
And even without a shift in partisanship over time, the counting can still take a while: In the 2022 and 2024 primaries, more than a quarter of the House races remained uncalled by the Monday after Election Day.
Hard figures on the number of ballots that remain to be counted won’t be available until later in the week, but in past California elections as much as 50 percent of the vote has remained to be counted after Election Day.
Alex Lemonides contributed reporting.
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