California’s election-night answer may not come Tuesday. In the state’s closest races, including governor and Los Angeles mayor, experts said the runoff candidates are unlikely to be confirmed until Wednesday or Thursday, leaving voters and candidates waiting well past Election Day California.
That delay is already familiar to California political watchers, but it still tests the patience of even the most devoted followers of state politics. In 2022, a competitive U.S. House race in the Central Valley took three weeks to call. Two years later, a state Senate race in South Los Angeles needed 17 days to produce a winner, and an unprecedented second-place tie in Northern California sent one contest into a recount that lasted almost two months.
The reason is built into the system. California’s primaries send the top two vote-getters in each race to November’s general election, no matter their party preference, and the state’s universal vote-by-mail setup adds steps that take time. Mail ballots must be inspected and signatures verified. If a signature is missing or does not match the one on file, elections officials have to notify the voter and give them a chance to fix it. Ballots postmarked by election day can still be accepted for up to seven days after the election.
For election watchdogs, the slower pace is not a warning sign. Jessica Levinson said the state allows people “lots of different avenues to vote,” which means it takes longer to count every ballot, and she argued that is exactly how the process should work: correctly, not quickly. Tracy Hernandez, trying to steady anxious voters, said officials were “trying to keep people calm” and told them to “expect not to know.” She called the pace “healthy” and said it “should result in more Californians being able to vote.”
That is the friction in California every cycle. The longer count can look messy from the outside, but it is often the product of rules designed to make sure valid ballots are not tossed aside. On Tuesday, that means the state’s most closely watched races may still be undecided when the rest of the country is already moving on. By Wednesday or Thursday, the picture should sharpen enough to show which two candidates are headed to November — and how many ballots were still left to sort when election night ended.
