California ballots still uncounted; key races uncalled

California ballots – Millions of ballots remain in the count in California as of Wednesday afternoon, leaving the state’s two marquee contests—governor and mayor of Los Angeles—still without final winners. The long wait is typical for California’s mail-heavy system, but it’s also

On Wednesday afternoon, California still didn’t have answers for two races that have come to stand in for the state’s political mood—who will lead next and how hard voters are ready to change.

Millions of ballots were still being counted. and the primary results for governor and for mayor of Los Angeles remained uncalled. The delay is partly built into how California votes: counties receive mail ballots after Election Day. because ballots must be postmarked by Election Day but can arrive at vote-counting centers in the days afterward. That kind of timing is common in the Golden State. but the pace also stretches the suspense for contests that have drawn national attention.

The governor’s race has unfolded under California’s “jungle primary” system. where the top two candidates—regardless of party—advance to the general election. Democrats had feared earlier that their field could be so split and closely divided that two Republicans might make the cutoff. As of Wednesday afternoon. at least one Democrat is expected to move forward for governor: former Biden Health and Human Services Secretary and former California Attorney General Xavier Becerra.

For Los Angeles mayor, the dynamics are sharper and more immediate. Incumbent Mayor Karen Bass appears set to advance to a run-off. That would be the first time a sitting LA mayor since 2005 has not won reelection outright—an outcome that. in practice. means Bass will have to defend her place in a city that is signaling frustration.

The person Bass faces in November is still unclear, and that uncertainty is the central tension for both races. In the gubernatorial contest. Republican former Fox News host Steve Hilton was leading at the moment and could block an all-Democratic matchup. In Los Angeles. Bass faces challenges from left city council member Nithya Raman and from Republican former reality TV star Spencer Pratt. whose insurgent campaign has reshaped the race.

What’s getting counted is one part of the story. What isn’t—voter enthusiasm—may explain why so many ballots are still sitting behind the scenes.

Voters were reluctant to rally around a single candidate in either the governor or mayoral race. according to the accounts emerging around the results. Many expressed unease with their choices and dissatisfaction with the Democratic-dominated government. The frustration. as it has been described across the race. circles back to multiple pressures at once: anger at Trump. anger at the status quo. anger tied to homelessness. and anger at incumbents.

Yet the lingering worry is that this mood may not translate into something fundamentally different.

To understand how California arrived at a primary season that feels unusually unsettled, Dan Walters—an editorial columnist at CalMatters and a veteran chronicler of state politics—said the election’s chaos runs deeper than the ballot-counting timeline.

He described it as the longest and messiest gubernatorial election in recent California memory. saying that the campaign lacked a pre-established frontrunner. In his view. the problem was not just crowded candidates—it was that the “stage” before the official campaign launches. when potential contenders test the waters. produced no clear signal of who would rise.

Walters said the sequence began with Kamala Harris standing around for “what. a month. two months. making up her mind. ” before she eventually did not run. He said Rob Bonta, the state attorney general, and Alex Padilla, a US senator, both declined to run as well. Eleni Kounalakis, the lieutenant governor, also announced she was going to run and then dropped out. By the time campaigns really started earlier this year, he said, voters largely did not know who was running.

The absence of a natural frontrunner. Walters argued. is something he has never seen in the governor’s elections he has covered for 50 years. and he called it unlike other periods where the party had a clearer sense of where the race was headed. He said the field ultimately swelled to 61 people running, with 10 candidates he described as serious.

Within that scramble, he pointed to Eric Swalwell as an example of how quickly momentum shifted. Walters said that former congressman Eric Swalwell became the leading Democratic candidate in early April. then within a few days was accused of sexual harassment. resigned from Congress. and left the race. He tied that moment to what followed: Walters said Xavier Becerra. who had been down at about 4 percent in the polls at that point in early April. rose and became essentially the candidate of the Democratic establishment.

Walters said voters either moved toward Becerra or held back, and that dynamic produced a two-person runoff in his description: Becerra and Tom Steyer, who spent $200 million mostly attacking Becerra at the end.

He characterized Becerra’s position as a kind of safe choice—people wanting something known and predictable—contrasting it with Steyer’s pitch to “fix it,” especially amid anxieties about inflation and cost of living, gas prices, and housing prices.

Walters also said this did not resemble earlier Democratic scrambles where figures such as Barack Obama or Nancy Pelosi offered a sense of intervention or sign from above. He called the overall campaign unusually strange.

Even if the candidates and campaigns had less clarity, Walters said the underlying structure of governing California is part of why the politics can feel stuck.

He argued that California’s challenges—water supply issues. homelessness. a chronic budget deficit. and low education performance—are existential issues that will sit on the desk of the next governor when the transition begins next January. In his view, Gavin Newsom’s engagement has not effectively dealt with those issues.

When asked whether it is fair to blame candidates and campaigns when structural problems exist. Walters pointed to the obstacles that come with complex policy-making in the American system. He said governance requires navigating committees. chambers of the legislature. and the floor as hurdles—each one a place where failure can occur. He also said consensus is required across multiple stakeholders. including business. labor. trial lawyers. environmentalists. and consumer protection advocates. making effective policy difficult and potentially impossible. He said that results in limited promises that may require ignoring larger, complicated issues.

He then connected California’s top-two system to the timeline: he said the system was forced on both parties by a budget deal involving Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2009. and that it was put on the ballot in 2010. passing. Walters said Democratic leadership never wanted it and Republican leadership never wanted it. After this year’s fear among Democrats of two Republicans finishing one and two. he said there is sentiment among Democrats to do away with it.

In Los Angeles. Walters said Bass’s political vulnerability is tied to a basic electoral fact: if an incumbent mayor does not win 50 percent in the primary. most voters are against her. and she must worry about what could happen in November. He said Bass has tried to deflect some blame by pointing to her limited powers. including that she can’t have the police arrest ICE agents. has no control over schools or public health because those fall to the county. and couldn’t control the weather when wildfires destroyed whole neighborhoods last year.

Walters said Becerra used a similar approach on the trail by discussing issues caused by Trump.

He also suggested that Bass may face difficulty not just from the candidates but from the city’s anger after the fires and over the response and reconstruction. He said Bass didn’t do herself any good in how she handled that period, and that it is “coming back to haunt her.”

On matchups. Walters offered his own probabilities: he said Bass would probably win against Nithya Raman. describing Los Angeles as liberal but not leftist. But he called Spencer Pratt a wild card. Walters said Pratt has had “very clever AI-generated ads” and a lot of enthusiasm. and he argued Pratt has struck something in voters—unhappiness with the status quo on homelessness. crime. and the fires. In his view, Bass defeats Raman, but faces a potential problem with Pratt.

Walters also looked beyond these two marquee races. focusing on Tom Steyer’s spending and what the early results seemed to suggest about the party’s progressive flank. He said it looks like Democratic voters rejected the more progressive wing of their party. He described Steyer’s campaign as populist on single-payer healthcare. taxing billionaires. and breaking up monopolies. saying the agenda matched the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Walters said Steyer spent $200 million and “didn’t get him that far.”.

He said this may reflect a post-2024 feeling within the party that it had been identified as “too woke.” He cited Gavin Newsom saying the Democratic Party had gotten too far left and needed to become more “normal.”

Walters also pushed back on what he called a misconception that California is a woke leftist paradise. He said the results seen from yesterday hint at that. adding that he cited the more progressive candidate running for Nancy Pelosi’s seat over in San Francisco not doing well. and that Steyer did not do well as well. He said he is not certain yet whether the left-wing candidate for mayor in Los Angeles didn’t do well.

In his framing, he did not call it a backlash against progressives so much as a decision that “no, we really don’t want to go that way.” He described Becerra as an ordinary, “don’t rock the boat” Democratic politician, not a left-winger.

Walters also pointed to demographics and political representation. He said the Latino population of California, the largest ethnic group, isn’t very left-wing. He said in the legislature, moderate Democrats tend to be Latino and Black, while progressives seem to be white liberals. He added that California also has many Republicans, saying a quarter of registered voters are Republican.

For now, the ballots are still moving and the final picture remains incomplete. But the combination of a long count. a crowded primary shaped by uncertainty. and voters expressing unease with their choices is already shaping what comes next—whether it’s the race for governor or the runoff that will decide who can take the stage in Los Angeles.

California primary ballot counting Xavier Becerra Karen Bass Steve Hilton Spencer Pratt Nithya Raman jungle primary Los Angeles mayor runoff