CSSA Election Update #3 - Blue Wave is the Red Bloodbath

The Short Version

• Republicans have now lost six sitting legislators, and the leaders of both Republican caucuses, Assemblymember Alexandra Macedo and Sen. Roger Niello, are holding on by about a point apiece.
• If current leads hold, Democrats will have 66 of 80 Assembly seats and 32 of 40 Senate seats. The last time the Assembly had more than 64 Democrats was 1883.
• Proposition 42, the constitutional ban on new wealth taxes, is still uncalled and has slipped to about 51.5%.
• Rep. Ken Calvert beat Rep. Young Kim in their Republican-on-Republican race, and California's Republican House delegation is headed for four of 52 seats.
• 12,070,684 ballots have been processed
• There are 1,544,106 ballots left to count. 

More than a week out from Election Day, we have a nearly complete picture of the new Legislature, and it is worse for California Republicans than it looked on Friday. Last week's story was a blue wave that held. This week's story is a minority party watching its bench, its suburban foothold and possibly both of its leaders disappear in a single cycle.

The ballot measures are mostly settled. CEQA reform and the billionaire tax are officially dead, the measure written to bury it is still alive, and two low-budget reform measures are coming down to the wire. In Washington, California is down to a handful of House Republicans, and they'll be serving in a Democratic House on pace to rival the 2008 wave.

Start with the casualty list. Since our Friday update, the AP has called two more Republican-held Assembly seats and two Republican incumbents have conceded. Add the races already called and Republicans have lost six sitting legislators, five in the Assembly and one in the Senate.

Seat

Republican incumbent lost to

How it ended

AD 7
Sacramento suburbs

Josh Hoover
lost to Amy Slavensky (D)

Hoover conceded Tuesday after Slavensky's lead passed 10,000 votes

AD 36
Riverside/Imperial

Jeff Gonzalez
lost to Ida Obeso-Martinez (D)

AP call Saturday; about 18 points

AD 47
Palm Springs

Greg Wallis
lost to Leila Namvar (D)

AP call Tuesday; about 10 points

AD 58
Riverside

Leticia Castillo
lost to Clarissa Cervantes (D)

AP call Saturday; about 23 points

AD 70
Little Saigon

Tri Ta
lost to Paula Swift (D)

Ta conceded Monday

SD 36
Orange County coast

Tony Strickland
lost to Chris Duncan (D)

Strickland conceded Tuesday

Democrat Mara Elliott also flipped former Senate Republican Leader Brian Jones's open San Diego County seat (SD 40), which the AP has called.

Some of these weren't supposed to be close. Two years ago, Jeff Gonzalez won AD 36 by 3.6 points and, this week, lost it by about 18.

Similarly, in 2024, Tri Ta won his seat by nearly 10 points, only to lose it on Monday.

Senator Tony Strickland won SD 36 in a special election last year by more than 24 points. His challenger, Chris Duncan, who lost two Assembly races to Republican Laurie Davies in the last four years and says he was outspent nearly three to one, will be the first Democrat to hold that Senate seat since 1994. Davies, for her part, is now trailing too.

Both minority caucus leaders are on the bubble

Here's the part that has Sacramento talking. Assembly Republican Leader Alexandra Macedo leads Democrat Hipolito Angel Cerros, a former mayor of Lindsay, by less than 900 votes in AD 33. Last week she was at 51.9%. To put a finer point on it, projections now have the Assembly Republican Leader’s challenger solidly outpacing her.

In the Senate, Republican Leader Roger Niello led Democrat Sean Frame by about a point in SD 6 after Tuesday's Sacramento and Placer updates, down from roughly four points a week ago. In the June primary, Niello took 56%.

Both could still hold on. But it's worth sitting with the possibility. In most organizations, losing a third of your members gets the leadership replaced. California Republicans may not have to bother. If either leader loses, the caucus will pick a successor from a smaller, more geographically isolated bench just as the new session begins, with almost no votes to trade.

Seat

Matchup

Where it stands

AD 33

Alexandra Macedo (R, inc., Assembly GOP Leader) v. Hipolito Angel Cerros (D)

Macedo by fewer than 900 votes, 50.5% to 49.5%, narrowing

SD 6

Roger Niello (R, inc., Senate GOP Leader) v. Sean Frame (D)

Niello by about 1 point, narrowing

AD 72

Gracey Van Der Mark (R) v. Chris Kluwe (D), open

Van Der Mark +111 votes, down from about 1,700 over the weekend

AD 74

Laurie Davies (R, inc.) v. Sergio Farias (D)

Farias +3,700, about 51%; lead flipped Monday

Laurie Davies's OC race is the cleanest illustration of how California counts. Davies led by about 1,200 votes as of Monday morning. Farias had been taking roughly 62% of San Diego County's post-election ballots, and San Diego held about three of every four votes left in the district. The California Target Book rated it Leans Farias before the lead flipped. Then it flipped. AD 72, where former NFL punter Chris Kluwe trails by 111 votes in an open Orange County seat, is now a genuine coin flip.

Assembly (80 seats)

66 D – 14 R

Senate (40 seats)

32 D – 8 R

22 of 120

Republican seats if current leads hold, down from 30

8 seats

Flipping to Democrats if leads hold, seven of them from sitting Republicans

For context, 64 Democrats would have broken the modern Assembly record of 62. A 32-member Senate majority ties the modern record. Orange County, once the beating heart of the California GOP, could end the count with Democrats holding seats Republicans have controlled for decades.

One Democrat-on-Democrat race also came off the board. The AP called AD 12 in Marin and Sonoma on Tuesday for Jackie Elward, the labor- and progressive-backed Rohnert Park councilmember, over Marin County Supervisor Eric Lucan. Grow California, the super PAC funded by crypto investor Chris Larsen and venture capitalist Tim Draper, spent nearly $4 million in the district on Lucan's behalf. Nearly $4 million buys a lot of mail. This year, in this district, it didn't buy the seat.

Why it matters, and why it doesn't

Democrats already had two-thirds in both houses, so the Republican caucus wasn't the obstacle to anything that needs a supermajority. Taxes, urgency clauses and constitutional amendments were already a question of how many Democrats would go along. That hasn't changed. What changes is who those Democrats are.

The new members from AD 7, AD 47, AD 70, SD 36 and the rest won districts that have flipped before and can flip again. They'll be cautious about anything that can be described as raising someone's cost of living, and they'll be defending these seats in a 2028 presidential year that may not be as kind. The votes on affordability, which remains the key buzzword under the dome, that decide energy costs, insurance, AI, CEQA and revenue in 2027 will increasingly belong to swing-seat Democrats, not to Republicans.

The Republican side of the ledger is simpler. With something like 14 Assembly members and eight senators, the caucus becomes mostly a messaging operation.

Props. 4 and 5: The Coin Flips

The two most obscure measures on the ballot are the last ones to settle. Prop. 4, which would lift California's ban on public financing of campaigns, trails 49.7% to 50.3%, about 74,000 votes. Prop. 5, which would separate a recall vote from the choice of a replacement, leads 51.9% to 48.1%, by about 434,000 votes, and looks likely to pass.

Neither had a formal campaign committee or meaningful money behind it. In September, PPIC found Prop. 5 with just 35% support among likely voters. Its author, former Sen. Josh Newman, admitted most Californians would give "a blank look" if asked about it. What it did have was the California Democratic Party's endorsement, which landed on the party's slate mailer to millions of registered Democrats. For all the talk of digital targeting and nine-figure ad budgets, the most effective campaign tool on this ballot may have been a slate card.

If Prop. 5 passes, a successful recall of a governor would no longer come with a same-day replacement election. The lieutenant governor would step in, and the vacancy would generally be filled later. That changes the math for anyone thinking about launching the next recall, which in California is never a hypothetical for long.

Measure

What it does

Where it stands

Prop. 1

$11.25 billion housing affordability bond

Passed, about 61% yes

Prop. 2

Doubles the rainy day fund cap from 10% to 20% of General Fund taxes

Passed, about 61% yes

Prop. 3

Makes the high-earner income tax for schools permanent

Passed, about 61% yes

Prop. 4

Allows public financing of election campaigns

Uncalled, trailing 49.7% yes

Prop. 5

Separates the recall vote from the replacement election

Uncalled, leading 51.9% yes

Prop. 37

Up to $25 billion in bonds for a middle-income homebuyer loan program

Passed, about 62% yes

Prop. 38

$8.4 billion bond for immunology research

Passed (called Nov. 9), about 54% yes

Prop. 39

Requires voter ID for in-person and mail voting

Failed, about 61% no

Prop. 40

One-time tax of up to 5% on billionaires' assets

Failed (called Nov. 9), 52.8% no

Prop. 41

Bars new taxes from sidestepping the state spending limit; requires audits

Failed (called Nov. 7), about 55% no

Prop. 42

Bans new state taxes on personal property and certain retroactive taxes

Uncalled, leading 51.5% yes

Prop. 43

Two-thirds vote for citizen-initiated local special taxes

Failed (called Nov. 7), about 57% no

Prop. 44

Spending requirements for community health clinics

Failed, about 82% no

Prop. 45

Streamlines CEQA review to speed construction

Failed (called Nov. 7), about 56% no

One more pattern: nearly every measure drifted left as the late ballots came in. Prop. 40 gained about two points, Prop. 42 lost about two, and Prop. 3 grew its margin. The direction of the late count is no longer a theory in California. It's a feature of the system, and campaigns that budget for election night instead of the canvass will keep learning that the hard way.

A Final Thought

Two years ago, California Republicans picked up a handful of Assembly seats and talked about a comeback. This year they gave nearly all of it back, plus seats they've held for a generation. It would be easy to read that as the end of the California GOP. We'd be careful. The voters who swung toward Republicans in 2024 and away from them in 2026 were mostly voting on the president, and the president won't be on the ballot in 2028.

The more durable lesson is about where power in Sacramento now sits. It isn't with Republicans, who weren't needed for much before and are needed for nothing now. It's with the Democrats who just won seats that flipped once and can flip again, and with the labor groups, tech donors and billionaires who will spend the next two years courting them.