California's Election Night Surprises: Republicans Find Unexpected Wins Amid Blue Dominance

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The polls are closed in California. Some winners are already celebrating, some losers are licking their wounds, and in dozens of races we’re going to be waiting days — possibly weeks — to find out who actually won.

Although Democrats outnumber Republicans here in the Golden State by millions of voters, some of the early called races are no surprise at all.

We do know that Democrat Xavier Becerra beat Republican Steve Hilton for governor by a wide margin, as did all the Democrats running for statewide office, except in the Insurance Commissioner’s race. That one features two Democrats in a close race.

Of course, I hoped Hilton could end Republicans’ long losing streak in statewide elections. Becerra made sure that streak continues. 

There are some decisive verdicts on ballot measures, too. Some good news: Election night returns show Proposition 40, the “billionaire tax,” losing by double digits.

But Proposition 3, the extension of the higher income tax rates for millions, passing by even more.

Proposition 39, the Voter ID measure, was getting trounced by nearly twenty points. Also Proposition 43, to make it harder to raise local taxes, was going down.

With the “Blue Tsunami” sweeping the nation, Republicans are losing at the Congressional, State Senate, and Assembly levels up and down California. It’s ugly.

Meanwhile, the candidates in the closer races are going to be staring at their phones for days, waiting for the next batch of votes. Some are ahead right now. Others are trailing. And if history is any guide, a fair number of those early leads won’t survive the counting.

I’ve watched this happen to Republicans for decades. I call it California’s red undertow.

Remember 2018? Republicans Jeff Denham, David Valadao, Young Kim, and Mimi Walters all led on election night. Every one of them lost.

Kim actually flew to Washington for new member orientation. She came home without a seat in Congress.

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I’ve sat in those campaign offices after Election Day, watching every county update shave a few hundred more votes off the lead. It’s a miserable experience, especially when everybody knows where the trend is heading.

We saw another example in June’s Los Angeles mayoral primary. Republican Spencer Pratt led Democrat Nithya Raman early, only to watch Raman overtake him as more ballots were counted.

Republicans tend to return their mail ballots earlier, and those ballots dominate the first reports. Ballots dropped off on Election Day, late-arriving mail, and provisionals can look very different politically.

None of that means the later ballots are fraudulent. They’re lawful votes and they have to be counted. But California has built a system in which Election Day is increasingly just the day we start finding out what happened. I think it’s a disgrace.

Every active registered voter gets a ballot mailed to his or her home, postage paid. Ballots postmarked by Election Day can arrive up to seven days later. Then there are signature checks, provisional ballots, and opportunities for voters to correct certain problems.

Florida and Texas manage to give voters a pretty good idea of who won within hours. California has more voters, certainly, but that’s hardly an excuse for a system that leaves competitive races hanging for weeks. And don’t blame the county registrars. They didn’t write these laws.

Then there’s ballot security, which bothers me even more. At a polling place, election workers and observers can watch the process. Nobody watches what happens when a ballot gets filled out at somebody’s kitchen table. We rely on signature verification and other safeguards after the fact.

I’d go back to voting primarily in person. Show up at your polling place, sign in, vote, and drop your ballot in the box. Keep absentee voting for people who really need it — military personnel overseas and homebound voters. It’s how we used to conduct elections, and I think we were better off.

Besides the Insurance Commissioner race, the highest-profile uncertain race would be the race for LA Mayor – which is going to be too close to call for some time. 

Many close races will take longer to settle. Nobody expects otherwise. But why should Californians have to wait weeks for results that voters in most other states get on election night?

Sacramento has spent years making it easier to cast a ballot. Apparently making it easier to know who won isn’t nearly as important. If faster results mattered to the people who write the rules, we’d have faster results.

Instead we get to spend the next few weeks watching the red undertow do its work.

One final note, for disappointed Republicans: A great Republican president lost both houses in his sixth year in office. Today he is remembered as one of America’s best.

His name was Ronald Reagan. And his legacy endures, in California and the nation.

Jon Fleischman, a longtime strategist in California politics, writes at SoDoesItMatter.com.