California Republicans could lose up to four more seats
California Republicans lost two House seats in Tuesday’s midterm election and could surrender more as tens of thousands of ballots are still being counted in four other contests that remain too close to call.
The party has an exceedingly small chance of holding the seats of Representatives Dana Rohrabacher and Jeff Denham, historical voting patterns suggest. Two other Republicans, Representative Mimi Walters and Young Kim of Fullerton hold thin leads over their opponents that could also vanish. The reason is simple: Early voters, often older white Californians who start mailing in their ballots weeks before Election Day, lean towards Republicans, while later voters, many of them young and minority, tend to prefer Democrats.
With extremely rare exceptions, close races in California shift in Democrats’ favour — typically by 2 percentage points — as the later ballots are counted, according to Political Data, a firm that tracks voter trends.
“This is as dependable as the tides,” Paul Mitchell, the firm’s vice president.
A huge share of the ballots — perhaps 40 per cent — remain uncounted, largely due to Californians’ increasing preference to vote by mail. By law, ballots postmarked by Election Day and received by Friday must be tabulated.
“For voters, the race is over,” said state Republican Chairman Jim Brulte. “For us, it isn’t.”
Both major parties were assembling squads of lawyers and volunteers on Wednesday to said dispatch to county registrars’ offices to monitor the post-election ballot counts.
For Republicans, the drift of votes towards Democrats, as the tally unfolds, can be grim. The day after an election, Republican candidates locked in a nearly tied race must evaluate not whether they can pull ahead, but whether they have a big enough buffer to sustain Democrats’ inevitable gains. Another former conservative bastion, the coastal 49th Congressional District in southern Orange and northern San Diego counties, turned blue on Tuesday as Democrat Mike Levin won the seat of retiring GOP Representative Darrell Issa.
California’s slow vote count can be anticlimactic after a frenetic campaign.