State saw highest midterm election turnout since ’82
Nearly 65% of registered voters cast ballots Nov. 6
SACRAMENTO — California voters turned out for the November election at a higher rate than any similar election since 1982, according to final statewide results certified Friday.
More than 12.7 million voters cast ballots in the Nov. 6 election, representing 64.5% of the state’s registered voters. That represents the highest percentage of voter turnout in a gubernatorial election since Nov. 2, 1982, when 69.7% of voters participated.
It was a dramatic change from 2014, which saw the lowest turnout — 42.2% of registered voters — of any gubernatorial election since 1942.
“What an election it was,” Secretary of State Alex Padilla said in a video posted online by his office.
In all, 41 counties reported turnout above the statewide average.
Fifty-seven percent of registered voters in Los Angeles County cast ballots, a marked increase from the 31% of voters who showed up in the fall election four years ago.
Orange County, which saw fierce competition for four of the six congressional seats all or partially inside its borders, had almost 71% of its voters cast ballots. That’s the highest turnout for the county since at least
1990, according to statewide statistics.
Elections in presidential years routinely see strong voter turnout. In 2016, 75% of California’s registered voters cast ballots.
But gubernatorial elections — which come at the midpoint of a presidential term in office — have generally been less popular with voters. Last month’s election, though, featured a number of campaigns that drew heavily on the record of President Trump and a host of national issues including healthcare, immigration and the environment.
An analysis by The Times shows that 43% of the votes — 5.2 million in all — were counted in the weeks after election night. California has a number of laws that have led to a longer vote counting process. The state, for example, allows any ballot postmarked by election day to be counted as long as it arrives at a county election office by the following Friday.
In the race for governor, Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom defeated Republican businessman John Cox by almost 3 million votes. Cox, who came in second in a June primary that saw 27 candidates, garnered a smaller percentage of November votes than any GOP candidate since 1998 — and even came up slightly short of the low-vote total won that year by former state Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren. The official results show Cox won just 38.1% of the vote, compared with Newsom winning 61.9% of ballots cast.
Historically, Republican candidates for governor have hovered no lower than about 40% of the votes cast in a general election, and Cox’s total share of the ballots continued to fall as the tallies were updated through late November.
This year also marked a milestone in the way elections are conducted in communities across California. Five counties enacted a new voting system that swapped neighborhood polling places for ballots mailed to every voter and a limited number of all-purpose “vote centers” for registration or voting assistance prior to election day. In each of those counties, voter turnout was higher than the statewide average. It was also the first year for “conditional voter registration,” the state’s version of same-day registration.
“Clearly [it was] a big success, and I look forward to working with many more counties” in implementing the new vote centers in 2020, Padilla said in Friday’s online video.
As of last month, some 19.7 million Californians were registered to vote, the largest number of voters in state history.
Elections officials expect strong turnout in 2020 and are already preparing for the statewide primary in late winter of that year — moved up by California lawmakers in hopes of giving the state a more prominent role in the presidential race.