cent

IF you’re trying to figure out which country is the absolute cheapest for a summer getaway, you’re asking the wrong question.

After digging through thousands of our Summer 2026 bookings, the data made one thing blindingly obvious.

The biggest savings don’t come from swapping Spain for Turkey or Greece for Tunisia. They come from swapping one resort for another.

In almost every major holiday destination, there is one specific pocket quietly delivering far better value than the rest.

Sometimes it’s because it sits just a few miles outside a famous hotspot, and other times it’s simply because a place hasn’t shaken off an old reputation it no longer deserves.

The upshot is that you can bag the exact same week in the sun for a fraction of the cost just by shifting your search field a few miles down the coast.

I’ve crunched the numbers to find the cheapest resort in each of Britain’s favourite holiday spots to show you exactly where the system is breaking in our favour.

10. Hammamet, Tunisia – 18 per cent cheaper

Tunisia has quietly become the ultimate value play for guaranteed Mediterranean sunshine without the inflated price tags of Egypt or Turkey, but Hammamet is the real standout.

Our booking data has it tracking at 18 per cent cheaper than the average holiday in Tunisia, serving up massive white sand beaches and a proper, historic old town and marina that gives it way more character than a standard, purpose-built resort strip.

I spotted a seven night stay at The Russelior Hotel & Spa, flying from Gatwick in September, from £350pp on a Bed & Breakfast basis.

And the thing I love most at this property is their dedicated, ultra-quiet saltwater lagoon section hidden at the back.

It completely bypasses the noisy main freshwater pools, giving you a high-end, peaceful oasis for a rock-bottom price.

9. Praia da Luz, Portugal – 26 per cent cheaper

The Algarve is dominated by high-premium names like Albufeira and Vilamoura, which completely swallow the search traffic and explains why Praia da Luz routinely slips under the radar.

But bookings here are coming in 26 per cent cheaper than the Portugal average despite sitting on one of the prettiest, cliff-backed horseshoe bays on the coastline.

You can lock in seven nights at Oasis Beach, flying from Stansted at the end of September on a self-catering basis, from £365pp.

Because the seafront is packed with incredible independent seafood spots, saving cash on the board is a no-brainer.

The biggest perk at this complex is that the clifftop walking trail starts literally right outside the reception gates, leading you directly up to the famous Rocha Negra headland for an elite sunset view without paying the premium prices of the frontline bars.

8. Chloraka, Cyprus – 27 per cent cheaper

When people look at Cyprus, not many people know that Chloraka even exists.

The data shows it is averaging 27 per cent cheaper than the Cyprus baseline while offering the exact same sea views and Mediterranean weather.

It’s a brilliant, simple switch if you don’t mind being slightly outside the main tourist hub.

I tracked down an early autumn week at Helios Bay from £460pp.

Don’t let the 3-star rating fool you – this place has an incredibly loyal following of repeat guests, and the easy local transport right outside the hotel is a big reason why.

The main municipal bus stop sits directly outside the hotel entrance, running a direct link straight into Paphos harbor every 10 minutes for pocket change, allowing you to entirely skip expensive car rentals or daily taxi fares.

How’s that for a hack?

7. Naama Bay, Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt – 28 per cent cheaper

Egypt has firmly established itself as a luxury-for-less destination, but the soaring popularity of its newest five-star resorts has started pushing average prices up.

Naama Bay completely bucks that trend, tracking at 28 per cent less than the average Egypt holiday while still putting you right in the heart of Sharm El Sheikh.

You can spend a week at Falcon Hills from £500pp, flying direct from Liverpool – and that’s all inclusive as well!

It’s a massive favorite for return visitors because it’s set back slightly from the central bustle, and this hotel even has a complimentary, on-site dive partnership.

The hotel runs a free daily shuttle to a private, sheltered coral reef section on the coast, meaning you can snorkel with incredible marine life straight from the shore without shelling out for an expensive commercial boat excursion.

6. Nuevo Horizonte, Fuerteventura, Canary Islands – 34 per cent cheaper

The Canaries are Britain’s ultimate holiday safety blanket because the weather is a safe bet all year round, but the downside is that peak-season markups can be savage.

That’s why Nuevo Horizonte is such a smart data loophole, sitting at 34 per cent cheaper than the Canary Islands average.

I found an all inclusive week at the Globales Costa Tropical, flying from Bournemouth, from £390pp.

You are paying for Fuerteventura’s legendary white beaches here rather than a flashy marble reception lobby, which is a trade I will make every single day.

And being in Fuerteventura, this hotel’s bike hire program is a massive bonus.

The hotel rents out high-spec cycles from the front desk for next to nothing, and because the coastal path running directly into neighbouring Caleta de Fuste is entirely flat, you can cruise into town for an evening out without ever paying a euro for a taxi.

5. Sarigerme, Dalaman, Turkey – 38 per cent cheaper

Turkey is always at the top of my list for sheer value, but Sarigerme is currently outperforming the market, running 38 per cent lower than the average Turkish booking.

It is infinitely calmer and more unhurried than Bodrum or Marmaris, making it the perfect spot to turn your phone off for a week.

I clocked a seven-night all inclusive break at The X Life Hotel, flying direct from Bristol, from £470pp.

Because it’s strictly an adults-only property, the vibe around the grounds is incredibly laid-back.

The hotel also has a specialised beach shuttle – they run an exclusive, free tractor-pulled shuttle wagon that shuttles guests down to their private sand lot all day, which sounds a bit quirky but is an absolute lifesaver for bypassing the intense midday Turkish heat on the sun-baked sand tracks.

4. Mgarr, Gozo, Malta – 40 per cent cheaper

Gozo is essentially Malta with the brakes tapped, and hopping on the quick local ferry drops your holiday bill by a staggering 40 per cent compared to the main island average.

Mgarr is a stunning harbour town where the water is crystal clear and the pace of life is completely relaxed.

A week at the Grand Hotel here starts from £495pp at the end of September on a room-only basis.

Booking room-only is a smart play here too, because the hotel sits directly above the active harbour, putting the island’s best independent seafood tavernas right at your feet.

And I’ve got a great tip for this hotel too: head down to the docks at 7am, because the local fishermen will sell you the catch of the day directly from their boats for pennies, and the harbour restaurants will happily grill it up for your dinner for a tiny prep fee.

Thank me later.

3. Malgrat de Mar, Costa Brava, Spain – 42 per cent cheaper

Spain will always dominate summer bookings, but Malgrat de Mar has come out as the cheapest major Spanish resort in my entire analysis, sitting at 42 per cent less than the average Spain hol.

It gives you an incredible balance of wide beaches, long promenades, and proper tapas bars that don’t fleece you for chips.

If you just want a cheap week in the sun, the Alegria Cartago Nova is hard to ignore at £205pp for seven nights, flying direct from Stansted.

The location does all the heavy lifting here, and the real insider secret is that the hotel sits just a two-minute stroll from the coastal train line, giving you a direct, traffic-free route straight into central Barcelona for less than the price of a pint.

2. Montecatini, Tuscany, Italy – 59 per cent cheaper

This was the absolute wild card of all the data I poured through.

Italy is rarely associated with budget package holidays, yet the Tuscan spa town of Montecatini came in at a mind-blowing 59 per cent cheaper than the national average.

The logic is simple: instead of paying eye-watering city-centre hotel rates in Florence or Pisa, you use this beautiful historic town as your base and commute in.

I spotted a week at the Boston Hotel from £285pp on a room-only basis.

And while you’re here, take the historic Funicolare cable car from the town centre up to Montecatini Alto.

It’s an ancient, red funicular railway that drops you into a medieval hilltop square packed with family-run trattorias where a proper plate of handmade Tuscan pasta costs a fraction of what you’d pay near the main tourist landmarks down in Florence.

1. Kavos, Corfu, Greece – 69 per cent cheaper

Across every single piece of data I analyzed for Summer 2026, Kavos delivered the biggest saving on the board, dropping an incredible 69 per cent below the average holiday anywhere in Greece.

I know the immediate reaction because Kavos has carried a rowdy party reputation for decades, but if you look past the main strip, the landscape has changed completely.

It now boasts excellent boat trips across to Paxos and some of the cheapest food and drink prices in Greece.

Take the Oula Maisonettes, where a week from Gatwick starts from just £255pp on a self-catering basis.

The property is run by a local family who harvest their own lemons directly on the grounds – perfect in a G&T, I might add.

So the insider play here is hitting up the pool bar for their homemade lemonade or evening cocktails – it’s entirely made from scratch using their own grove fruit and costs next to nothing compared to the commercial town bars.

I first went to this hotel in 2018 and it’s only grown in popularity since. Easy pick.

Prices correct at the time of publication.

Happy Birthday, America!

You turned 250 on Saturday and, honestly, you don’t look a day over 249. (Ha ha.)

Seriously, it’s perfectly understandable why there’s more gray on your scalp and deeper worry lines on your face. This last year has been another challenging one, to say the least. (And we thought the one cataloged 12 months ago in this space was rough.)

The country is caught up in an unpopular, on-again, off-again war with Iran that was recklessly launched by President Trump with far more swagger than foresight. In an utterly predictable move, Iran choked off the the Strait of Hormuz, a vital passageway for the world’s oil, sending gasoline prices skyrocketing. Though they’ve fallen since the announcement of a shaky ceasefire agreement, the cost of filling up is still significantly higher than a year ago.

Of course, costlier oil means virtually everything else has become more expensive. Trump was reelected in good part because he vowed to tame inflation on his very first day in office. Instead, it’s reached a three-year high.

The ground beef served up at many July 4 cookouts costs 75 cents a pound more than it did a year ago. A package of hamburger buns is up 15 cents. The price of hot dogs and other picnic staples have also increased, along with just about every other item at the grocery store.

Chew that over with your corn on the cob. (Up roughly 2.5% from July 2025.)

Meanwhile, Trump enriched himself to the tune of $2.2 billion during his first year in office alone. Treating the U.S. treasury like his personal cash cow, the president has lavished hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on vanity projects such as a personally kitted out Air Force One — a “gift” from Qatar that Trump plans to keep after retirement — and a gilded White House ballroom, rising where the demolished East Wing used to stand. Plans are underway for a grand, marble arch in Washington celebrating, well, you know who.

At the same time, Trump has squandered money and resources pursuing political vendettas, persecution of his enemies and fruitless investigations like the one probing “theft” of the 2020 election and “vandalism” at the algae-clogged Reflecting Pool he promised and failed to rehab.

All this while millions of Americans have lost healthcare coverage and/or federal food assistance, all thanks to the One Big Billionaire Bounty bill that Trump signed into law a year ago.

It’s all a bit unnerving isn’t it, America? You’re on edge in a way you haven’t been in at least a generation.

In Minnesota, in the dead of winter, two of your citizens were gunned down by federal officers as they engaged in that most American of exercises, registering dissent against the policies of their government. From sea to shining sea, innocent Americans have been arrested — and sometimes shipped abroad — and immigrant communities cower in fear of federal agents who often seem bent more on meeting deportation quotas than meting out justice.

You’re divided, America, in ways no one alive has ever seen.

It starts at the very top. Trump acts as though he’s president of a favored rump group — his political supporters — rather than the nation as a whole. He’s used your 250th birthday not to celebrate those many grand and glorious things that hold us together as Americans but to bask in the tanning-bed glow of his immeasurable self-regard.

But, heck, if it’s any consolation on this star-spangled holiday weekend, the country has been through worse. Much worse. And you, America, have not only survived but in many ways grown stronger by surmounting obstacles, facing down your flaws and overcoming some knee-buckling, soul-crushing challenges.

Slavery. Civil war. Racist exclusionary laws. Genocide against indigenous peoples. Two worldwide conflicts. Depression. Financial crises. And too many deadly natural disasters — fire, floods, earthquakes, hurricanes — to enumerate.

Your treatment of some Americans, it should be said, hasn’t always been fair and just. It still isn’t.

People are despairing over the Supreme Court and its genuflecting deference to the president. The justices of its conservative majority have done just about everything short of handing Trump a crown and scepter to reign as a virtually untouchable, imperial president.

But it’s worth noting that earlier court majorities held that Black Americans — “beings of an inferior order,” in the words of the wretched Dred Scott decision — could be denied citizenship, that racial segregation was constitutional and that compulsory sterilization based on eugenics was perfectly fine from a legal standpoint.

That ugly, sordid history won’t necessarily make anyone feel better about the current state of affairs, nor should it. But it does offer some perspective and, with it, hope.

This weekend is best celebrated honoring the country’s many good things and the bright, shining place that America aspires to be, with liberty and justice for all. So chin up! Have another slice of birthday cake, America, and don’t worry about the calories — you really do look terrific for 250!

Going forward it’s up to us, your citizens, to keep working toward that more perfect union mentioned in the preamble to the Constitution. Whatever ails you, America, the remedy resides with we the people and the power we hold, particularly at the ballot box.

Unhappy with the wrecking crew that’s heedlessly chain-sawed federal programs and allowed Trump to money-grub with both fists, defile the White House and undermine our rule of law? Send a message and vote ‘em out, starting in November’s midterm election. And bear in mind the damage that’s been wrought come the 2028 presidential race.

Don’t stop believing that, as dark and difficult as things may seem right now, better days lie ahead.

That undimmed and abiding faith is what makes America great.

The money-saving expert said earlier in the week that he expected energy prices to drop soon in some rare ‘good news’ for hard-pressed Brits

Martin Lewis says that energy deals are already becoming more affordable following an agreement between the US and Iran. The money-saving expert stated earlier this week that he anticipated prices would fall soon in some rare ‘good news’ for financially stretched British households concerning energy costs.

This followed an announcement of an accord between the US and Iran to cease hostilities and reopen the crucial Strait of Hormuz. The memorandum of understanding, which is now active, was signed on Wednesday by Donald Trump and Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian.

This has seen the cost of oil and natural gas decline, resulting in a reduction in energy prices. At the time of writing, Brent crude has fallen by approximately $7 a barrel and UK natural gas by roughly 14 per cent.

Mr Lewis confirmed that fixed energy deals were already being made available that were around 5 per cent more affordable. He stated: “Energy fixes have started to get cheaper, now 5% below April price cap.”

However, Mr Lewis cautioned earlier this week that people shouldn’t anticipate a substantial reduction in the next price cap, which runs from October to December.

The next price cap is expected to be announced on August 26 by energy regulator Ofgem. Approximately 60 per cent of households in England, Scotland, and Wales remain on a standard variable tariff, meaning their costs are governed by the price cap.

The current energy price cap is due to increase on July 1 by 13 per cent. This means that a home with typical energy consumption paying by direct debit will face charges of £1,862 annually.

That marks a rise of £221 compared to the previous price cap – and Mr Lewis cautioned it could climb even higher, despite the cessation of hostilities.

He stated: “The US and Iran signing a framework deal has pushed natural gas prices down. These wholesale prices are a key driver of UK gas and electricity bills. As the six-month graph shows, though, prices still have a long way to fall before returning to pre-conflict levels.

“The good news is that this could lead to slightly cheaper fixed tariffs being launched in the coming days. However, without substantial further drops the October price cap still looks likely to be significantly higher than it is today.”

He was subsequently questioned about why he believed the price cap would increase from October. He responded: “It’s the same reason the energy Price Cap HASN’T yet risen due to the Middle East crisis. It is time-lagged. So slow to rise, slow to fall.”

A FURIOUS passenger has called out a major airline for giving him a smaller than usual seat.

A British passenger has bashed KLM Royal Dutch Airlines after they revealed their assigned seat was “30 per cent smaller than usual”.

Follow The Sun’s award-winning travel team on Instagram and Tiktok for top holiday tips and inspiration @thesuntravel.

Calling out the airline on X, Mike (@finnishmike), said: “Almost 8 months ago @KLM said they will reimburse my payment for this seat, which is not supposed to be on sales for passengers.

“Since then, they’ve completely ignored me won’t even reply back to emails anymore.”

According to The Mail, Mika was assigned seat 30A but when he arrived he realised it was much smaller than he expected it to be – even though he had sat in the same seat previously.

Read more on travel inspo

DEEP DIVE

All the lidos in the UK mapped – with FREE entry, water slides and cocktail bars

HOL YES

I’m a travel editor & mum-of-3… my favourite family holidays from just £3pp a night

Mika had specifically paid to be on an exit row, which usually means extra leg room.

However, the seat he eventually sat in was 30 per cent smaller than the one next to it, despite both seats being the same price.

Mika added: “It was only €99 (£85.57) and its not about the money, its principle.

“Just common sense they should reimburse me back, shame.”

One commenter pointed out that the seat is relatively new and is normally used for staff travelling between cities.

Sun Travel has contacted KLM for comment.

Picking the wildest fantasy promoted by President Trump as a basis for public policy is increasingly challenging — is it his yarn about schoolchildren being secretly abducted from their classrooms and given sex-changing operations? The notion that the vaccines given to children are like “a vat, like a big glass, of stuff pumped into their bodies?”

Here’s one that has disrupted the economics of renewable energy generation and will cost Americans billions of dollars: It’s Trump’s “completely weird war on wind power in the United States,” based on a sheaf of “fact-free arguments.”

That judgment comes from Steven Cohen, a climate policy expert at Columbia University, who points out that wind already accounts for 10.5% of U.S. energy generation, that it’s destined to continue growing — and that most of it is generated today in red states such as Texas, Oklahoma, Iowa and Kansas.

There is no question that Trump’s weird war against wind is full blown. On the day of his second inauguration, he issued an executive order shutting down all new permits for offshore wind farms and ordered the Interior Department to review existing permits.

A federal judge in Massachusetts blocked the executive order in December, and his orders suspending work on existing offshore wind projects have been halted by other federal judges. The Trump administration has blocked or delayed as many as 165 wind projects on private land, citing “national security” concerns, according to the American Clean Power Assn.

Most recently, Trump has reached agreements with offshore wind firms in which the government will pay them a combined $2 billion to abandon their U.S. projects.

At some level, this crusade resembles Trump’s misguided effort to revive the American coal industry, which is on the glide path to inevitable extinction. In that case, Trump is waging an explicitly partisan and ideological battle. “We’re ending Joe Biden’s war on beautiful, clean coal,” he declared last April.

Trump’s anti-wind program is part of his campaign to dismantle U.S. renewables policy because of its roots in the Biden administration.

Additionally, multiple commentators conjecture that his hostility to wind originated in 2011, when he groused that an offshore wind farm would be visible from one of his golf courses in Scotland. He sued to thwart the “ugly” project, and lost.

But Trump has mustered other arguments against wind, on- and offshore, none of which holds water.

During a cabinet meeting in July 2025, he called wind “a very expensive form of energy.” In fact, on average it’s cheaper than natural gas, coal and nuclear generation. Perhaps more important, the cost has been coming down sharply as technology improves and the sector reaches critical mass: falling to eight cents from 21 cents per kilowatt-hour from 2010 to 2024 for offshore projects, and to 3.4 cents from 11.3 cents for land-based wind farms over the same period.

Trump blamed wind turbines for mass killing whales and birds. Neither assertion is correct.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a federal agency, says “there are no known links between large whale deaths and ongoing offshore wind activities.”

The Audubon Society reported in January that although wind turbines can present hazards to birds, “developers can effectively manage these risks without significantly increasing project costs.” The biggest risks to birds come from the climate: “Two-thirds of North American birds are at increasing risk of extinction from global temperature rise,” the society reported — a threat that wind power can ameliorate.

Trump spokeswoman Taylor Rogers didn’t respond to my questions about the derivation of his anti-wind stance, but told me by email only that “President Trump has been clear: hard-earned taxpayer dollars shouldn’t be wasted on unreliable and costly wind farms that pose serious threats to our national security. Instead, we should be strengthening and expanding our infrastructure that produces reliable, affordable, and secure energy like natural gas plants.”

That brings us to the recent deals with offshore wind developers. The largest single deal, signed in March, was with the French firm TotalEnergies, which is to receive approximately $1 billion from the federal government to abandon all of its U.S. offshore wind projects and invest instead in oil and gas projects, including a liquefied natural gas export facility in Texas.

In his March 23 announcement of the deal, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum called offshore wind “one of the most expensive, unreliable, environmentally disruptive, and subsidy-dependent schemes ever forced on American ratepayers and taxpayers.”

This is what Huck Finn would call a “stretcher,” given the decades of subsidies spooned out to the oil and gas industry, reaching more than $30 billion a year in federal and state tax credits, indulgent regulation of pollution and low-cost access to federal lands. Indeed, the investment firm Lazard recently reported that renewables, including wind, are a cost-competitive form of generation even without subsidies. (Lazard’s calculation is of the “levelized cost of energy,” meaning the average cost over a generating plant’s lifetime.)

TotalEnergies fell into lockstep with the Interior Department in its own announcement, explaining its willingness to renounce U.S. offshore wind power because “offshore wind developments in the United States, unlike those in Europe, are costly,” echoing the agency’s position that “the development of offshore wind projects is not in the country’s interest.” Never mind that one factor that makes U.S. offshore wind development costly compared with Europe is the Trump administration’s opposition.

The government subsequently reached an agreement to pay the French company Ocean Winds $885 million to walk away from two offshore wind projects, including one in the waters off California. Ocean Winds described the deal as one driven chiefly by economics, but hinted at pressure from the White House.

“We welcome the opportunity to engage constructively with the administration on this agreement and acknowledge the clarity they have provided with this decision and deal,” Michael Brown, the chief executive of Ocean Winds North America, said when the deal was announced last month. “Our priority remains disciplined capital allocation and delivering reliable energy solutions that create long-term value for ratepayers, partners, and shareholders.”

The TotalEnergies deal, which the government has described as a “refund” of money the firm paid for its offshore leades, raised the hackles of congressional Democrats, who assert that it violates the law and constitution in multiple ways.

“We will hold you accountable for this billion-dollar ripoff,” Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee and Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael), ranking member of the House Committee on Natural Resources, warned TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanné in an April 29 letter.

Among other infirmities Raskin and Huffman alleged, the government’s national security rationale for canceling offshore wind leases looks “fabricated”; the payout violates the statutory formula for compensation for canceled leases; the money is to come from a fund designed only to pay court-ordered judgments and settlements of lawsuits, which don’t exist in this case; and includes a provision preventing the deal from being reviewed by a court.

The last of those provisions would have to be authorized by Congress, the letter states, asking for documents and a response from the company by Wednesday. Committee spokespersons weren’t available to say whether they received a response from TotalEnergies, and the company didn’t respond to my request for comment. I received no response from the Department of the Interior.

The California Energy Commission has opened an investigation into the Ocean Winds deal.

“The Trump Administration is recklessly spending billions of taxpayer dollars on backroom deals that would turn back the clock on innovation” CEC Chair David Hochschild said. “Taxpayer dollars should be used to build a sustainable energy future, not to pay to make projects disappear.”

What’s especially wasteful about Trump’s crusade against wind power is that it’s almost certain to be time-limited.

It’s hardly debatable that renewables such as solar and wind will be our principal sources of energy in the future; holding back the clock achieves nothing but injecting uncertainty into investment decisions that need to be made now, at a time when the price of oil is on the upswing thanks to Trump’s Iran adventure and Europe and China are racing to transition away from fossil fuels, while the U.S. remains becalmed by ideology.

“In the long run, fossil fuels will be used for petrochemicals and not for burning,” Cohen told me. “Fifty years from now, people are going to be amazed that we burned these rare, useful hydrocarbons for fuel, when the sun was just sitting up there providing an essentially infinite source of energy.”

It’s been years since Los Angeles County voters met a sales tax they didn’t like.

They agreed to pay half a cent more at the cash register to fund buses, trains and pothole fillings in 2016. The next year, they gave a quarter-cent more to fund homeless services. In 2024, voters bumped it up to a half–cent.

But with the electorate in a dour mood and reeling from rocketing gas prices, some speculate voters’ willingness to tax themselves may be dwindling as ballots arrive for the June 2 primary election.

“This is going to be a tougher year for taxes than prior years,” said former supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who pushed through a property tax ballot measure in 2002 to fund the county’s trauma care network. “There’s a limit to the tolerance people have for increasing their own taxes.”

Los Angeles County voters will soon decide whether they want to pay a temporary half-cent sales tax to shore up the region’s public healthcare system, which is facing dramatic federal funding cuts. Officials estimate the county will lose more than $2 billion in healthcare funding over the next three years.

The county currently has a base sales tax rate of 9.75%, and cities impose additional local taxes on top of that. If approved, the tax would take effect Oct. 1 and last for five years. The exact tax rate would vary depending on the city.

Voters haven’t said no to a sales tax hike since 2012, when a transportation measure fell just short with 66.1% support. It needed 66.7% to pass.

The healthcare sales tax has a lower bar to clear. The supervisors voted to put the measure on the ballot as a general tax, which gives them more leeway with how the money is spent and only requires a simple majority to pass.

But even that threshold may prove difficult. Polling from March suggested the measure was losing among L.A. city voters, who are often more generous than county voters at large. Angelenos will also find their ballot crowded with other tax hike proposals, which may leave some voters feeling picky.

“People have a very discerning instinct,” said Yaroslavsky. “They will pick and choose what they think is important.”

Despite no organized opposition, a flurry of cities, as well as the editorial board of the Los Angeles Daily News, have loudly spurned the idea, arguing it will make the region even less affordable.

“It’s just terrible timing,” said Paul Little, the head of the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce. “Costs are going through the roof for everything.”

With weeks to go until election day, healthcare workers and advocates supporting the measure have gone full steam ahead with mailers, marches and a social media campaign depicting a wallowing penny finding its lost sense of purpose with the measure. The campaign’s top funders are St. John’s Community Health and SEIU, who frame the measure as life or death for thousands of uninsured residents.

“Think about that person you know in your family who is asthmatic and relies on that inhaler, who has rheumatoid arthritis, who is diabetic,” said Supervisor Holly Mitchell at a recent town hall held in support of the measure. “And think about whether or not you’re willing to spend a half a penny — 50 cents on every hundred dollars — to make sure that that family, friend or neighbor gets what they need to be healthy.”

The supervisors voted 4-1 to put the sales tax on the ballot. Supervisor Kathryn Barger was the lone no vote.

Supporters say the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed by President Trump last July, is an existential threat to the public health system, leaving the county without reimbursement for the medical care of many Californians who are losing Medi-Cal coverage. The looming multibillion-dollar hole in the budget raises the prospect of hospital cutbacks, staff layoffs and possible emergency room closures, they say.