Poll

WASHINGTON — Most Americans continue to disapprove of how President Trump is handling Iran, while his overall presidential approval holds steady, according to a new AP-NORC poll that was conducted as he suggested a deal with Iran had been reached.

The poll points to just how unpopular the war, which began Feb. 28, has been with Americans even as the Republican president turned abruptly from threatening Iran to reopening negotiations. Support for his handling of the war remains lopsidedly partisan. About two-thirds, 65%, of U.S. adults disapprove of how Trump is handling issues with Iran. But while the vast majority of Democrats and independents view Trump’s actions negatively, only 28% of Republicans are unhappy.

Americans’ views on how the president is handling Iran are roughly in line with his overall job approval, which stands at 37%, unchanged from an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in May.

The new survey was conducted June 11-17, just after Trump called off threats to escalate the war with Iran. The poll was fielded as Trump announced a deal with Iran and authorized an end to the U.S. naval blockade in the Strait of Hormuz, concluding just before the deal was signed Wednesday.

Approval of Trump’s actions on Iran has been low over the past few months. But in interviews, some Republicans also weren’t pleased with the outcome of this week’s agreement, which gives Iran an immediate benefit, allowing it to sell its oil freely again.

The deal also reopens the strait without tolls for two months, restarts talks between the U.S. and Iran over Tehran’s nuclear program and calls for Tehran to dilute its stockpile of highly enriched uranium.

David Farrington, a 79-year-old Republican-leaning independent in Fort Worth, Texas, “doesn’t have any love lost” for Iran, but he’s frustrated the agreement focused on the strait and didn’t deliver more on the country’s nuclear weapons program.

“Any agreement regarding the strait is hardly what I would consider a recognizable concession on the part of Iran,” Farrington said. “So, I consider that some fluff that attempts to make this agreement look better when it’s not.”

Trump’s approval on Iran remains flat

Only about one-third of U.S. adults approve of how Trump is handling Iran in the new poll, in line with May.

Donald McBride, a 28-year-old independent in Plano, Texas, is frustrated that Trump has not maintained his campaign promise to keep America out of foreign wars. McBride voted for Trump but he opposed going to war with Iran.

“I would like the war to end,” he said. “The original objective of the war was to end the Iranian regime, and that’s just not possible. I don’t really know why we’d continue fighting.”

The poll suggests most Americans want action in Iran to wrap up. Even with an agreement on the horizon, 53% of U.S. adults said American military action against Iran had “gone too far,” only a slight decline from 59% in March.

About 4 in 10 Republicans, though, said in the latest poll that action has been “about right,” and 37% said it had not gone far enough.

Joan Jones, a 64-year-old independent in northwest Florida, believes the United States’ actions in Iran have been necessary to address the threat Iran posed.

“Those attacks are ultimately to protect us from nuclear attacks,” Jones said. “I think we have to go through that … and eliminate that worry so we don’t have that hovering over us.”

Few approve of Trump’s approach on Israel

About one-third, 34%, of U.S. adults approve of how Trump is handling Israel.

Tensions have been rising between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Trump as the president criticizes recent Israeli attacks in Lebanon, which jeopardized negotiations between Washington and Tehran.

James Huffman, a 69-year-old Republican in Medway, Ohio, thinks Trump is taking the wrong strategy when it comes to Netanyahu.

“Netanyahu is not going to do everything Trump wants. He’s going to do what he wants,” Huffman said. “I just don’t think it’s effective.”

Only about one-third approve on the economy

About one-third of U.S. adults approve of Trump’s approach to the economy. That’s in line with last month, and continues a challenging stretch for Trump on the issue.

Jones, the Florida independent, is more optimistic than most. She said she can hardly leave the house some hours without getting stuck in the traffic of tourists headed to the beach on vacation. She also spots lines around the block for Starbucks, McDonalds and Chick-fil-A in her community — all signs to her that the economy is doing well overall.

“I think President Trump’s policies are contributing to a better economy,” Jones said.

Other Republicans are more skeptical, a troubling sign for a president who prides himself on his business acumen. Only 69% of Republicans approve of how he’s handling the economy, slightly lower than the 78% who approve of how he’s handling the presidency overall.

Patricia Bailey, a 42-year-old Republican in Parkersburg, West Virginia, sees an economy where prices have gotten out of control. “I just said the other night, ordering pizza is for rich people,” she said. Bailey voted for Trump but added, “He’s kind of let me down a little bit.”

Even if high prices preceded Trump, Bailey doesn’t think he’s lived up to his pledge to improve the economy.

“I think he got so distracted with the war that he forgot some old promises,” she said.

Sanders and Thomson-Deveaux write for the Associated Press.

The AP-NORC poll of 3,040 adults was conducted June 11-17 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 2.8 percentage points.

WASHINGTON — Independents have grown increasingly unhappy with President Trump during his second term, a new AP-NORC polling analysis finds, particularly those without a college degree.

The analysis from researchers at The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that while about half of independents without a college education had a positive view of Trump around the 2024 election, his approval with that group fell to about one-quarter this spring. That shift has erased the large education gap that existed among independents in the months before Trump took office for his second term, with independents now holding similarly negative views of the president regardless of their level of education.

The analysis was conducted by aggregating nearly two dozen AP-NORC polls conducted between July 2024 and April 2026, allowing for a deeper look at how support for Trump changed during several distinct periods, including the last six months of 2024, the first 100 days of Trump’s presidency, the summer of 2025 when the One Big Beautiful Bill passed, last fall’s government shutdown and the beginning of the Iran war.

The compiled polling shows a steady decline among independents throughout Trump’s second term. His standing has also dropped among several small but important groups that moved toward him in the 2024 presidential election, including Black and Hispanic independents.

More Americans than ever consider themselves independents, and they are among the groups that shifted toward Trump in the 2024 presidential election. Any erosion in that support could signal trouble for Trump and Republicans headed into the midterm elections, which are often seen as reflection of how voters feel about their governing party.

Tafari Torres, a senior research associate at NORC who co-authored the analysis, noted that while Democrats’ and Republicans’ views of Trump have held largely steady in his second term, independents’ opinions are still moving.

“Independents are, broadly, the people who are reacting to the events and dropping in their support,” he said.

Dramatic declines during Trump’s first 100 days

Trump’s return to the White House was in part fueled by independent voters who saw him as the stronger candidate on key issues like the economy. The new analysis, which looks at Trump’s favorability and presidential approval ratings, shows that once he took the helm, their views quickly soured.

Independents without a college degree had a much more positive view of Trump than college-educated independents did during and shortly after the 2024 election, but that shifted in the first few months of his term. Positive views of Trump among independents without a college degree fell from 48% in the months before he returned to office to 31% in polling conducted during Trump’s first 100 days back in office. Those warm views declined even further, to about one-quarter, during the government shutdown and the early months of 2026.

Only about 3 in 10 college-educated independents, by contrast, had a positive view of Trump before he returned to office, making their drop to about one-quarter much less dramatic.

“The decline among no-college independents was steeper and it was greater than the slight decline in college independents,” said Sean Collins, a research associate at NORC who co-authored the analysis. “That was surprising, especially given, when you think of Trump’s coalitions, those without college degrees is usually one of the ones that that stands out.”

Hispanic, younger independents grow disenchanted

Americans without a college degree have long been a key part of Trump’s coalition. But Trump also won in 2024 by making gains among groups that tend to support Democrats, including Hispanic adults.

About 4 in 10 independent voters — 42% — voted for Trump in 2024, up from 37% in the 2020 presidential election. Independent voters without a college degree were a little more likely to back Trump over former Vice President Kamala Harris in the last election, according to AP VoteCast, and Hispanic independents were about evenly split between the two.

The picture looks much bleaker for the president now.

Nearly half of Hispanic independents — 46% — saw Trump favorably in the polling conducted around the presidential election. His approval among these adults dropped quickly in his second term, falling as low as 15% during last fall’s government shutdown before landing around one-quarter in the spring.

Younger independents also became less supportive of the president, while independents age 60 and older remained mostly stable. Other AP-NORC polling has pointed to Trump losing ground among younger Republicans over inflation concerns and Hispanic Americans growing increasingly discontented.

“The gains Trump appeared to make during the election, I don’t know if they’re sticking around. He’s experienced some significant shifts among those people,” Torres said. “From our research, they don’t appear to be permanent gains.”

The economy is frustrating many independents

Polling suggests that the economy is at the root of many Americans’ frustrations with Trump, including independents.

About half of independents who supported Trump in 2024 said inflation was the single most important factor for their vote, AP VoteCast found, and most expressed high levels of concern about the cost of food and gas.

More than a year into Trump’s second term, inflation remains high, fueled by gas prices that remain elevated as the Iran war continues. An AP-NORC poll conducted in April found that about 3 in 10 independents were “extremely” or “very” concerned about being able to afford groceries in the last few months, and a similar share were worried about being able to afford gas.

The analysis found that Americans’ views of the U.S. economy tend to align with their view of the president. Those with negative views of the country’s economy tended to have negative views of Trump, and about 8 in 10 independents described the U.S. economy this spring as poor.

The latest AP-NORC polling from May found that only about 3 in 10 independents approve of how Trump is handling the economy, in line with the roughly 3 in 10 who said that at the beginning of his second term. The April poll found only about 1 in 10 independents — 12% — approved of how Trump was handling the cost of living.

This AP-NORC analysis of 4,836 independents was conducted over 21 AP-NORC surveys, blocked into five time periods before and during President Donald Trump’s second term. Independents are classified as panelists who do not select that they identify with or lean toward either the Democratic or Republican Party.

Sanders writes for the Associated Press.

SACRAMENTO — Democrat Xavier Becerra holds a major advantage over Republican Steve Hilton as the race for California governor heads toward the November election, a new poll shows.

The two candidates topped a crowded field of gubernatorial hopefuls in the June 2 primary, earning them the opportunity to face-off in the general election.

Among registered voters in the state, 52% supported Becerra in a head-to-head matchup against Hilton, who was backed by 31%, according to a UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll which was co-sponsored by The Los Angeles Times. The remainder were undecided.

“It looks very much like a traditional, partisan-based general election, with most of the Democrats, over 80%, behind Becerra as the campaign starts,” said IGS Poll Director Mark DiCamillo. “Even though Hilton has over 80% of the Republicans, the Democrats outnumber Republicans by 20 points in the state, and that gives the Democratic candidates a huge advantage, which Becerra is clearly taking advantage of in this election.”

The survey of California voters was conducted before the primary, from May 19-24.

The poll found that Democratic and Republican voters were extremely loyal to their party’s candidate. Among Democrats, 82% said they would support Becerra in the general election, while 84% of Republicans said the same about Hilton.

Becerra also had an edge among voters registered as no party preference or registered with other parties — who make up almost a third of the state electorate. Among those voters, 43% backed Becerra, 28% supported Hilton and 29% were undecided, the poll showed.

Along age, gender, racial and geographic lines, voters preferred Becerra to Hilton nearly across the board. The only geographic region where voters preferred Hilton to Becerra are those in the North Coast/Sierra region, which makes up about 2% of the electorate, DiCamillo said.

Hilton, who served as an advisor to former British Prime Minister David Cameron before immigrating to the United States, in April secured the endorsement of President Trump, which helped him gain enough support among Republican voters to outpace his GOP rival, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco.

More than a third of Republicans, 37%, said Trump’s endorsement made them more likely to support Hilton. But while it helped Hilton consolidate the Republican vote in the primary, helping him finish in second place, it will likely hurt him in the general election, DiCamillo said. Trump remains deeply unpopular in California; the poll released Thursday showed 69% of voters disapprove of the president’s performance while 29% approve.

“A majority of Californians have a very strong negative view of the president, so Hilton’s backing by the president will not be nearly as beneficial to him in the general as it was in the primary,” he said.

A former Biden Cabinet secretary, state attorney general and longtime congressman from Los Angeles, Becerra had been wallowing in the low single-digits in public opinion polls less than three months ago. His fortunes changed when former Rep. Eric Swalwell, one of the Democratic front-runners, dropped out of the governor’s race after he was accused of sexual assault and misconduct, which he denies.

Democratic voters and interest groups quickly coalesced behind Becerra, who was seen as a steady candidate with a long resume in California politics and a record of fighting the Trump administration. In two months, he went from polling at 5% in a March IGS poll to 25% in a late May poll and finishing first in the unofficial primary vote count.

With 91% of ballots tallied as of Wednesday afternoon, Becerra led with 27.9% of the vote compared to 25% for Hilton, according to the Associated Press, which declared Becerra and Hilton the two winners. Billionaire hedge fund founder turned environmentalist Tom Steyer was in third place with 22.5% — knocking the Democrat out of contention for the November election.

DiCamillo said Swalwell’s dropping out of the race “really gave Becerra an opening and he capitalized on it.”

The poll also showed that in the end, “Becerra was the only one of the major candidates who ended the primary race with a favorable image among the overall electorate, even in the face of all the negative ads that Steyer was running” against him, DiCamillo said.

Just before the primary election, 44% of likely primary voters surveyed had a favorable view of Becerra compared to 38% who viewed him unfavorably.

Hilton and Steyer were upside down — 31% had a favorable opinion of Hilton compared to 38% unfavorable, and 39% had a favorable view of Steyer while 43% saw him unfavorably.

Though Steyer had aggressively courted progressive voters and secured the backing of left-wing individuals and groups like Rep. Ro Khanna (D-San Jose) and Our Revolution, a group founded by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the final IGS poll before the election showed more progressive voters ended up backing Becerra.

Among those who self-identified as progressive, 39% said they would support Becerra while 29% preferred Steyer, according to the late May survey.

“It’s really one of the factors that was responsible for Steyer’s campaign not being successful,” DiCamillo said. Progressive voters were “a target audience for Steyer, but Becerra was able to have an advantage there.”

The poll was conducted online in English and Spanish among 8,578 registered California voters. The survey has a margin of error of 2% in either direction.

SACRAMENTO — Even before President Trump’s latest wave of unfounded claims of election fraud in California, a significant share of voters in the state expressed concerns about federal interference in the electoral process, according to a new poll.

Trump on Monday claimed on his social media site that the race for Los Angeles mayor was a “Rigged Election,” an allegation that came after Democrat Nithya Raman overtook Republican Spencer Pratt for second place in the ongoing primary election vote count.

Raman’s lead had prompted Rep. Abe Hamadeh, an Arizona Republican, to call for the election to be federalized, or run by the federal government rather than the state, a message Trump reposted.

Earlier Sunday, Trump had alleged during an interview with NBC News that California elections officials “were cheating.” That came after a debunked social media conspiracy theory claiming that a lag in an update of electronic voting data by the Associated Press showed Pratt was being cheated. On Monday, House Speaker Mike Johnson said the elections process in the L.A. mayoral race “stinks to high heaven.”

The ongoing attacks by Trump and his supporters continue to erode confidence in the nation’s elections, especially among Republicans, threatening a pillar of American democracy, said political scientist Eric Schickler, co-director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley.

“The president … wants to use those claims to make changes in the election process that could make it harder for people to vote, and that certainly is a threat to our democratic institutions,” Schickler said.

“One thing we’ve learned in recent years is that we just cannot take the voting process for granted, cannot take for granted that both sides will accept as legitimate the outcome, and can’t take for granted the idea that there won’t be efforts to essentially manipulate the vote counting process,” he added.

A new poll released Friday by the institute found that 41% of California voters were “not confident” that this year’s elections would be free of federal interference. Although 48% had confidence that there would be not meddling, the concerns expressed were still significant, Schickler said.

More telling was the partisan divide among voters when asked whether they have confidence that local officials would conduct fair and secure elections and that the vote count would be accurate. Among Democratic registered voters, 79% said they trusted elections officials to provide an accurate vote count. Among Republicans, 55% said they were not confident that would occur.

California voters who don’t belong to either party said by a 2-1 margin that they had confidence in the vote count, the poll showed.

“The positive is that local officials are still widely trusted by Democrats, no-party-preference voters, and at least a share of Republicans, though a lot fewer than I think in the past, and a lot fewer than you know we would want for a really healthy democracy,” Schickler said.

That growing mistrust among certain parts of the electorate comes after years of baseless claims by Trump that the 2020 election was stolen from him, as well as Republican-led efforts to restrict the use of mail-in ballots and impose new requirements for voters to show identification and proof of citizenship.

Recent rulings by the conservative-leaning Supreme Court also have rolled back federal protections under the Voting Rights Act. In April, the court sharply limited a part of those protections that had forced states to draw voting districts to help elect Black or Latino representatives to Congress, as well as state and local boards.

Trump and his allies have used California’s slow vote-counting process to allege cheating. The day after the June 2 primary, Trump claimed without evidence that Democrats were trying to “steal” the gubernatorial and L.A. mayoral primaries. The next day, he alleged that California Democrats had “found” mail-in ballots and were “rigging the election” with them.

Secretary of State Shirley Weber and other officials have said California’s voting system prioritizes voter accessibility and security over speedy results. The state has more than 23 million registered voters, and ballots go through numerous verification steps, including verifying signatures on mail-in ballots.

“Over 97% of our folks actually vote by mail. They want to keep that system. That system demands more contact, more touching of the ballot, more verification of the individuals who are voting. All of those things take time,” Weber said during a recent interview with ABC10 in Sacramento.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office called Trump’s claims during the recent “Meet the Press” interview the “most severe case of California Derangement Syndrome we’ve ever seen.”

Newsom is considering a 2028 run for president and has consistently warned that Trump may try to interfere in both the 2026 and 2028 elections.

The Berkeley poll found that California voters overall — 74% — want candidates running for president in 2028 to prioritize defending democracy and making voting more accessible. Among Democratic voters, 95% said that was important; among Republicans, 41%.

Funding for the poll was provided to IGS by the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund, a private foundation based in San Francisco that aims to increase civic participation and improve the state’s democratic processes.

The poll of 8,578 registered California voters was conducted between May 19 and 25 online in English and Spanish and has a margin of error of about 2 percentage points in either direction.

Times staff writers Alene Tchekmedyian and Kevin Rector contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — As the U.S. prepares for an extravagant celebration of its founding principles, fewer Americans see their country as exceptional, a new poll finds.

The survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research highlights many Americans’ feeling of unease over the future of its representative government — particularly among young people. It presents a jarring contrast as communities around the country commemorate the nation’s 250th anniversary.

Only about one-quarter of Americans say the U.S. stands above all other countries in the world, the new poll found, while 44% say it’s one of the greatest countries in the world, along with some others. About 3 in 10 say there are better countries than the U.S., an increase from 19% in an AP-NORC poll conducted in June 2016.

Americans remain divided about whether diversity is an essential feature of the U.S.’s identity, and agreement about other aspects of the country’s underlying character appears to be eroding, the survey found. Americans are less likely to see a democratically elected government as “extremely” or “very” important to the United States’ identity as a nation than they were just a few years ago. About two-thirds of U.S. adults now say a democratically elected government is highly important to the U.S.’s identity as a nation, down from 80% in 2021.

“It’s not that the democracy part is not working,” said Derricka Wall, 24, of Chickasaw, Alabama. “It’s the people that are actually being put in office that is the problem.”

Wall believes politicians have damaged America’s governing system, which was designed to ensure representation and guard against government misuse.

America, she said, “is not what it used to be. I feel like our founding fathers would be kind of disappointed with how it is now.”

Rising belief that democracy is not essential to American identity

Young adults are much less likely than older Americans to believe the U.S. is special, compared with other nations, the poll found.

About 4 in 10, 44%, of U.S. adults under 30 say there are other countries better than the U.S., compared with 22% of U.S. adults ages 60 and older.

Fewer, too, see democracy as a key element of the U.S.’s identity. Only about half of Americans under 30 believe this, compared with 81% of those 60 and older.

Wall said the people who established the government with co-equal branches thought they were erecting safeguards to keep any one person or group from attaining too much power. But she believes they didn’t foresee how easily those guardrails would crumble if the people in the system stopped enforcing them.

“I feel like they would actually roll out of their graves,” she said. “I feel they would be very disappointed in us.”

The belief that politics isn’t working for everyday people extends beyond the youngest generations. Kent Stage, 62 and a retired senior enlisted man in the Army, is a registered Republican in Indiana. He does not think the current political system addresses the country’s problems. He’d like to see term limits on politicians and more working-class people serving.

“I’ll trust the ambulance-chasing lawyer and a shady used car salesman before I trust the politician,” he said.

Stage, who is also a former Marine, believes public servants make self-serving choices for their families “while mine and yours still got to hit the old grindstone.”

Many feel it’s harder to get ahead in the U.S.

The survey also finds widespread cynicism about America as the land of opportunity. About half of U.S. adults, 51%, say the American Dream — the idea that if you work hard, you’ll get ahead — once held true but does not anymore. About one-third say it “still holds true” while 15% say it never held true.

Jack Hermanson, a 27-year-old software developer in Denver, said his belief in the American Dream changed when he saw his engineer husband struggle to find a job. “That really shattered my impression that if you work hard, you get what you deserve,” Hermanson said.

Only 22% of Americans under 30 say the American Dream still holds true, compared with 46% of Americans ages 60 and older.

Angela Toombs, 31, works at a senior living facility in Atlanta where her clients talk about how easy it was to buy a house while working their first regular jobs in their 20s and are incredulous about the obstacles facing Toombs’ generation. Toombs recently gave up her own apartment to rent a room in order to save money.

Skepticism about the American Dream is more widespread among Democrats and independents, compared with Republicans. Most Republicans, 57%, say the American Dream still holds true, compared with about one-quarter of independents and 17% of Democrats.

Republicans are also much likelier than Democrats to see the U.S. as exceptional. About half of Republicans say the U.S. stands above all other countries in the world, compared with only 7% of Democrats.

Quintin Sharpe, 28, lives in a resort town on Lake Geneva in Wisconsin. A financial planner who is Republican, he said the American Dream remains accessible and he is proud of the country. “It’s been a great experiment.”

“The opportunity is there for those who want to work for it,” he said. Sharpe believes the country is “a meritocracy, and the best ideas, the best work ethic, those with the best succeed regardless of race, skin color, any of those factors.”

He and his wife will celebrate the country’s 250th anniversary watching the fireworks over the lake.

Divides on whether diversity is essential to U.S.

Just over half of U.S. adults — 56% — say a shared American culture and set of values are “extremely” or “very” important to the country’s identity, down from 65% in 2017. Younger Americans are less likely than older ones to say a singular set of values is important to U.S. identity.

But Americans remain sharply divided on the centrality of welcoming diverse perspectives: About half of adults, 51%, say the ability of people to come from other places in the world to escape violence or find economic opportunities is “extremely” or “very” important to American identity, while 55% say this about the mixing of cultures and values from around the world.

Only about 4 in 10 Republicans see the mixing of cultures and values from around the world as central to the country’s identity, compared with 76% of Democrats.

Rose Nunez, 70, of San Antonio, was a small business owner but now is a caregiver for family members. Nunez, who tends to vote for Democrats, said there is an unease and tension that are just beneath the surface, especially focused on Hispanics. She said some people have started carrying their papers showing their immigration status in case they are challenged.

“It is hard to celebrate when the feelings towards immigrants and communities of color are so strong,” she said of the upcoming America 250 celebrations.

She said even citizens are questioned now. If it gets to a point where being naturalized is challenged, “guess what, my mom would be leaving. She’s been living in this country since she was maybe four years old. She’s 93.”

Fields, Sanders and Riccardi write for the Associated Press. The AP-NORC poll of 2,596 adults was conducted April 16-20 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 2.6 percentage points.

Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman cut deeper into the lead of reality television personality Spencer Pratt on Saturday, as his lead slimmed to just a single percentage point.

Pratt fell to just over 27% of the vote while Raman jumped up to slightly over 26%, according to the results from the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder. Pratt now leads Raman by just 7,494 votes.

“We’ve seen Nithya Raman catching up on every update and the last two in particular she’s accelerated,” said Paul Mitchell, vice president of the bipartisan voter data firm Political Data Inc. “She’s continued to gain at a rate that means she will eventually catch up unless Pratt starts getting some ballots coming in that are either geographically or demographically better for him.”

Democratic consultant Michael Trujillo, who doesn’t represent anyone in the mayoral race, said the results suggest Raman will surpass Pratt as more votes are counted.

“I think it’s over,” Trujillo said. “It appears Nithya will be in the runoff. Pratt doesn’t appear to be growing much more.”

The second-place finisher in the mayoral primary will face Mayor Karen Bass in a Nov. 3 runoff. On election night Tuesday, the Associated Press determined that Bass had secured enough votes to qualify for the runoff.

Pratt has been in second place since then, but Raman has gradually eroded his lead as mail-in ballots have been counted. The updated vote tally released Thursday showed Pratt with 29% of the vote and Raman with 23%.

With Friday’s update, Raman’s share had risen to 25% and Pratt’s shrank to 28%, for a 3 percentage point gap.

In the most recent batch of mail-in ballots counted, Raman received 23,514 votes, while Pratt gained 10,336.

Election analysts expected Raman to gain ground as the mail-in ballots were tallied, reasoning that many left-of-center voters — Raman’s base — held onto their mail-in ballots until the last minute as they waited to choose between Democratic gubernatorial candidates. They also say younger, more progressive voters tend to hold onto their ballots longer generally.

Although the mayor’s race is nonpartisan, Pratt is a Republican in a city that is overwhelmingly dominated by Democratic voters and elected officials.

A poll by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, which was co-sponsored by The Times, had Pratt running in third place behind Bass and Raman.

The poll of 1,351 likely voters conducted May 19-24 had Bass with 26% support, Raman with 25% support and Pratt with 22% support, with a 3% margin of error.

Los Angeles voters have become accustomed to seeing election results change as late-arriving ballots are tabulated. In the 2022 mayoral primary, real estate developer Rick Caruso led the pack for about a week before Bass pulled ahead.

Pratt was favored in many of the same neighborhoods that voted for Caruso, according to a Times analysis of precinct-level returns provided by the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder on Wednesday, when an estimated 62% of the projected vote had been counted. Raman, by comparison, made inroads in progressive areas dominated by Bass four years ago.

Pratt, whose Pacific Palisades fire home burned in the January 2025 fire, was strong there and on the Westside, as well as in the San Fernando Valley communities of Encino, Woodland Hills, Chatsworth and Sunland-Tujunga.

Raman dominated precincts known for their progressive politics, particularly those with younger people in renter-heavy neighborhoods stretching from Hollywood to Highland Park, including her home base of Silver Lake.

Mail-in ballots with an election day postmark will continue to be accepted by county election officials through Tuesday.

More than a day after polls closed, voters still hadn’t learned which two candidates would run off in the November general election for dozens of races.

Many significant races are still too close to call. In the race for governor, Republican Steve Hilton and Democrat Xavier Becerra held leads, with Democrat Tom Steyer and Republican Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco trailing. Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, San José Mayor Matt Mahan and former Rep. Katie Porter conceded the race Tuesday night.

The Associated Press surveys the numbers posted by local election officials and projects the winner using vote returns and other data. Races can be called within minutes of polls closing on election night. However, if a race has tight margins or an high expected volume of mail-in ballots, it can take longer to call.

In some cases, such as for L.A. mayor and state treasurer, the tight race is between second and third place.

In California’s primary, the top two vote-getters move on to the general election regardless of candidate pool size, party preference, or whether one candidate receives a majority of votes. Locally and in nonpartisan races, however, a candidate can avoid the November election if they win with a majority.

Statewide

State Senate

State Assembly

Congress

Almost half of California’s 52 U.S. House of Representatives seats had known finalists on election night. But in tight races such as the Republican vs. Republican competition in the 40th District and the Democrats’ challenging of Republican Rep. David Valadao in a redrawn 22nd District, the top two vote-getters weren’t yet known.

Local

In Los Angeles County, there were still 27 races with uncertain results. The Times considers uncertain races those where no candidate has a majority or where the vote share for the top two is between 55% and 40%. The Associated Press does not call winners for most local races, such as city councils, city officers and ballot measures. If no candidate wins with a majority, the top two will face off in November. That could be the case for the sheriff and L.A. City Council’s 3rd District.

The L.A. County registrar will continue to count and confirm mailed-in, provisional and conditional ballots until June 26. Updates to the results charts below are expected approximately once a day in the early evening.

Close city races

Voters can track their own cast ballot here.

The secretary of state will certify results in early July.

June 3 (UPI) — People in the United States have pulled back from support of LGBTQ+ issues over the past few years, with 65% percent showing support for same-sex marriage now as opposed to 71% in 2022-2023, a Gallup poll released Wednesday shows.

The percentage of U.S. residents saying that gay or lesbian relations are “morally acceptable” also fell to 62%, the lowest that percentage has been since 2016.

This comes after a surge in acceptance in the late 2010s and early 2020s. Gallup said that between 1996 and 2022, the percentage of those in favor of legal same-sex marriage increased from 27% to 71%. However, that percentage has declined since.

The poll (Gallup’s annual Values and Beliefs survey) first asked about same-sex relationships and morality in 2001. Then, 40% percent said they were “morally acceptable.” That percentage grew to 71% by 2022, dropping to 64% in 2023.

The Gallup release noted that Republicans are largely responsible for the decline in acceptance. In 2021 and 2022, it said, 55% of Republicans expressed acceptance for same-sex marriage, but that has now dropped to 37%. Democrat views, however, are the same today as in 2022, with 87% in favor. Independents dropped from 73% to 67%.

There is a similar trend in opinion on the overall morality of same-sex relationships. In 2022, a high of 56% of Republicans said same-sex relationships were morally acceptable, but that percentage has now fallen 21 points to 35%. Democrats remain at 81% for that measure, while Independents have fallen eight points to 64%.

Gallup noted that Republican views on that measure are now where they were between 2005 and 2014.

The poll also asked about the perceived morality of changing one’s gender. The percentage of those in support has decreased from 46% over five years to 38 percent. Among Republicans, 22% expressed support in 2021, the first year the question was asked, compared to 5% today. Among Independents, the percentage decreased from 48% to 42%, and among Democrats, it decreased from 67% to 60%.

“The change has come as conservative leaders have pushed back against diversity, equity and inclusion programs that were intended to foster greater acceptance of LGBTQ+ people and other historically disadvantaged groups,” a Gallup release said.

The Trump administration has worked against protections for LGBTQ+ people in both terms, including ending civil rights settlements with college and school districts intending to prevent discrimination against transgender students.

Gallup surveyed 1,001 adults between May 1-17 with a 4% margin of error.

The outcome of the hotly contested race for California governor remained uncertain Tuesday night, but Republican Steve Hilton and Democrat Xavier Becerra held leads in the large field running to replace termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Hilton, a former conservative commentator, and Becerra, a longtime elected official who served in the Biden administration, were roughly tied in early returns, with Democratic billionaire Tom Steyer in a distant third. Only two of the candidates will advance to the November general election.

In Tuesday night remarks, Becerra cited his upbringing as the child of hardworking immigrant parents. When it came to his run for governor, he said, he was counted out, was outspent by competitors and faced calls to drop out to clear a path for a Democrat to rise to the top of a crowded field.

In the end, Becerra appears to have been that Democrat.

“Like my parents, I never gave up … and thankfully neither did you,” he told supporters Tuesday evening at the Plaza de Cultura y Artes in downtown Los Angeles. “While I take nothing for granted [and] there are lots of ballots left to be counted, it appears that we are on track to advance to November.”

Hilton, a former Fox News commentator who was endorsed by President Trump, took the stage at his party in Huntington Beach just after 10 p.m. as results showed him leading the race. “This is the first stage, but the fight really starts tomorrow,” he told supporters.

Hilton spoke of himself and Spencer Pratt, who had a strong showing in the Los Angeles mayoral race, as “a couple of outsiders who’ve never run for office before” who had taken on a broken system.

Steyer remained hopeful Tuesday night, urging supporters to be patient as the statewide vote is counted. He called out corporations, including Chevron, PG&E and the insurance industry, for rigging the system and making the state unaffordable for working people.

“Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate,” he said.

Other candidates in the race included Republican Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and Democrats including former Rep. Katie Porter, San José Mayor Matt Mahan, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and state Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond.

Villaraigosa, Mahan and Porter conceded the race Tuesday night.

Sonia Molina of Hancock Park said she came to Becerra’s election night party to support the Democrat, whom she has known since college. The local dentist described him as an honest, hardworking person who understands the importance of healthcare policy. Still, she was initially surprised at his rise in the polls.

“He’s very low-key and not very pompous — a lot of people [didn’t] really know him,” Molina said. “But I’m glad people are actually paying attention.”

Supporters of Hilton were gathered at the Waterfront Beach Resort in Huntington Beach, where cheers erupted in the ballroom with each wave of incoming results.

“He’s a true conservative,” said Hilton supporter John Merguerian, 52, of Glendale, who works as a security guard. “This is a chance for real change. We have the highest gas prices in the nation. We have the highest sales tax. One-party rule has done all this.”

California’s 2026 race for governor started slow but entered its next phase with a flourish, including the demise of a scandal-plagued Democratic favorite, the anointing of a Republican by Trump and Becerra’s unexpected rise from the depths of the crowded field of candidates.

Unlike gubernatorial elections in the last quarter century, this year’s race lacked a clear crowd-pleasing front-runner able to win over voters like Hollywood movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger or Jerry Brown, a sage of the California electorate and scion of a storied political family. But it unfolded at a crucial time as the state’s residents are overwhelmed by high housing costs, steep gas prices and overall unaffordability that threatens the “California dream” that once drew millions of people to the state.

Many voters appeared exhausted by Trump’s policies that disproportionately affected California, such as immigration raids, and the costly special election in the fall to redraw the state’s congressional districts. They did not tune in to the gubernatorial contest until weeks before Tuesday’s primary.

A fundamental question in recent days was whether the state’s 23.2 million registered voters, who all received mail-in ballots, were waiting to vote or if they would skip the election because of malaise. Low early Democratic voter turnout alarmed party leaders, but it increased in the lead-up to the primary.

Tuesday’s initial results are the culmination of one of the most unpredictable and expensive gubernatorial primaries in decades and a race that was shaped just as much by who opted not to run as by the candidates who did.

Former Vice President Kamala Harris signaled interest in the seat shortly after her bruising 2024 loss to Trump. The race was in effect in limbo as Harris, one of the state’s most high-profile politicians, weighed whether to enter.

She ultimately decided against it, as did Sen. Alex Padilla. If they had run, political strategists said, either would have been favorites to win, with high name recognition and previous experience running for statewide offices.

Others bowed out too, including Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and billionaire developer Rick Caruso. Candidates who had initially declared for the seat — former state Senate leader Toni Atkins, Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis and billionaire Stephen Cloobeck among them — dropped out or pivoted to other races.

“I don’t ever recall a playing field that looks like this one. Usually there’s a clear front-runner,” said veteran Democratic strategist Darry Sragow. “It’s easy to say that it reflects a lack of talent [but] that’s absolutely not true. Almost any of the candidates running could make a good governor.”

Still, candidates struggled for months to break through to voters.

In February, polls showed the crowded field of Democrats splitting liberal voters and opening a statistical possibility that the party would be boxed out of November under California’s open, top-two primary, which places all candidates on the same ballot. Only the first- and second-place finishers in the primary advance to the general election, regardless of their party affiliation.

Republicans Hilton and Bianco led many polls, prompting Democratic officials and allies to urge their party’s low-polling candidates to drop out of the race.

“Normal people are not living and breathing politics on a daily basis,” said Tim Rosales, a strategist who ran Republican John Cox’s 2018 gubernatorial campaign. In today’s information-saturated environment, Rosales said, the race and its roster of “extremely milquetoast candidates” didn’t break through to voters until scandal erupted.

Just when former Rep. Eric Swalwell appeared on the cusp of becoming the Democratic front-runner — rising in polls and gaining support from influential labor unions — the San Francisco Chronicle and CNN published allegations that he sexually assaulted a former staffer and acted inappropriately with other women.

Swalwell, a top Trump critic in Congress, vehemently denied the allegations as “flat false” and vowed to fight them, but the damage was done. His campaign staff and supporters abandoned him and some donors sought refunds. Two days after the allegations were published, Swalwell suspended his campaign.

In the vacuum created by Swalwell’s collapse, his Democratic rivals frenetically cast about for momentum. Porter saw a new bump in fundraising. Silicon Valley executives poured new millions behind Mahan. Former state Controller Betty Yee — who languished at the bottom of the polls — held on for a few more weeks before calling it quits.

It was Becerra who benefited most, though his critics and supporters alike have a hard time explaining exactly how or why. In less than two months, he vaulted from polling in the low single digits to the top of the field of candidates, according to surveys conducted by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies that were co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times.

“Becerra caught lightning in a bottle,” Rosales said. “It could have easily gone to any of the other candidates,” but many had baggage. Videos of Porter losing her temper hurt her image, the source of Steyer’s wealth and his unbridled campaign spending weighed on voters’ minds, and Villaraigosa and Mahan were “more centrist than what most Democrats wanted, and so Xavier Becerra was really the safe choice,” Rosales said.

Before Democratic voters began to narrow down their choices, Trump endorsed Hilton in early April. It helped the former Fox News host break away from Bianco but diminished the chances of a Republican primary sweep.

In the days before the primary election, the race solidified into a three-way contest involving Becerra, Steyer and Hilton. Now fearing a scenario with two Democrats on the November ballot, Hilton called on Republicans to unite behind him and ramped up pressure on Bianco to drop out of the race, warning that having Becerra and Steyer on the November ballot would “be a disaster for California.”

“There’s one person who can stop this doomsday scenario, and that is my friend Chad Bianco,” Hilton said in an Instagram video Friday. “Chad, the best time to have dropped out would have been a couple of weeks ago, but the second best time is right now.”

Steyer stepped up his fight in the remaining days, seeking to squeeze into one of the top two spots by relentlessly battering Becerra in ads and at campaign rallies as a politician propped up by corporate special interests.

“We cannot afford to have a governor who’s been bought off by Big Oil. Period,” he said at a Sunday rally in Los Angeles.

Corporations, along with labor unions and interest groups including the California Assn. of Realtors, had spent more than $18.7 million to boost Becerra, according to the election spending tracker California Target Book. Many of the same groups also gave money to a committee intended to attack Steyer.

As the election neared, Becerra sharpened his own attacks against Steyer, calling the billionaire a “liar” and accusing him of trying to buy the election.

“We are not going to let a billionaire or Trump’s handpicked candidate take over this state,” he said during a Sunday rally in Long Beach.

Steyer’s wealth has been a central theme of the race. He has so far dropped more than $216 million into his campaign, shattering records set by other wealthy self-funded candidates before him and prompting attacks from critics who accuse him of trying to buy an election.

“Everybody assumes money is the most important thing, that you can quote-unquote ‘buy an election’ with all that money,” said Jason McDaniel, an associate professor of political science at San Francisco State University. “You still have to have a candidate who is able to be well-liked, and policy stances that are aligned with where voters are in general.”

Times staff writers Susanne Rust, Andrew Khouri and Christopher Goffard contributes to this report.

We’re tracking races across California, including primary elections for U.S. congressional districts that were recently redistricted. Results for governor, statewide officers such as the attorney general and insurance commissioner, as well as state Senate and Assembly contests are available on this page.

In state-level primary races, the top two finishers will move on to the general election in November. Their names will be indicated with checkmarks once their races are called by the Associated Press.

Initial results are expected shortly after the polls close at 8 p.m.

Every registered voter in the state receives a ballot by mail. To vote by mail, these ballots must be postmarked by June 2. They may take several days to process. Results from provisional and conditional ballots also take longer, and will be added to the tally once they are cleared.

The data on this page updates periodically as results come in from the Associated Press. The secretary of state will certify results in early July.

Governor

The California governor’s race is a tight battle between 24 Democrats , 12 Republicans and 25 candidates from other parties or with no party preference . Half a dozen of which had real support in the polls. The crowded field is vying to replace Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom. California has never elected a woman as governor and only once a person of color, making this race potentially historic for the state. The top two vote-getters move on to the general election regardless of party preference.

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Statewide races

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Board of Equalization

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U.S. House

California’s congressional map was redrawn last year after the passage of Proposition 50. Several seats are expected to flip from red to blue due to Newsom’s redistricting effort. In some cases, districts were moved slightly and incumbents remain unchallenged. However, in one area, lines have been redrawn with no overlap at all with their current boundary: Rep. Ken Calvert’s 41st District in the Inland Empire was eliminated and completely redrawn in Los Angeles County. Calvert is now challenging Republican incumbent Young Kim in the 40th District. Both are marked as incumbents on the table below.

The 1st Congressional District — which was redrawn further south to cover portions of Butte, Colusa, Glenn, Lassen, Modoc, Shasta, Siskiyou, Sutter, Tehama and Yuba counties — is holding a special primary election to fill the seat left vacant by Rep. Doug LaMalfa’s death in January.

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State Senate

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State Assembly

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It’s election day in California’s 2026 primary, and you’re headed to the polls — until you realize you’re not sure you’re registered, or fear you might not make it to the vote center on time.

Here are some common election day concerns and challenges and how to end your Tuesday with an “I voted” sticker.

I forgot to register to vote

You can still register to vote on election day as a conditional voter through the same-day voter registration process.

Eligible citizens who need to register or re-register to vote within 14 days of an election can complete this process and vote at county elections offices, polling places or vote centers. To register you’ll need to provide a driver’s license, a state identification number or the last four digits of your Social Security number.

A complete list of county election office addresses can be found here.

Your submitted ballot will be processed and counted once the county elections office has completed the voter registration verification process.

If you’re unsure about your voter status, you can find your record here by providing some personal information including your date of birth and driver’s license number.

I don’t know where my polling place is

You can find your nearest polling place on the California secretary of state’s website here.

You can also use Los Angeles County’s voter center locator on the registrar-recorder/county clerk website here.

On election day, voting centers are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. across the state.

I can’t submit my mail-in ballot myself

You can have someone else submit your ballot.

Anyone can drop off your mailed ballot as long as you authorize them to do so and they do not get paid on a per-ballot basis, according to the secretary of state.

You and the person you’ve authorized to submit your mailed ballot must fill and sign the outside of the ballot envelope.

I forgot my check-in code for in-person voting

Los Angeles County election officials say you can check in at a vote center by scanning your “quick check-in code” — a number that verifies your voter registration.

Your code can be found on your mailed sample ballot and vote center postcard. Take either of those hard copies to the vote center.

If you forgot the hard copies, you can retrieve the code by verifying your voter registration here. You’ll need to input your last name, birth date, the house number of your residential address and ZIP Code. For assistance call, (800) 815-2666, Option 2.

I want to drop my ballot in a box but fear it’s too late

There are three ways you can submit your mailed ballot on election day:

• You can put it in a ballot drop box. The cutoff time for doing so is 8 p.m., which is also when the polls close on election day.
• Drop it off at a vote center, where the deadline is the same.
• Drop it off at a United States post office. Be sure to get a hand-stamped postmark from a postal employee. Mailed ballots must be postmarked on election day and received no later than seven days after election day.

I think I forgot to sign by mailed ballot envelope

If you failed to sign your vote-by-mail ballot return envelope, your vote will still count.

Your county elections official will notify you by mail, phone or email, according to the secretary of state. You can also be notified by way of the “Where’s My Ballot?” tracking tool if you have signed up for automatic notifications that will ping you if there are issues with your ballot.

Your county elections office will provide you with a form to fill out and return completed.

The form will be given to you two days prior to the day your county certifies the election, so be sure to fill it out and return it to your county elections office right away.

I’m going to be late getting to the polls; can I still vote?

In California, any voter who is in line at 8 p.m. when the polls are scheduled to close is allowed to vote, according to the secretary of state.

If there is a line when the polls close, a poll worker stands at the back of the line to let people who arrive after 8 p.m. know that the polls have closed.

Any voter who arrives after the polls have closed may not be allowed to vote, even if voters who were in line to vote before the polls closed are in the process of voting.

California voters are deeply divided over the trustworthiness of state elections heading into Tuesday’s primary, with most Democrats but less than half of Republicans expressing confidence in the electoral process, according to a new poll.

The polarized view follows a years-long campaign by President Trump and his Republican allies to question the legitimacy of American elections, especially in California and other blue states. It also follows robust efforts from liberal leaders, elections officials and voting rights experts to denounce Trump’s claims as baseless.

Overall, registered voters in the state — which skews heavily Democratic — expressed confidence in local election officials by a 2-to-1 margin, with 65% expressing confidence and 31% expressing a lack of confidence, according to the poll released Tuesday by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by The Times.

However, those figures shift dramatically when sorted by political party, and even more when parsed by partisan leaning.

For example, 79% of Democratic voters expressed confidence in local officials running a secure and fair election, compared to 62% of independent voters and 42% of Republican voters, the poll found.

While 82% of voters who identified as strongly liberal expressed confidence, just 38% of voters who identified as strongly conservative did so.

A volunteer assists Melani Hurwitz at a polling location Monday at the Cal State Long Beach Walter Pyramid.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

“It’s clearly a partisan issue, and it is being promoted by the president and others who are his followers,” said Mark DiCamillo, the director of Berkeley IGS polls. “Strong conservatives and the Republicans are the least confident, and a lot of them are saying [they are] not at all confident. That’s a pretty extreme statement.”

Rick Hasen, an election law expert and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA Law, said he expected Republican confidence to be even lower given Trump’s decade of undermining trust in elections, especially in liberal, diverse states such as California. But he said neither Trump’s narrative nor public sentiment about election security — which generally shows voters are more confident “when their side wins” — reflects reality, which is that “our elections are administered well.”

“There’s very little evidence of manipulation or of fraud or even of incompetence,” Hasen said. “Anyone who looks objectively would see that there are numerous safeguards to ensure we have free and fair elections in California.”

Trump has long contended without evidence that voter fraud is pervasive among undocumented immigrants and in states, such as California, that use mail ballots, and blamed his 2020 loss to Joe Biden on such fraud despite experts rejecting the claim and Trump’s own allies and lawyers being unable to prove it.

A voter casts their vote inside the Westchester Family YMCA Annex on Monday.

(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

Since returning to the White House last year, Trump has tried to implement strict new requirements for voter ID and proof of citizenship and to limit or bar mail-in voting, and called for greater federal or Republican Party control over state-run elections. In February, he said that “Republicans ought to nationalize the voting” in “at least 15 places” where they lose.

On Saturday, Trump falsely claimed that California doesn’t have any voting booths and only accepts mail ballots.

Democratic leaders, elections experts and voting rights advocates have all pushed back. They’ve backed their assurances that the state’s elections are safe with lawsuits to block Trump’s efforts to assert federal control. They also warn that his administration may try to intervene anyway, including by sending federal immigration agents to polling locations or intercepting or invalidating mailed ballots.

When Trump issued an executive order in March 2025 purporting to require voters to provide proof of citizenship, California sued, with a court blocking the policy while the litigation continues. When the Justice Department sued California Secretary of State Shirley Weber in September for refusing to hand over the state’s voter rolls, California won a dismissal in court. When Trump issued another executive order this March directing the U.S. Postal Service to take control of mail balloting, California sued again. That litigation is ongoing.

Last week Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill barring federal agents and other law enforcement from interfering with local and state elections officials or confiscating ballots, voter rolls or voting machines without a warrant. Newsom said California voters were experiencing “legitimate anxiety” over election integrity given the threats from the Trump administration and the recent actions of Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco — a MAGA-backed Republican candidate for governor who recently seized hundreds of thousands of ballots as part of what he said was an investigation into potential fraud in last year’s election.

An election worker collects extracted vote by mail ballots to be tallied at the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Ballot Processing Center in City of Industry.

(Gary Coronado / For The Times)

Newsom said he expects Trump to interfere with the upcoming election as well because “every single thing that Donald Trump is saying only suggests that he will do more, not less, to intimidate and to impact the outcome of this election,” but that the state stands ready to respond.

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta last week said that his office is preparing for “all different types of scenarios” involving federal interference, from ballots being seized to immigration agents showing up at polling locations.

“We are currently monitoring any potential risks or threats, and we’re ready for any possibility,” he said.

Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) last week blasted the U.S. Postal Service for issuing a proposed rule to implement Trump’s mail ballot changes, despite the ongoing litigation. In April, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) helped convene a pair of “shadow hearings” in California where fellow House Democrats and a panel of experts shot down Trump’s claims about widespread fraud and expressed confidence in state elections.

A Berkeley IGS Poll from a year ago found that California voters support requiring first-time voters to show ID to prove citizenship in order to register, and that most supported requiring a government ID every time a voter casts a ballot. However, another Berkeley IGS Poll from last month found that strong majorities of California voters believe American democracy is under attack or being “tested.”

Dean Logan, head of the L.A. County registrar-recorder/county clerk’s office, said that overall confidence, “despite a sometimes volatile state and national narrative,” was “gratifying.”

“Election officials take connection to their community seriously. We recognize that our job is to facilitate their voting experience, and that voter participation is key to election security,” Logan said. “Regardless of party affiliation, our role as election officials focuses on the function and process of ensuring the voice of the electorate is heard and that compliance with the election laws adopted in our state is achieved.”

Jesse Salinas, president of the California Assn. of Clerks and Elections Officials and the registrar of voters in Yolo County, said local elections officials are “proud to be a steady source of trust at a consequential moment,” and stand ready to “open our doors to any voter who wants to see firsthand how our elections work and to answer any questions they may have.”

Times staff writer Iris Kwok contributed to this report.

After the polls close in California on Tuesday, NBC News data analyst Steve Kornacki will just be getting started.

Since December, the khacki-clad vote-counting guru has been going live and uninterrupted on streaming platforms to provide results and analysis of every special election and even some state Senate contests.

The stream — called the Kornacki Cam — provides unadulterated number-crunching without any pundits weighing in. Rather than getting updates that last a few minutes, Kornacki provides continuous real time results until the last available total is counted.

“This all happens in full view,” Kornacki said Monday in a phone interview. “The audience gets to see the whole thing. They get to see the buildup, the anticipation, the payoff.”

In the 10 Kornacki Cam sessions streamed by NBC News so far, 20 million viewers have sampled on YouTube alone. The coverage — consisting of Kornacki, his Big Board, his producer and a Stedicam operator — is also available on NBCNews.com, the NBC News app and the division’s social media accounts on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.

The Kornacki Cam will focus on the primaries for Los Angeles mayor, California and several Congressional districts, shortly after the state’s polls close at 8 p.m. Pacific.

In a Monday chat with The Times, here are the trends Kornacki says he’ll be looking for on the night.

Polling in mayoral races is typically pretty unreliable. What do you make of the contest based on what you’ve seen?

You don’t always have super-competitive mayoral elections and they’re not all created equal. It’s not quite like a presidential election so you just don’t have a wealth of data to draw on for expectations either.

I’ve seen the polling you’ve seen. It suggests that of the three candidates, (Mayor Karen Bass, reality TV star Spencer Pratt and City Council member Nithya Raman) Bass is in the best position to get into the runoff. It also suggests that Spencer Pratt has had the most positive movement in the last month or so of the campaign. But we go in knowing there will be volatility and I’m open to any and all possibilities.

Spencer Pratt is an unusual candidate who has been able to take up a lot of oxygen in the race. Is there a hidden vote for him that people might not be eager to admit to pollsters?

You can look at the city and know where to look for whether Pratt is having a big night. The San Fernando Valley is gonna be more than a third of the vote, probably close to 40%. If he gets in the general election, he wants to be winning there by a big margin. 
If it’s not happening there for Pratt, I don’t think it’s happening anywhere else. Karen Bass is going to rely on central and south L.A., with probably a third of the vote coming out of those two places. Those should be her bulwarks. The Westside, I think could be more of a toss-up. There’s a fair chunk of the vote there.

We don’t do a ton of mayoral races around the country. So we’re still trying to figure out exactly how detailed we’re going to be able to zoom in, at the neighborhood level and the precinct level.

Turnouts usually are low for Los Angeles mayoral races. Will this year be different?

This mayoral race has received a lot more national attention than 2022. 
So my thought is that the turnout would be higher, just based on that. But this is something that is resonating nationally because Pratt has that celebrity factor. The number was 646,000 (total votes) for 2022. So that’s something we’ll be following — are we trending over or under that?

And what will be the best indicators for the gubernatorial race?

The place that I kind of got circled here is Orange County. In the last two sort of major statewide elections, it was the first to report out vote. 
At 8:06 p.m local time in California, in 2024, Orange County reported out half of its vote, right? So you’re getting, you know, you’re getting hundreds of thousands of votes, potentially, from this enormous county within, potentially within 10 minutes of polls closing. 
There were a couple others — the Central Valley, and we got a we got a good chunk of Merced and Fresno quickly.

So how long are we going to have to wait for a result on Tuesday night?

One of the other things that just surrounds everything in California, whether it’s the mayor’s race, or governor’s race, or anything else, is nothing is definitive in the first hour or so after the polls close. We’re probably realistically looking at a days or even weeks-long process of getting all the vote counted.

I know it drives many people nuts. Without editorializing on that, it’s just a fact that they can get out of about two-thirds of their vote on election night, and if the races aren’t clear and definitive, then you’re generally in for a pretty long haul.

We do know in California that they’re not going (to count) nonstop until they get a result. They’re going to then start doing updates as they process and count the remaining vote by mail, which is usually a considerable pile in a lot of these places. The vote by mail in California can continue coming in for seven days after the election.

So do you think your coverage reflects a shift in what the consumer wants? We already know how fragmented the audience is. Are there now enough political junkies who want the pure uncut stuff?

I’ve been doing this about 20 years, and when I would tell people that I reported on politics for a living, they either moved away from me or changed the subject. And now, you know, I found the last, you know, 10 years or something, has just totally changed. People come up to me, even if they don’t know I work in politics, and they want to talk politics. Everybody seems into it whatever side they’re on.

The June 2026 election has been dominated by a down-to-the-wire governor’s race that has been filled with drama, scandal and much national attention.

A large group of Democrats are vying to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom in this very blue state. But the candidates have — until recently — struggled to generate wide excitement, and it’s far from clear who will win. On the Republican side, commentator Steve Hilton has benefited from the divided Democrats (and a Trump endorsement) to remain near the top of the pack in polls.

But the governor’s race is far from the only vital decision voters will make.

Los Angeles residents will vote for mayor in a race that is far from certain. And there are numerous state, county, local and judicial candidates to choose from.

Here is a breakdown:

When is the election?

The election is Tuesday, but early voting has already been already under way.

You can find your polling place here or by calling (800) 345-8683. All polling locations are open on election day from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Once it’s cast, you can track your ballot here.

(Photo illustration by Nicole Vas / Los Angeles Times; Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

What are the big statewide races?

Let’s start with the race for governor, of course. With Newsom term-limited, Democrats and Republicans are competing for California’s open gubernatorial seat in what could reshape the state’s political landscape. Democrats went in hoping for easy sailing, but a wide field and no superstar name has left the race something of a tossup, though Xavier Becerra has been rising in recent polls. On the Republican side, Hilton continues to poll strongly.

There is a possibility California could make history: The state has never has elected a woman as governor, and only once has a person of color held the office.

But there are many down-ballot statewide races as well,

(Photo illustration by Nicole Vas / Los Angeles Times; Mark J. Terrill / Associated Press)

What are the big L.A. races?

The L.A. mayor’s race is grabbing all the attention. Polls show the leading candidates are Mayor Karen Bass, City Councilmember Nithya Raman and community activist and former reality TV personality Spencer Pratt. Those same polls show Bass has struggled in the aftermath of the 2025 firestorms, a big issue for Pratt. Another major topic is affordability, which Raman has taken up.

But there are several other competitive races plus ballot measures.

What are the big L.A. County races?

These contests don’t get the attention of the mayor’s and governor’s races, but L.A. County voters have a lot of choices to make.

What’s left?

One more day and it’ll all be over. I’m referring to the primary election, of course, and the unremitting campaign ads that have infiltrated every aspect of our being as Californians.

Authentic or paid influencers promoting candidates on TikTok and Instagram. Facebook ads vilifying or praising various measures. Incessant, repetitive TV campaigns that get nastier with every election, yet still manage to feel like an analogue remnant from 1982. The worst? Those sponsored leaflets and postcard mailers that end up as makeshift coasters, mosquito swatters or unread refuse that goes straight from the mailbox into the blue recycle bin.

The king of ad spending is Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer. He’s behind the most expensive political advertising campaign in the country this year. A former hedge fund manager, Steyer has reportedly spent more than $200 million on his campaign, with a major chunk of that for broadcast TV, cable and radio — 20 times the amount spent by fellow Democrat, former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services and California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra. And Steyer is still polling behind Becerra.

I never thought I’d write this but it’s not always about the money.

Xavier Becerra, front-runner in the race for California governor, speaks before a crowd at UFCW Local 1167 Union Hall.

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

Voters have more resources than ever should they choose to actually research and learn about who and what is poised to shape the future of their city, county and state.

There’s no shortage of broadcast, cable, digital and print reporting about former reality TV personality turned mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt. He uses AI!

The battle between incumbent Karen Bass and her closest Democratic competition, Los Angeles city council member Nithya Raman, dominates local newscasts. And there’s pundits from both sides arguing for and against these choices on every available platform.

Given the amount of information now at voter’s fingertips, we should be the most informed voting populace in the history of ballot casting. But are we?

A new poll by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies that was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times asked 8,578 registered voters across California what sources they rely on to get news and information about election-related issues. The poll, which was conducted online May 19-24 in English and Spanish, found that nearly half of the state’s electorate (47%) said they refer to the official voter information guide that is mailed to voters in advance of each election.

Discovering that a nonpartisan, non-sponsored source of data topped the list is a welcome surprise. Today’s media-verse is so fractured and bifurcated along political lines, I just assumed that confirmation bias would drive most folks toward friendly sources, i.e. what they want to hear.

Not as surprising is that 44% of those polled said they use Google or other search engines to seek out election-related information, and greater than 3 in 10 obtain election-related information from social media (39%). Traditional means of information weren’t far behind search engines. Those polled said they still rely on national or cable TV news (39%), newspapers, online or in print (37%), and local TV news (35%). One in three (33%) get information word-of-mouth from family, friends, neighbors or co-workers.

Gubernatorial candidate and billionaire Tom Steyer, right, meets with supporters at a campaign stop.

(Sara Nevis/For The Times)

“The substantial differences in news sources across generation, education and partisanship suggest that we are a considerable distance from the information environment that dominated most of the 20th century, where local newspapers, network news and local television stations dominated,” said Professor Eric Schickler, co-director of the Institute of Governmental Studies. “This fragmentation means that voters may no longer share a common frame of reference when evaluating candidates and election issues.”

The increasingly splintered ways in which voters seek information, fueled by the rapid changes in technology and media, has kept political campaign strategists on their toes.

“Getting attention is the first barrier, and then once you have that attention, how do you convert that into support?” says Democratic campaign consultant and strategist Brian Brokaw. “You have to create a surround-sound effect in order to persuade the voter to go for your candidate or your issue, and they have to hear from multiple avenues. Voters are innately skeptical of advertising, especially when it’s a very direct sale from a candidate. That’s why you’re seeing the use of more influencers in campaigns, particularly paid influencers, who may or may not be disclosing that they are being paid. That’s been a prominent issue in the governor’s race.”

Age, or generational differences, are another deciding factor in where voters look for more intelligence on issues and candidates. The poll found that two-thirds of voters under the age of 30 (67%) and a majority of those ages 30-39 (52%) use social media such as Facebook, X, Instagram, or TikTok to get their information.

Getting to know a candidate, particularly via social media, isn’t necessarily part of a rigorous, fact finding mission. Laughing at Pratt’s Batman-themed video or Gov. Gavin Newsom’s satirical X posts are more about bonding with the person than unpacking their policies. Real or perceived, discovering a candidate via one’s Instagram feels more organic than seeing them on billboard or TV ad.

“One way that politics has changed is that people are craving authenticity. Someone like [Zohran] Mamdani, was very successful and promoted himself from the back of the pack to mayor of New York City. But what people are seeing doesn’t mean that’s the truth,” warns Republican consultant and campaign strategist Kevin Spillane. “I’ve been involved in politics for 40 years. A lot of people are not how they present themselves. But we still crave authenticity, we want to believe [in someone], we want that connection.”

We’ll soon see who Californians choose to represent them and their concerns — or which candidate waged the best campaign warfare, substantive political arguments be damned. But it may take a minute to count all the votes. California reached a record number of registered voters ahead of Tuesday’s primary election, according to the Secretary of State’s office. Officials say more than 23.1 million Californians are now registered to vote statewide.

West Coasters who want to understand what they’re voting for have infinite resources to turn to, some more useful than others. Sponsored mailers (the aforementioned mosquito swatters) only appealed to 9% of those polled as a useful source of information. But did you really need a poll to tell you that?

In a typical midterm year, Donna Layne casts her ballot long before election day.

But this time around was different for the 75-year-old Democrat. Late-cycle controversies and fear of a “wasted vote” leading to a lockout for Democrats in the race for California governor meant she didn’t make her final decision until Friday.

California Democrats have been wringing their hands for weeks about who would emerge as front-runners in the crowded race to replace termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom. The sudden departure of high-profile candidate Eric Swalwell amid sexual assault allegations and California’s jungle primary system, which sends the top two vote-getters to the November general election regardless of their party affiliation, added pressure for Democrats to coalesce around candidates who had the best chance of advancing.

“I was concerned,” Layne said as she slid her ballot into a drop box. “I wanted to make my ballot count and I was afraid that there might be two Republicans because they had been polling pretty high, so I wanted to be strategic about it.”

On Friday morning, voters — predominately Democrats like Layne — trickled into the Orange County Registrar of Voters in Santa Ana to turn in their ballots. A few told The Times they frequently wait to vote until the days leading up to the election so they can watch all the debates and get the most up-to-date information about the candidates.

But most said they hung onto their ballots this year for far longer than usual.

As of Friday, 19% of California Republicans had already cast their ballot, compared with roughly 16% by the same time in the 2022 primary cycle, according to data from Political Data Inc.

An election worker separates ballots from vote by mail envelopes to be tallied at the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Ballot Processing Center on Thursday in City of Industry.

(Gary Coronado/For The Times)

Meanwhile, only 14% of the state’s far-more-numerous registered Democrats have returned their ballots, down from 17% at this point in 2022. Only 29% of Democrats age 65 years and older — generally enthusiastic voters — had returned their ballots, down from 33% in 2022, data show.

But that doesn’t mean that Democrats will stay on the sidelines. Data show Democrats have started returning their ballots in earnest over the past several days, a trend that’s likely to continue through election day, said Paul Mitchell, the vice president of Political Data Inc.

“It’s the predominance of this fear that they’ve heard in the media — and that’s largely abated — that a Democrat won’t make it to the runoff,” Mitchell said. “In fact, there’s a growing sense that we could have two Democrats make the runoff, so that fear has — for the political class — gone away, but voters are still clinging to it.”

Democrat Xavier Becerra, the former Health and Human Services secretary, has risen steadily in recent polls, positioning him well to potentially advance to November. He was the leading candidate in a poll released Thursday by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies that was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times, garnering support from 25% of likely California voters.

Former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services and California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra, a front-runner in the race for governor, shares a light moment with supporters at the UFCW Local 1167 Union Hall in Bloomington, on Friday.

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

Slightly behind with support from 21% of likely state voters was Republican Steve Hilton, a former Fox News commentator whom President Trump has endorsed. In third place with 19% support was another Democrat: Tom Steyer, a hedge fund founder and environmental activist.

With support increasing for Becerra, Hilton and Steyer since the last Berkeley IGS/Times poll in March, the survey provided the clearest indication yet that those candidates have separated themselves from the rest of the field.

Support for Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, the only other major Republican candidate in the race, dropped 5 percentage points from the March poll to last week’s, putting him in a distant fourth at 11%. Former Democratic Rep. Katie Porter saw her support drop by almost half to 7%. Other prominent Democrats — San José Mayor Matt Mahan, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and state Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond — were all in the low single digits, the poll found.

Republican candidate Steve Hilton speaks at a news conference outside the CIF State Track Championship in Clovis, where transgender athlete AB Hernandez will be was to compete Friday.

(Tomas Ovalle/For The Times)

Roughly a dozen registered Democrats interviewed by The Times said they cast their ballots last week for the person they thought would have the best chance of making it through the state’s jungle primary, even if it wasn’t their ideal candidate.

“I love Katie Porter,” said Connie Wadsley, 78. “I really do, but I just didn’t see her as being able to pull it off. I just don’t think society is ready for a woman governor as much as that pains me to say.”

In the end, Wadsley and her husband, Victor, cast their ballots for Steyer. Becerra, she said, is too much of a career politician for her liking, but Steyer impressed her with his promise not to take corporate money and his position on social justice issues.

“I think we need to shake things up in this state — in this nation,” she said. “Yeah, [Steyer] is a billionaire and I’m not really excited about that, but he truly seems to be spending his money on things that I feel are important.”

For some voters, the sheer volume of gubernatorial candidates — 61 in all — was off-putting. Some even organized gatherings with politically like-minded friends to discuss the best course of action.

“I think it was really overwhelming for a lot of people, especially when they got their ballot and saw all of those names,” said Linda Verraster, co-president of the Democratic Women of South Orange County. “There was this fear of making a mistake — air quotes — that would lead to two Republicans in the runoff.”

Gov.-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger, left, and Gov. Gray Davis joke with each other as Davis shows Schwarzenegger the governor’s private office at the Capitol in Sacramento on Oct. 23, 2003.

(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press )

The race seems somewhat reminiscent of the 2003 recall election when 135 candidates vied to replace then-Gov. Gray Davis amid the state’s energy crisis. Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, won decisively with roughly 48% of the vote.

But this race differs in a few key ways, experts say.

Mainly, while all of the top candidates have impressive resumes, there’s a lack of star power that could help propel someone to the forefront. Instead, Democrats “have an option of like moderate Dem to slightly less-moderate Dem,” said Matt Lesenyie, an assistant professor of political science at Cal State Long Beach.

“There’s a lot of people, but they occupy a very similar lane and I think that’s been a lot of the problem,” he said. “They’re loathe to really critique some of the foundational problems like a real ideological opponent would.”

Verraster put it even more simply: “There’s no unicorn.”

Still, she’ll be happy if either of the two Democratic front-runners — or both — make the ballot.

In 1973, Tom Bradley became L.A.’s. first Black mayor by assembling Black, Jewish, white and Latino liberals into a coalition that ended decades of conservative white rule at City Hall.

Bradley’s election transformed Los Angeles politics and began what has been, for the most part, a 50-year reign of moderate Democrats. Year after year, the election map has changed, but liberal centrists have usually remained on top.

But as Mayor Karen Bass seeks reelection, she is struggling to unite her traditional base as she faces attacks from Democratic Socialists of America Councilwoman Nithya Raman on the left and Republican reality TV star Spencer Pratt on the right.

Some political experts in L.A. say mainstream Democrats are floundering as they try to patch together their coalitions in an era when poll after poll shows the city’s residents frustrated with the status quo.

“Overwhelmingly, Angelenos feel Los Angeles doesn’t work,” said Fernando Guerra, founding director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University. “You have this liberal regime that has dominated from ‘73 to ‘26 and it’s stagnant.”

Traditional voting patterns, political experts agree, are unraveling as L.A.’s mounting housing costs create new political fault lines in this city of 3.9 million. The devastating 2025 wildfires, along with enduring problems of homelessness, declining city infrastructure and traffic, have exacerbated discontent.

It’s still possible Bass can pull off reelection in the nonpartisan mayoral race and some coalition of centrist Democrats can survive. But the fact that she is unlikely to avoid a runoff when U.S. incumbents typically win at a 90% rate, Guerra said, shows that L.A.’s mainstream Democratic institutions are hollowing out.

“The problem is not Bass,” Guerra said, adding: “Any regime that lasts for that long begins to fall upon itself. … It stagnates and stops being innovative, and just becomes protective of the ingrained interests that have nurtured that coalition.”

Former L.A. Mayors Antonio Villaraigosa, Eric Garcetti and Richard Riordan.

(Los Angeles Times)

Republicans hope that Pratt’s social-media-fueled critique of L.A. leaders’ failures in emergency preparation and response after the fires and high spending on homeless programs can lead a new generation of conservative Angelenos to the polls.

Most political observers in L.A., however, are confident that the city’s future is not conservative.

The DSA, a decentralized anti-capitalist group, has made inroads in L.A. as it advocates for rental protections, defunding the police and a Green New Deal. Over the last six years, Angelenos have elected four DSA-backed City Council members and a DSA-recommended city controller.

“L.A. is clearly a city that is steadily moving to the left,” said Jim Newton, executive director of UCLA Blueprint magazine and a veteran political journalist who worked for the L.A. Times for 25 years.

“People are unhappy, but they’re not unhappy enough to vote for a Republican,” Guerra agreed. “They have been looking at the other alternatives: the Democratic Socialist party that is the challenge to the establishment.”

Some caution, however, that it is too early to map out Los Angeles’ political future.

Raphael Sonenshein, executive director of the Haynes Foundation and author of “Politics in Black and White: Race and Power in Los Angeles,” said sweeping generational changes are happening in L.A. politics.

“I think everything is up for grabs,” Sonenshein said, noting that he expected more competition for Latino and Asian voters, young voters and even older Democrats. “Certainly, younger voters are completely up for grabs. It’s just hard to know where they’re going to end up. … Small shifts in the primary can make a very big difference.”

L.A. rose as the Republican stronghold of California.

As a massive influx of white Midwesterners descended on L.A. after the 1885 opening of the Santa Fe railroad, conservative white civic leaders — including the owners of the L.A. Times — touted the city as the GOP counterpart to progressive, union-friendly San Francisco. Liberal Black and white Angelenos were shut out of citywide power.

The purpose of the Bradley coalition, Sonenshein said, was to “break open the stranglehold of a city establishment that was … unresponsive to the diversity of the community.”

Bradley, an even-keeled attorney and former police officer, was well positioned to bridge L.A.’s racial divides. As a police community relations officer, he had cultivated relationships with Jewish business owners. He was an early supporter of L.A.’s first Latino City Council member, Edward Roybal, and had already united Black and Jewish Angelenos in the 10th District as the city’s first Black City Council member.

L.A. City Councilman Tom Bradley and Mayor Sam Yorty in a TV studio just before the start of a debate during their 1973 campaign for mayor.

(Los Angeles Times)

After his 1973 win, as waves of new immigrants moved to L.A., Bradley brought more Latinos and Asian Americans into the fold. A conscious alliance of minority communities reelected Bradley, helping him become the longest-serving mayor in L.A. history.

But by the 1990s, frustration had swelled over L.A.’s crime, pollution and poverty. Bradley’s popularity plummeted after Black motorist Rodney King was brutally beaten by LAPD officers in 1991 and riots erupted across the city the next year when a largely white jury acquitted the officers. More than 60 people were killed.

As Bradley prepared to step down, Democrats struggled to find a successor who could unite liberal Black, white, Latino and Asian Angelenos.

Still, some were skeptical that Richard Riordan, a Republican venture capitalist, would win. Riordan was a moderate, easygoing philanthropist, Newton said, and Republicans at the time made up 30% of L.A.’s registered voters, double their number now. Even so, he noted, “there were people who thought this is just not what this city is, the city doesn’t need a multimillionaire white guy Republican.”

Voters thought differently. After securing the support of San Fernando Valley Republicans and Democratic centrists and making small inroads among Latinos, Riordan became the first Republican L.A. mayor elected in 36 years.

The Bradley coalition was “a spent force,” Sonenshein said. “But new players were emerging in prominent roles, working to forge new types of alliances and, at times, temporary coalitions.”

When California voters in 1994 passed the anti-immigrant Proposition 187, which barred undocumented immigrants from receiving many public services, Latino participation in L.A. politics surged. Asian Americans also began to rise.

But after Bradley, there was no single Democratic coalition in the city.

When Antonio Villaraigosa challenged James Hahn in 2001 and 2005, Sonenshein said, Hahn drew support from the Black community and the Valley, Villaraigosa from Latinos and liberals. When Eric Garcetti defeated Wendy Greuel in 2013, Greuel had strong support in Black South L.A., but Garcetti managed to win with the white and Latino vote.

“People have to piece it together, because the Democrats have such a larger edge in L.A. than they did in Bradley’s age,” he said. “It’s almost a kind of entrepreneurial thing: You’ve got to go out and build a majority each time, and those alliances shift.”

There were still challenges from the right. But in 2022, when billionaire real estate developer Rick Caruso ran against Bass on a centrist law-and-order platform, he switched his party affiliation from Republican to Democratic. Some saw that as a recognition that a Republican could not win in L.A.

Bass defeated Caruso by nearly 10 percentage points.

Like Bradley, Bass is a pragmatic politician with a long record of forging relationships behind the scenes.

In the 1990s, she founded the grassroots Community Coalition to combat the public health crises that plagued South L.A. amid the crack-cocaine epidemic.

But as Bass presides over a City Hall that is almost entirely dominated by Democrats, discontent is spreading. Polls show a substantial portion of the electorate views her unfavorably because of her handling of the Palisades fire.

Guerra said the lack of affordable housing had created a unique moment: Even after the King riots, the Northridge earthquake and the O.J. Simpson trial, he said, Angelenos were still invested in living in the city.

“You could still buy a home. You could still see yourself nurturing L.A., but also L.A. nurturing you,” Guerra said.

For Guerra, centrist Democrats have been so successful at inclusion they have struggled to identify priorities.

“There are too many members of the coalition and there are too many of the members who have veto power, which then leads to paralysis,” Guerra said. “The paralysis is what’s led to the lack of innovation, the failure to pursue policies that make sense for the greater good.”

The dysfunction, he said, is particularly clear on housing.

“Every NIMBY in every neighborhood, in every council district, is like, ‘We want housing, but not here,’” Guerra said. “That, replicated everywhere, leads to paralysis and no housing.”

It has also led to renters becoming a rising political constituency — a big shift from the Bradley era, when homeowners were the city’s dominant voters.

But that doesn’t mean working-class Angelenos have a bigger voice now in L.A. politics. Instead, the middle class is splintering along generational lines.

“Middle-class young folks graduating from college, who have extraordinary amounts of debt, cannot buy homes,” said Sara Sadhwani, a politics professor at Pomona College. “The city still has issues with food insecurity and low-wage worker protections, but those are not the issues dominating anymore.”

While L.A. Democrats have long focused on assembling coalitions of Black, Latino, Asian American and other minority activists, Sadhwani said, what was often not spoken about was the role of the city’s “nonprofit industrial complex.”

“Nonprofits have a huge role,” she said, noting that Bass came of that world. “Their politics are shifting.” Before 2020, she said, progressives focused on racial justice, immigration reform, and creating an economy that respects the work of immigrants; now, the focus is largely on homelessness and policing.

“What it means to be a progressive today,” Sadhwani said, “is actually quite different from what it was to be a progressive even just five years ago.”

Even as L.A. is clearly still a Democratic stronghold, Republicans say there are signs that some Angelenos are not in lockstep with liberal activists.

Donald Trump’s share of the vote in L.A. in the last three presidential elections, they note, climbed from 16% in 2016 to 21% in 2020 and 27% in 2024. And there is evidence that voters, at least at the county level, are questioning some criminal justice reforms.

In 2024, L.A. County voters ousted progressive incumbent Dist. Atty. George Gascón, who eliminated cash bail for misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies and championed rehabilitation over punitive sentencing. A majority of county voters also backed Proposition 36, allowing stiffer penalties for crimes of repeat theft and possession of hard drugs.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, pictured here on the cover of Newsweek, helped reshape the city’s Democratic coalition

(David McNew / Getty Images)

With Republicans making up about 15% of L.A.’s registered voters, Rob Stutzman, a GOP strategist, said Pratt might win enough independent voters and disaffected Democrats to make it past the primary. But he would then struggle to get more than 50% in the runoff.

“The math just isn’t there, but in addition to that it’s the stink of Trump,” Stutzman said. “The tribal politics of today make a Republican victory in L.A. very difficult.”

Raman stunned L.A.’s political establishment in 2020 when she was elected L.A.’s first DSA-backed City Council member.

As she runs for mayor, the Los Angeles chapter of the DSA hopes to expand its power as it endorses a new slate of 2026 candidates for City Council, city attorney and L.A. school board.

Richard Riordan, the last elected Republican mayor of Los Angeles.

(Los Angeles Times)

Raman is clearly betting that a big, viable part of the electorate is to Bass’ left, Newton said.

The DSA, Newton said, had done a good job in recent years of identifying renters’ interests and advancing them to usher in a “newer, younger, probably more progressive edge to the city’s politics.”

But so far, Raman, who has aligned herself with the DSA on issues such as renter protections but deviated on police spending, is struggling to unite the organization.

The Harvard and MIT graduate caught the DSA and her fellow City Council members off guard when she entered the mayoral race just before the filing deadline.

In March, the L.A. chapter of the DSA announced it would recommend Raman for mayor, but not formally endorse her. This month, a trio of her fellow DSA-backed City Council members endorsed Bass.

After building momentum, the DSA’s failure to rally around a 2026 mayoral candidate could hurt the movement for several election cycles, Guerra said.

“This dissension is setting them back,“ Guerra said. “They really do have an opportunity to elect a DSA mayor.”

Bass has seized on Raman’s lack of support in City Hall to critique her coalition-building skills.

“If you want to be the mayor and you can’t get along with people who are your colleagues on council,” Bass said recently, “I don’t know how you’re supposed to govern at all.”

In the end, the outcome of L.A.’s mayoral race may not depend so much on Bass’ ability to inspire her traditional Democratic coalition. The question is whether a new generation can find a way to represent a mass of Angelenos with bold new visions and coalitions of their own.

On the cusp of California’s gubernatorial June 2 primary, voters are closely divided among three candidates vying to succeed Gov. Gavin Newsom at a perilous moment in the state and nation’s history, according to a poll released Thursday.

Among likely California voters, 25% support Xavier Becerra, a Democrat and former Biden Cabinet secretary, according to the survey by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies that was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times. Republican Steve Hilton, a former Fox News commentator and British political strategist, has the backing of 21%, while 19% backed billionaire hedge fund founder turned environmental activist Tom Steyer, a Democrat.

California gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra takes a selfie at an event while campaigning on May 26, 2026 in San Francisco, California. Becerra is the former United States Secretary of Health and Human Services and is running as a democratic candidate for governor. California’s statewide election is on June 2.

(Benjamin Fanjoy / Getty Images)

The survey provided the clearest indication yet that the three have separated themselves from the rest of the field. Support increased for Becerra, Hilton and Steyer since the last Berkeley IGS poll in March. Becerra leapfrogged everyone. In early March he wallowed near the bottom of the pack at just 5% support among likely voters, and now is the front-runner.

The other candidates floundered. Support for Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a Republican, dropped 5% and he now finds himself in a distant fourth place. Former Democratic Rep. Katie Porter of Irvine dropped by almost half to 7%. San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and state Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond — all Democrats — remained mired in the single digits.

Poll director Mark DiCamillo cautioned that it remains unclear which candidates will finish in first and second place in the June 2 primary, a pivotal question since only the top two finishers will advance to the November general election regardless of party affiliation. The low voter turnout thus far makes predicting the outcome especially difficult.

Although every registered voter in California was sent a mail-in ballot, many have not returned them or dropped them off at voting locations — a telltale sign of the uncertain nature of this year’s governor’s race. The survey, which included all 61 of the gubernatorial candidates on the ballot, found that Democratic turnout thus far is noticeably lower compared with past primary elections, DiCamillo said.

Steve Hilton, Republican gubernatorial candidate for California, arrives for a news conference at the San Jose Diridon Station in San Jose, California, US, on Tuesday, May 26, 2026. Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton is announcing his intention to halt future taxpayer-funded payments for California’s High-Speed Rail project, if elected in November.

(Jason Henry/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

“We’re assuming that … the Democrats will in fact turn out in the final week after we had concluded our poll and begin to make up ground on what looks like an early lead for Hilton, and those voters favor Becerra,” DiCamillo said.

The survey, conducted between May 19 and 24, found that likely Democratic voters favored Becerra over Steyer by 11 percentage points. Voters registered as “no party preference” were evenly divided between Becerra, Steyer and Hilton. Among likely Republican voters, Hilton led Bianco by almost 2 to 1.

Becerra also had a notable edge over Steyer among women and Latino voters, while Steyer had an advantage among Black voters. Hilton was favored over the two Democrats among self-identified libertarians and among voters in Orange County, the Central Valley and northern coast and Sierra region.

The poll found that 7% of voters remained undecided.

For the first time in more than a quarter of a century, the contest to lead the nation’s most populous state and the world’s fourth-largest economy has consistently lacked a front-runner despite a plethora of candidates.

Two of California’s best-known Democrats, former Vice President Kamala Harris and U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, both toyed with a run for governor before deciding not to run, which contributed to the sluggishness of the race. The 2026 campaign for governor also languished in the shadow of the mayhem stirred up by President Trump, including his immigration raids throughout Southern California, and the devastation wrought by the 2025 Pacific Palisades and Altadena wildfires.

But a whirlwind of recent developments has drawn attention to the race.

Former Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Dublin), once a front-runner in the contest, withdrew from the race and resigned from Congress in the aftermath of multiple allegations of sexual misconduct and assault that he denies.

Tom Steyer, Democratic gubernatorial candidate for California, during a campaign event in Santa Rosa, California, US, on Wednesday, May 27, 2026. California is holding its primary election on June 2. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images

(Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Additionally, record-breaking amounts of money have flowed into the race. Steyer has smashed state self-funding records by contributing $212 million to his campaign as of Tuesday, according to the California secretary of state’s office. Nearly $85 million has been donated to independent expenditure committees by corporations, labor unions, tech titans, Native American tribes and other special interests, most of which will have policy interests that will be in front of the next governor.

Although the 2026 California governor’s race lacks the allure of recent contests that featured candidates such as global movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger, political scion Jerry Brown and former San Francisco mayor and likely 2028 presidential candidate Gavin Newsom, it is unfolding at a crucial time for Californians.

The state’s most vulnerable residents are facing severe reductions to medical care because of looming federal healthcare funding cuts, and California’s budget, already volatile because of its reliance on the state’s wealthiest residents, may grow more unpredictable. California’s highest-in-the-nation gas prices increased even more because of the U.S.-Iran war, adding to the state’s entrenched affordability crisis, which has driven many residents out of the state.

The cost of living, homelessness and public safety were among the top concerns expressed by voters, according to the poll. Protecting voting rights was also supported by most voters, though their underlying concerns could be starkly different based on their political views.

Democrats have been focused on the disenfranchisement of voters, a fear that has heightened in the aftermath of a recent Supreme Court decision that gutted a section of the Voting Rights Act that forced states to draw voting districts to help elect Black or Latino representatives to Congress. Republicans echo President Trump’s claims of elections being rigged.

Los Angeles, CA – MAY 06, 2026: Chad Bianco is interviewed after the California Gubernatorial debate at Skirball Cultural Center on Wednesday, May 6, 2026 in Los Angeles, CA.

(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)

Voters split largely along party lines about issues such as Trump’s policies about climate change, immigration and taxes.

Voters’ uncertainty in the governor’s race is partly driven by California’s unique, voter-approved “jungle” primary system, in which the two candidates who win the most votes in the June 2 primary advance to the November general election, regardless of party affiliation.

Although the state’s voters are largely registered Democrats, the party’s leaders feared earlier this year that they would splinter among the multiple Democrats on the ballot, leading to Hilton and Bianco advancing to the November general election and ensuring that a Republican would be elected governor. Bianco had the backing of 11% in the new Berkeley survey.

The Republicans were once roughly tied in polls, until Trump endorsed Hilton in April. More than one-third of likely Republican voters said Trump’s endorsement of Hilton made them more likely to support him. Among voters who identified with the “Make America Great Again” movement, nearly two-thirds supported Hilton while less than 3 in 10 backed Bianco.

Though Bianco’s followers seem to be more passionate, “Hilton has got the much broader base of support, and then he got Trump’s endorsement,” DiCamillo said.

He added that Hilton’s rise is unusual in California, where statewide candidates typically spend enormous sums of money to raise their visibility among the state’s 23.1 million registered voters.

“What’s interesting about Hilton is that he hasn’t really done much of his campaigning in the traditional way. He hasn’t run huge amounts of television advertising, you don’t see his name out there in the traditional media, other than in free media,” DiCamillo said. “You can see that in the data, because almost a third of voters still have no opinion of Hilton … about what it was back in March, which is startling for a candidate who is among the leaders.”

Democrats’ fear of being locked out of the November general election led party leaders and allies to effectively urge low-polling candidates to drop out of the race in remarkable public statements in March.

The tables have since turned — the prospect of two Republicans winning the top spots in the June primary appear nonexistent, while polling shows a small possibility of two Democrats advancing to the general election.

“I’m not saying it’s likely, but it’s possible that two Democrats could emerge, and that would have huge implications on turnout in the [November] election,” DiCamillo said, pointing to California congressional races that could shape control of the U.S. House of Representatives. “If you don’t have a Republican at the top of the ticket, it would be dismal for the Republicans’ chances.”

The poll of 8,578 registered California voters was conducted online in English and Spanish and has a margin of error of about 2 percentage points in either direction.

Karen Bass, Nithya Raman and Spencer Pratt are locked in a tight battle for Los Angeles mayor, according to a poll released Thursday, with incumbent Bass holding what pollsters called a statistically insignificant lead ahead of Tuesday’s primary.

Bass had 26% support from likely voters, followed by City Councilmember Raman with 25% support, according to the poll by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, which was co-sponsored by The Times.

Pratt, the former reality TV personality making his first bid for elected office, had support from 22% of the likely voters surveyed.

Up until this latest poll, Bass had enjoyed a substantial lead over her challengers, with analysts predicting she would garner enough votes to make a Nov. 3 runoff with either Raman or Pratt. The latest survey suggests any of the three could advance.

“You’ve got three very different candidates, each with very different constituencies, all within the margin of error. It’s going to boil down to turnout,” said Mark DiCamillo, the director of Berkeley IGS polls.

The poll also showed that in a head-to-head runoff between Bass and Raman, the councilmember would lead, 32% to 28%, among the city’s registered voters, but in this scenario, a quarter of likely voters say they would choose neither or would not vote, and 15% were undecided.

The survey of 1,913 registered voters — 1,351 of whom are considered likely voters — is the largest sample of any public poll released in advance of the election. It was conducted between May 19 and 24. The poll has a margin of error of around 3% in either direction.

Just 10% of voters were still undecided, the poll found, down from 26% when the last survey by Berkeley IGS was conducted March 9-15.

Mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt at a campaign block party in South Los Angeles last week.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Since then, Pratt and Raman have made steady gains while support for Bass has nearly flatlined.

The March poll had Bass with support from 25% of likely voters, followed by Raman with 17% and Pratt with 14%. Since then, Bass has gained just 1 percentage point, while support for Raman and Pratt jumped by 8 percentage points each.

There are 14 candidates running for mayor in Tuesday’s primary and all were listed in the Berkeley IGS poll, but Bass, Raman and Pratt have consistently led in polling. They’ve also raised the most money in campaign contributions. The latest campaign finance reports, filed last week, showed Pratt with $3.26 million in contributions through May 16, followed by Bass with $3.13 million.

Raman reported a total of more than $931,000 through the May 16 filing period, of which $60,000 came in the form of a loan from Raman to her own campaign. She also received the maximum amount of matching funds available in the race, $1.25 million.

Leftist candidate Rae Huang was favored by 9% of the likely voters surveyed, up 1 percentage point from March, while tech entrepreneur Adam Miller dropped from 6% to 5%, despite infusing his campaign with $4 million of his own money after the first poll.

The major issues in the race have included the city’s approach to homelessness, housing affordability and public safety.

Pratt, whose home burned in the Palisades fire, has blamed Bass for failing to prepare for the conflagration and for her postfire response. Raman has criticized Bass’ Inside Safe program for the unhoused, saying its high cost isn’t sustainable.

Bass has deemed Raman an ineffective City Council member who struggles to build alliances on the legislative body, and has said Pratt does not have a clue about how to run a city like Los Angeles.

Although Pratt now appears to have a chance at making the runoff, the poll showed he would face a steeper climb in potential November runoff scenarios with Bass or Raman. Pratt, a Republican who has been labeled “Trumpian” by Raman, is competing in a city where GOP registration is less than 15%.

“Pratt is an unusual candidate and is generating a lot of enthusiasm in the primary, but he trails by double digits to Raman and Bass in a runoff,” DiCamillo said.

In a showdown between Bass and Pratt, the incumbent mayor was ahead, 47% to 29%, among the city’s registered voters, with 12% undecided and 12% choosing neither or saying they would not vote.

Raman also led Pratt in a potential runoff, 45% to 28%, with 16% undecided and 11% choosing neither or saying they would not vote.

Pratt has repeatedly pointed out that the mayor’s race is nonpartisan. Even so, President Trump said last week that he hopes Pratt does well and that he heard Pratt was “a big MAGA person.”

Trump’s unpopularity in Los Angeles could lessen Pratt’s appeal to Democrats, according to a poll by Cygnal, a national polling group that has worked for Republican candidates.

Los Angeles mayoral candidate Nithya Raman walks down Olvera Street alongside Olvera Street business owners on May 19 in Los Angeles.

(Ronaldo Bolaños / Los Angeles Times)

There’s been just one debate featuring all three of the leading candidates, during which Raman asserted that Bass and Pratt were working to ensure that she would be knocked out in the primary, which Bass and Pratt disputed.

The debate was followed by a huge influx of campaign contributions to Pratt, who also was polling in second in an Emerson College poll earlier this month.

Raman’s strong showing in Thursday’s poll shows she is very much in the race despite assertions by Bass’ campaign and Pratt’s campaign that she is faltering after a lackluster debate performance.

The poll shows Bass and Pratt with high unfavorability ratings. Bass was considered unfavorably by 57% of likely voters, up 1 percentage point from the March survey. Pratt’s unfavorable rating in the current poll was also 57% — up dramatically from the 28% unfavorable rating in the previous poll, although in that poll, 55% of likely voters had no opinion of him.

In the May poll, Pratt was rated favorably by 25% of likely voters, and Bass by 35%.

The poll found that 40% of likely voters rated Raman favorably, with 35% viewing her unfavorably.

Sometimes it seems as though the only thing that stands between a functioning democracy and a full-on Trump autocracy is a thin, black-robed line.

Although the Supreme Court, in general, and conservative appellate courts, in particular, have bowed and granted President Trump permission to do pretty much anything he wants, they haven’t thoroughly capitulated to his endless grasping for ever more power. (The way invertebrate congressional Republicans have.)

At the lower-court level, judges have repeatedly ruled in ways intended to check Trump, most notably when it comes to violating civil and constitutional rights in pursuit of his indiscriminate immigration dragnet.

The tendency to slow-walk his administration’s response to those rulings — and ignore others that Trump thinks he can safely snub — only contribute to the perception of presidential lawlessness and a sense that our judicial system is being strained to something approaching a breaking point.

Go ahead, if you’d like, and dismiss those concerns as just so much overwrought hand-wringing, or the mindless anti-Trump blathering of your friendly political columnist. A new survey of legal experts — including federal judges, top-tier lawyers and scores of professors from some of the country’s leading law schools — finds widespread concern about the brittle state of our legal system.

And it’s not just the fears of a lot of shaggy-thinking liberals.

“The nation is strong as is its commitment to the rule of law,” said one appellate judge, a Republican appointee. “The current president presents the greatest threat in decades.”

The survey was conducted by Bright Line Watch, a nonpartisan academic group that monitors the health and resilience of American democracy, in conjunction with the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA’s School of Law.

Conducted between mid-February and early March, the poll anonymously surveyed 21 federal judges, 113 lawyers, 193 law professors, 652 political scientists and a nationally representative sample of 2,750 Americans.

What leapt out to UCLA’s Rick Hasen, director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project, was that “across the ideological spectrum and across judges, lawyers and law professors, there was considerable agreement that the rule of law in the U.S. is under tremendous stress.” That consensus, he said, suggests “a real risk to democracy.”

Most legal experts agreed that Trump is using executive power excessively, with a majority doubting the conservative-leaning Supreme Court would handle cases involving the Trump administration impartially. The experts also expressed concern about politicized law enforcement — Trump seeking to persecute his perceived enemies — executive branch overreach, and the failure of Congress or the Supreme Court to do more to rein in the rogue president.

Eight in 10 of those surveyed said federal officials fail to comply with court orders somewhat or very often, and nearly 9 in 10 said political appointees in Trump’s Justice Department mislead federal judges somewhat or very often.

Talk about contempt of court — not to mention our vital system of checks and balances.

There was, unsurprisingly, a split among conservatives and liberals who took part in the survey. (The study defined legal conservatives as those saying the Supreme Court should base rulings on its understanding of what the Constitution meant as originally written. Liberals, who made up most of the respondents, were defined as those saying the court should base its rulings on what the Constitution means in current times.)

Conservatives, for instance, were more likely than liberals to see former President Biden as a greater threat to the rule of law than Trump. Liberals were more likely than conservatives to see evidence of Trump politicizing the Justice Department.

There were also differences between legal experts — those most intimately involved in the judicial system — and the public at large. The experts were more concerned about Trump’s excesses and threats to the rule of law, which, Hasen said, stands to reason.

The legal system is not something most people encounter daily in the same way they do, say, gasoline prices or the cost of groceries. “Yet,” Hasen said, “it’s one of these background things that really matters.”

Why?

Hasen put it this way: “Imagine that a person had a dispute with their neighbor and it ended up in small claims court before a judge and the judge made the decision not based on the merits of the case but based on whether he was friends with one of the parties, or didn’t like people who were similar to one of the parties.”

Now imagine that kind of corrupted, perverted system of justice writ large.

If, for instance, “people know that the government can successfully seek retribution from people who criticize it, people will be less likely to criticize the government,” Hasen said, leaving the country worse off by muzzling those who would hold their elected leaders to account.

Or if, say, rioters overran the U.S. Capitol and tried to steal an election and, instead of being punished, received cash payouts from the federal government, what incentive would there be to follow the law?

Happily — and who couldn’t use a bit of good cheer right about now — all is not lost.

People “can demand that their elected representatives take steps to assure that the rule of law will be followed,” Hasen said, and can insist “that the government [not] play favorites or seek retribution against perceived enemies.”

That’s the power people have, come election time. That’s why voting matters.

There are lots of things riding on the outcome in November, not least the sanctity and integrity of our legal system.

Bear that in mind when you cast your ballot.

CLOVIS, Calif. — In the waning days before California’s primary election, the two top Republicans running for California governor delivered closing arguments in front of a friendly Central Valley audience Friday evening.

Though Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and former Fox News host Steve Hilton have attacked each other throughout the campaign, they abstained from feuding and instead focused on common enemies — Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democratic lawmakers who control the Legislature.

Hilton criticized Newsom’s new $20-million program to provide free diapers for families of newborn babies, referring to the outgoing governor as “the great loaded diaper of California himself.”

Earlier this year, Hilton and Bianco topped the governor’s race polls as a packed field of Democrats split many of the state’s liberal voters. Under California’s “jungle primary” system, where the top two candidates advance from the primary to the general election regardless of political affiliation, that led to fleeting hope among Republicans that the two candidates could shut Democratic candidates out of the November election.

“That idea was always a fantasy,” Hilton wrote in an op-ed published in the New York Post earlier this week in which he urged Bianco to drop out of the race “for the sake of the state we both love.”

“Steve, it is time for you to drop out,” Bianco retorted in a video posted to social media soon after. “In no world, no world does Steve Hilton beat a Democrat in November.”

After winning an endorsement from President Trump in early April, Hilton has steadily outpaced Bianco in polls. A poll commissioned by the California Democratic Party released last week showed Hilton leading the field with support from 22% of likely voters, followed by Democrat and former Biden Cabinet member Xavier Becerra with 21%. Bianco was at 10%, down from 15% in a previous poll conducted two weeks prior.

Still, Bianco, the two-term sheriff of California’s fourth most populous county, is a favorite of many Republicans in the state and won more support from delegates during the party’s recent endorsing convention than Hilton, though neither reached the necessary 60% to win the party backing.

While the two candidates have needled each other with personal digs and insults throughout much of the campaign, they appeared to set that energy aside during the Clovis forum and even traded some compliments. Hilton praised “sheriffs like Chad who actually understand what public safety looks like” while Bianco acknowledged that his opponent “should be very proud” to have Trump’s endorsement.

State Sen. Shannon Grove (R-Bakersfield), who moderated the more than 90-minute event, praised their “extraordinary civility” before she pressured each to commit to backing whichever Republican makes it through the June 2 primary — or if they both advance, continue to focus on policy debates over attacks.

The forum was hosted by the Fresno County & City Republican Women Federated as part of a fundraiser and dinner honoring the upcoming 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding. About 450 attendees were served dishes inspired by presidential favorites including sirloin steak for Theodore Roosevelt, a chopped salad from Chasen’s, a favorite Los Angeles eatery for Ronald Reagan, and a chocolate pie with cherry vanilla ice cream for Trump.

The Central Valley stretches from Bakersfield to Redding and is home to some of the nation’s most lucrative farmland. It also includes the heart of California oil country in Kern County. Yet residents feel largely neglected by statewide politicians who are more drawn to the ample votes and wealthy donors in Southern California and the Bay Area.

“We are the breadbasket of the world but we’ve been overlooked for too long,” said Andrea Shabaglian, a vice president of the Fresno Republican women’s group. “When gubernatorial candidates come here to sit down and listen to our communities, they realize that a stronger Valley means a stronger California.”

Though he lost California handily to former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, Trump dominated in the state’s midsection. Even in Fresno County, where the Republican forum was held, Trump beat Harris by a four percentage point margin despite Democratic voters slightly outnumbering Republicans.

“We need a Republican in office because California is a mess. I mean, anybody with common sense can see that,” said LuAnne Pinedo-Madden, a retiree living in the Sierra foothill community of Coarsegold who listed transgender girls being allowed to compete in girls’ sports and government corruption as her top concerns.

Pinedo-Madden said she was “pretty sure” she had decided which of the Republican candidates to vote for but declined to say whom. “I feel that if we don’t get a Republican in office, we’re looking at moving” to Utah, Idaho or Nevada, she said. “We can’t take this anymore.”

Bianco and Hilton spoke about their plans to improve public safety, small businesses, homeowner’s insurance and water management, a crucial issue for the conservative-leaning owners of vast swaths of California’s agricultural heartland.

Signs along the major highways that straddle California’s Central Valley proclaim that “Food grows where water flows” and criticize Newsom for allowing water to flow into the ocean instead of capturing and storing more of it for farming.

Both of the GOP candidates described their visions for the state, which include building new dams and raising existing ones to store more water.

“We don’t have the water problem. We have a water management problem,” Bianco said before falsely arguing that “we get more water every single year than any other state in the country” and that California has “never, ever, ever been in a drought.”

“The water will be flowing to our farmers, the oil will be flowing to our refineries, the forests will be managed, the timber will be harvested” and used to build new single-family homes, Hilton said. “We’ve got the best weather, we’ve got the best people, we’ve got the best farmers, we’ve got everything we need to make this place amazing, except a good governor. Very soon we’ll have that as well.”

Though a Republican governor would likely face a hostile Legislature intent on blocking many priorities, Bianco and Hilton both promised sweeping cuts and cutbacks of state agencies. Both pledged on Friday to replace every member of the state’s parole review board, which drew criticism in February when it granted elderly parole to a man convicted of 16 counts of kidnapping and child molestation in 1999.

“California criminal justice is absolutely broken and it was forced upon us in the name of reform. What I’m going to do is make it a crime to hear the word reform again, because we lost track of what that word even means,” Bianco said.

He also pledged to eliminate laws and environmental regulators often blamed for slowing housing development: the California Environmental Quality Act, the California Coastal Commission and the state Air Resources Board.

Though his opponent has the coveted Trump endorsement, Bianco argued that it will hurt Hilton’s chances of winning the general election. The Republican president has never been popular in deep-blue California; just 25% of adults in the state approved of Trump’s performance according to a February survey by the Public Policy Institute of California.

“Steve should rightfully be proud of being endorsed by President Trump [but] we have to actually realize, is that a good thing in California? It’s a good thing in this room,” Bianco said as the crowd cheered at the mention of the president’s name. “We have to realize strategically that President Trump ran three elections in this state, and he lost 60-40 in all three of them.”

The Riverside sheriff argued he is “the only person that can actually sway Democrats to vote for a Republican across party lines on a public safety platform.”

As petrol prices rise, new survey suggests economic confidence in the US is at -45, the worst since 2022.

Only 16 percent of Americans view the economy in the United States as “good” or “excellent”, a new Gallup poll suggests, as inflation continues to rise amid the war on Iran.

The survey, released on Friday, deepens US President Donald Trump’s political woes ahead of the midterm elections in November, which will determine whether his Republican Party can retain control of Congress.

The survey, dubbed Gallup’s Economic Confidence Index, showed confidence in the economy has dropped to -45.

Forty-nine percent of respondents said economic conditions are poor and 34 percent rated them as fair. At the same time, 76 percent said they think the economy getting worse, while 20 percent said it is getting better.

The index averages the results on economic conditions, currently at -33 and economic outlook, currently at -56.

It was the worst set of findings on the economy that the index recorded since 2022 when the cost of living rose after the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Petrol costs in the US have skyrocketed since the start of the conflict with Iran late in February. The average price of one gallon (3.8 litres) of gasoline has risen to $4.55 from less than $3 before the US and Israel launched the war.

According to official government reports, consumer prices overall rose in March and April due to the energy crisis.

Iran has responded to the US and Israeli strikes – which killed several top officials, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, as well as hundreds of civilians – by closing the strategic Strait of Hormuz, sending oil and gas prices soaring.

The US has also imposed a naval siege on Iranian ports, deepening the strain on energy supplies across the world.

Despite the ceasefire that began in April, the blockades have persisted in the absence of a permanent end to the war, and Iran is now claiming sovereignty over Hormuz, which operated as a free international passageway before the war.

Parts of the strait run through Iranian and Omani territorial waters.

Although the US is one of the world’s largest oil producers, energy prices are set globally, so the disruption has spiked costs for American consumers.

As a candidate, Trump promised to be a president of “peace”, saying he would pursue “America first” policies that would prioritise domestic issues over foreign interventions.

But the US president joined Israel in attacking Iran without direct provocation. His administration argues that the military campaign is necessary to prevent Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

Iran denies seeking nuclear weapons. And Trump’s own intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard has said that Tehran is not building a nuclear bomb.

Trump has repeatedly argued that the cost of the war is worth it, stressing that petrol prices will drop rapidly once the conflict is over.

Last month, the US State Department released a legal justification of the war, saying that Washington joined the conflict “at the request of and in the collective self-defence of its Israeli ally, as well as in the exercise of the United States’ own inherent right of self-defence”.

The Gallup survey on Friday is the latest in a series of negative polls for the Trump administration.

A New York Times/Sienna poll released earlier this week suggested that only 31 percent of voters approve of Trump’s handling of the war with Iran.

Earlier this month, the US president suggested the economic fallout from the war and its effect on people in the US do not play a role in his approach to Iran.

“I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody,” he said. “I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That’s all. That’s the only thing that motivates me.”