Final ballot totals released today show that California voters turned out in record numbers for a gubernatorial primary.
Nonetheless, the nearly 9.5 million votes cast represented just 41% of registered voters, less than half the number expected to vote in November’s General Election, according to the California Secretary of State’s Election Division.
Xavier Becerra’s winning primary total of nearly 2.6 million votes represented just over 10 percent of the state’s registered voters.
The primary total approached the state’s 44% average for the last five presidential primary elections. In the last five gubernatorial elections, the total voter turnout averaged just 33%.
In Santa Clara County, the voter turnout was below the statewide total, just 39%.
A total of 421,157 ballots were cast in the election, of Santa Clara County’s approximately 1 million registered voters.
The statewide voter registration of 23.1 million, represented nearly 85% of the 23.5 million total of Californians eligible to vote – both records in gubernatorial primary years.
State law requires all county elections officials to report final official results to the Secretary of State by July 3. The Secretary of State has until July 10 to certify the results of the election.
All counties completed ballot counting on Thursday, July 2.
Total ballots received were 9,446,239.
Becerra, a Democrat, and Republican Steve Hilton qualified for the Nov. 3 runoff to decide who will succeed Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Democratic candidates accounted for 63% of the vote totals, while Republican candidates won 36%of the votes.
Here are the complete totals for the top candidates:
- Xavier Becerra 2,591,855 (28.1%)
- Steve Hilton 2,277,315 (24.7%)
- Tom Steyer 2,110,704 (22.8%)
- Chad Bianco 941,701 (10.2%)
- Katie Porter 403,908 (4.4%)
- Matt Mahan 327,537 (3.5%)
