Editorial | What to make of early election results

There was a time, not all that long ago, when election results were mostly decided, get this, on election night.

Reporters and TV and camera crews would descend after the polls closed to the basement of the County Center on Ocean Street, watching as votes were counted. Usually before midnight, candidates, winners sometimes losers, would show up, and eventually, at least for newspaper reporters, it would a long, long night into morning making sure readers had election coverage that mattered.

That era is long gone For more than a decade now, due to a number of peculiarly California voting rules, the vote comes in very slowly.

Why? Because California sends every registered voter a mail-in ballot a month ahead of the election. This gives voters plenty of time to mark and return them. You would think. But our state allows ballots to be counted as long as they are postmarked on or before Election Day. Many voters wait until the last minute.

Counting ballots returned by mail takes more time than those cast in-person because signatures have to be matched. The state also allows people to register to vote and cast ballots provisionally on Election Day, which can add time since county officials must verify voter eligibility. In Santa Cruz County, late votes usually swing elections to the left, as they're often cast by younger, infrequent voters.

As of Sunday, only 15% of all ballots had been returned with Democratic voters returning ballots at a lower rate than they did in 2022. This means, as in past years, results may not be known for day, perhaps weeks.

This absentee-ballot-counting process benefits Democrats, but it also can fuel public distrust in elections. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom said as much last month in a letter urging election officials to expedite vote counting. "The longer the voting count takes, the more mis- and disinformation spreads," he wrote. "Time is of the essence in preventing election lies from taking hold." We don't disagree and think one change going forward would be to require ballots be returned by Election Day.

Locally, the race for Santa Cruz mayor has attracted most of the noise this cycle, and in early returns through Tuesday night, longtime local elected official Ryan Coonerty is leading with about 51% of the vote. Ami Chen Mills, who has picked up significant local progressive backing, so far has just about 18.3%. Gillian Greensite is running third, with nearly 12%, followed by Joy Schendledecker with just over 11%. Former Mayor and Councilmember Chris Krohn is in last place so far with about 8.5%.

This could all change in coming days, but our best guess is a runoff between Coonerty and Mills, which should be interesting since if you add up all the four candidates running below Coonerty in vote totals, so far, it comes to just about the same percentage he has.

In the two Santa Cruz council seats up for election, in District 6 incumbent Renee Golder, with about 66% of votes counted so far, is running far ahead of Gabriella Noack, a UCSC student who has about 34$.

In District 4 incumbent Scott Newsome with 54% of votes cast has been getting a strong challenge from Hector Marin, who so far has about 45%.

And in the Fourth Supervisorial District, South County, incumbent Supervisor Felipe Hernandez is likely headed for a November runoff as, for now, challenger Tony Nuñez has slightly over 49% of the vote, compared to Hernandez's 33%. Elias Gonzales so far has about 16% of the vote. If these results hold, it would be something of a defeat for the local Democratic Party, which backed Hernandez. Nuñez (our recommended choice) has said he has no political party designation, but he'll need to pick up some headwinds in the coming count of mail-in ballots to go over the 50% plus-one threshold and avoid a Nov. 2 runoff.

In the 19th Congressional District, incumbent Jimmy Panetta is cruising to a one-sided victory, despite the organized local opposition that has been outspokenly critical over his ostensible support for Israel and the military. Sean Dougherty, the choice of some folks in the local peace brigade, had garnered only 12% of the county vote by Wednesday morning to Panetta's nearly 66%. Overall in the district, Panetta has about 58%.

And in the race for governor, as of this writing the morning after, with ostensibly millions of mail-in ballots still to be counted, former Biden Health and Human Services Secretary and state Attorney General Xavier Becerra, with 25.4% of votes counted so far, is, as predicted by polls, headed for a Nov. 2 runoff. But, somewhat surprisingly, Republican Steve Hilton is in front in votes counted so far, with about 28%.

Billionaire Tom Steyer is running behind the two leaders with about 19.6%. The Democratic Party, with a huge edge in party registration, would certainly prefer Hilton makes the run off, and that they don't have to figure out how to deal with Steyer's attack ads against Becerra, paid for out of the, yes, $213 million he seemingly wasted on this race. Steyer currently is running second in the county vote, a reflection on his progressive agenda in all likelihood.

In the LA mayoral race, incumbent Karen Bass has a sizeable lead, but with three candidates appears headed for a runoff against reformist Republican Spencer Pratt.

Meanwhile, the cast of 61 candidates seeking to lead California will be whittled down to two, hopefully before too long.

Sadly, Barack D. Obama Shaw, a Democrat, won't be one of them, although he parlayed adopting that name into gaining nearly 11,000 votes from precincts reporting Tuesday night.

Nor will Watsonville-raised Matt Mahan, whose early backing from Silicon Valley didn't seem to do him much good in a state where resentment against tech bros is ever simmering. And Katie Porter, probably the first Democrat out of the gate, will not be California's first female governor. Eric Swalwell somehow was the choice of more than 15,000 voters so far, even though he dropped out of the race following rape and sexual assault allegations.

We'll return to election results in a few days when more votes are counted and more trends and conclusions are apparent.

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This story was originally published June 4, 2026 at 2:18 AM.