Outside the Beltway

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Hilton Advances to Second Round in CA

I Guess Not All Late Counts are Rigged…

Steven L. Taylor
14

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Source: Wikimedia Commons

After you know, like forever,* California has confirmed that the second round of the election for governor will be between Democrat Xavier Becerra and Republican Steve Hilton. Becerra came in first with 27.9% of the vote, and Hilton was in second with 25.0%, which edged out Democrat Tom Steyer with 22.5%.

I appear unable to upload images at the moment, but the results can be viewed here.

All of this is an artifact of the two-round system they use in California, which isn’t really a primary, despite what people call it. It is a two-round system wherein the two top voter getters advance to the second round, regardless of margins (i.e., even if a candidate wins 50%+1, they do not win the seat), and where candidates of the same party can both advance to the second round.

These are not a nomination contest, which is the proper definition of a primary.

It seems worth noting that there were 61 candidates on the ballot and that while just under half of first-round voters chose someone other than Becerra or Hilton, Becerra’s ceiling is far higher than Hilton’s.

While we cannot simply port over, say, all the Democratic votes to Becerra (like third-place finisher Tom Steyer’s 22.5%), you can assume that the grand bulk of Dem support that is sprinkled across a number of other candidates will end up supporting Becerra, just as the other Rs will coalesce around Hilton.

FWIW, 59.3% of the vote went to Ds, and 39.7% went to Rs (with about 1% to others).

Weirdly, that is awfully close to the results in 2024, when Harris won 58.5% of the vote, and Trump won 38.3%.

It’s as if the partisan makeup of a given jurisdiction has some predictive power, or something.

Indeed, I will boldly predict that the final results of the election will be roughly 60-40 in November, favoring the Ds.

Bold, I know.

No doubt the fact that the results comport with a fully predictable outcome that conforms to the known partisan mix of the state, to include a Republican advancing (even if it took DAYS* to find out the results!), will quell all those claims that CA’s system is rigged?

Right?

Or will it be proof that it is rigged and that they manufactured this outcome after all the criticism to prove that it’s not?

Sigh.

*I am honestly very frustrated by all the bellyaching over a normal process taking the length of time it normally takes. It seems no story can avoid commenting on how long it takes, and a lot of otherwise reasonable people seem to be almost as hard on CA for counting the way it counts as they are on Trump for lying about fraud. It is a maddening illustration about how we cannot, collectively, figure out the difference between having a splinter in one’s finger versus having one’s hand amputated. I am not even sure that analogy is quite right because it still casts the CA system as a problem, if a minor one. Apart from giving grist to the lying mill, I can not figure out one serious problem with CA’s system, apart from making reporters and pundits have to wait a few days

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14 responses to “Hilton Advances to Second Round in CA”

  1. Kathy Avatar
    Kathy

    Timing aside, the terminology is rather obscure. Web searches lead me to believe the “second round” is the general election in November.

    1
  2. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @Kathy: That’s correct. The second round is in November and is the general election. Top Two is a two-round process wherein all comers compete in the first round (the so-called primary) and the top two move on to the second round (the general).

    1
  3. Kathy Avatar
    Kathy

    @Steven L. Taylor:

    Thank you.

    It’s really confusing when I read that this candidate advances to a run-off with the incumbent, or toa second round, when what they both mean is the actual election for Mayor of LA, or Governor of California.

    De jure it’s a general election in two rounds, which at least makes the terms make sense. So, de jure, there’s no primary. But de facto, it’s a primary and a general election.

    1
  4. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @Kathy:

    So, de jure, there’s no primary. But de facto, it’s a primary and a general election.

    Actually, de jure, it is a primary and the general (as I am sure that it what the law calls them).

    De facto, however, this is a two-round contest.

    See also, Matthew Shugart: https://fruitsandvotes.wordpress.com/2026/06/02/california-governor-2026/

  5. DK Avatar
    DK

    a lot of otherwise reasonable people seem to be almost as hard on CA for counting the way it counts

    Oh no how will Californians ever go on, with Nate Silver, The Bulwark, and the New York Slimes editorial board being hard on us lolol

    Their overly-impatient whining has no power here and will change nothing.

    5
  6. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @DK:

    will change nothing.

    In some ways, it doesn’t matter.

    But in others, I think it does. It is helping to deepen distrust in the electoral process, and it is hugely asymmetrical bothsiderism (which is part of what helped us get where we are).

    4
  7. DK Avatar
    DK

    @Steven L. Taylor: True. Unfortunately it’s not a problem California can fix.

    Under Trump, Republicans have gone all in on soreloserism, election denial, and vote suppression. No matter the state, when conservatives lose they will tantrum and lie. Presumably Arizona and Georgia count more quickly than California, but the right still cried fraud when Biden won them in 2020. Because Republicans don’t care about the count speed or the voting procedures involved, they just can’t accept losing.

    Simarly, easily-manipulated Substack bro types and legacy media hacks will always carry water for Republican bad faith. It has been so since Whitewater and the vast rightwing conspiracy of the 90s. They did it with the absurd Emailghazigatepalooza 2016 national bitch hunt against Hillary. And they’re doing it now, pretending waiting a few days to finalize California results is a democratic crisis, when it is not.

    I don’t know the fixes. If California could get Trumpers, Nate Silver, and New York Times editorialists to stop being idiotic rightwing propagandists, as outlined above, we would. Since we can’t, my guess is we’ll keep doing what’s best for the convenience and enfrachisement of Californians.

    6
  8. Ken_L Avatar
    Ken_L

    If Republicans find the system so offensive, they have an obvious solution. Let them hold their own internal primary early in the year to decide who will be the party’s (only) representative in the first round of state-wide voting.

    They won’t, of course, because they harbour dreams of doing what some analysts predicted could happen this year, namely taking both the top spots in the first round and preventing Democrats even being in the contest.

    4
  9. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @DK: Sure. I am not asking California to do anything.

    I’d like the pundits in question to stop this nonsense.

    1
  10. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @DK: Sure. I am not asking California to do anything.

    I’d like the pundits in question to stop this nonsense.

  11. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @DK: Sure. I am not asking California to do anything.

    I’d like the pundits in question to stop this nonsense.

  12. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    Test

  13. Scott F. Avatar
    Scott F.

    @Steven L. Taylor:

    But in others, I think it does. It is helping to deepen distrust in the electoral process, and it is hugely asymmetrical bothsiderism (which is part of what helped us get where we are).

    I don’t think it matters even in this way. We know full well that if California ran their elections in a way that couldn’t possibly be distorted into something distrustful regarding the electoral process, the Republicans would make up accusations of cheating from whole cloth. There was nothing remotely real about a child sex ring under Comet Ping Pong pizzeria.

    4
  14. Jay L. Gischer Avatar
    Jay L. Gischer

    I think that all elections take this long to certify. In order to certify, they must be sure every vote is counted and confirmed, even if the result isn’t in doubt.

    But this time, the result was in doubt. Many races were very close. It wasn’t clear whether Becerra or Steyer would advance, because it was really close. And so on.

    Most of the time, we produce an illusion that the voters are all counted by the next morning. That’s because there is no statistical doubt on the outcome, not because all the votes have been counted.

    However, the way people like me (and no doubt our hosts) use the phrase “statistical doubt” is not really understood by people at large, though really Nate Silver should know better.

    1

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