An update to San Joaquin County’s results in last week’s special election boosted Proposition 50’s approval by a tad.
But the level of approval is still well short of the state’s pluralities as a whole so far.
The latest count finished Friday night shows 53.8% of the county’s voters cast ballots in favor and 46.2% were opposed to the measure to redraw California’s congressional districts in a way that could flip five seats from Republican to Democrat.
The tallying of additional ballots boosted the county’s backing of Proposition 50 by 0.5 percentage points compared to the last count Wednesday morning. The latest count represents 40% of the county’s registered voters — and there’s still more ballots to count.
In the end, however, the county’s totals are a sidelight to the only count that really matters: The statewide vote. The latest figures from the California Secretary of State’s office show the measure passing by a much larger total than what was seen locally — 64.1% vs. 35.9%. The big approval numbers were driven by huge pluralities in the state’s most populous county, Los Angeles County, which had the proposition’s approval leading by a 3-1 margin.
Gov. Gavin Newsom pushed Proposition 50 as a rebuke to President Donald Trump. The measure is designed to likely flip five seats from Republican to Democratic. It was proposed after the Texas legislature, at Trump’s urging, recently redistricted in a way designed to turn five seats Republican. Trump’s goal is to hold or augment the Republican edge in Congress during the 2026 mid-term elections.
San Joaquin County is in the crosshairs of redistricting. Instead of having two congressional districts, parts of the county could end up in five under the redistricting proposal.