2024 United States Senate elections in California
Two 2024 United States Senate elections in California were held on November 5, 2024, to elect a member of the United States Senate to represent the state of California. There were two ballot items for the same Class 1 seat: a special election to fill the seat for the final month of the 118th United States Congress (ending on January 3, 2025), and a regular general election for a full term that began on January 3, 2025, in the 119th United States Congress. This was the second time in a row that both a regular and special election for the U.S. Senate occurred simultaneously in California, following the 2022 elections.Two Democratic U.S. representatives, Katie Porter of Irvine and Adam Schiff of Burbank, entered the race for the 119th Congress before February 14, 2023, when fellow Democrat Dianne Feinstein announced that she would retire at the end of her term. A third, Barbara Lee of Oakland, announced her campaign on February 21, 2023. Feinstein died in office on September 29, 2023. On October 1, 2023, California Governor Gavin Newsom appointed Laphonza Butler to fill Feinstein's term until a special election could be held in November 2024 to fill the last month of Feinstein's term. On October 19, 2023, Butler announced that she would not seek election to finish the final month of Feinstein's term, nor for a full Senate term in the 119th Congress.
Primary elections took place on March 5, 2024, during Super Tuesday. California uses a nonpartisan blanket primary election, in which all candidates regardless of party affiliation appear on the same primary ballot and the two highest-placing candidates advance to the general election; however, primary special election winners can win outright if they win more than 50% of the vote in the first round. Schiff, along with Republican former baseball player Steve Garvey, advanced to the general election in both the special and regular elections. As no Republican has won a Senate election in California since 1988, Schiff was considered a heavy favorite, and easily won both the regular and special general elections with more than 58% of the vote.
Schiff became the first male U.S. senator from this seat since John Seymour left office in 1992 and California one of several states to have a younger senior senator (Alex Padilla) and an older junior senator (Schiff). Schiff's popular vote total of 9 million in the regular election broke the record previously held by Feinstein in 2012 for the highest vote total ever received by a U.S. Senate candidate in American history, as well as the highest vote total ever received by a candidate for any office in any state outside of the presidency.
With over 41% of the vote in the general election, Garvey had the best performance of any Republican candidate for this seat since 1994. Garvey managed to win Orange County, which voted for Kamala Harris in the concurrent presidential election. He also flipped three counties compared to the 2022 Senate election: Lake, Imperial, and San Joaquin counties. With over 6.3 million votes in the regular election, Garvey set the record for the most votes ever received by a Republican candidate in California, and the most votes received by a non-presidential Republican candidate in any state in American history; he received over 200,000 more votes than Donald Trump did in the state's presidential election.
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