Early turnout in California’s June 7 primary election has been relatively poor so far, especially when compared to the number of voters who had cast a ballot a week prior to the statewide Gavin Newsom recall election.
According to Political Data Intelligence, which tracks turnout numbers, a little more than 2 million people had returned a ballot for next week’s primary as of Wednesday. With 21.8 million total ballots mailed out to voters, the Wednesday figure amounts to just 9% turnout statewide.
That’s low considering California is just six days away from Election Day. To put those figures into perspective, six days before last year’s recall election, more than 6 million voters had returned a ballot, amounting to roughly 27% turnout statewide.
As far as comparisons go, last year’s recall election serves as the best baseline for turnout given its similarity to this year’s primary.
Every voter in the state was mailed a ballot, which was true in the Newsom recall and in the 2020 general election. However, turnout in presidential election years is always higher than it is in midterm years, which makes comparing this year’s turnout numbers to figures in the 2020 elections basically irrelevant. In the 2018 midterms, voters still had to request an absentee ballot if they wanted to vote by mail.
One possible reason for this year’s paltry early turnout numbers: California allows ballots received after Election Day to be counted until June 14 as long as they are postmarked by June 7, which means voters can wait until the last minute on Election Day to return their mail-in ballot. Because many voters may not be familiar with some candidates given last year’s reapportionment of the state’s legislative and congressional districts, it may be taking people longer to make up their minds this cycle.
Of the 2 million ballots returned so far, more than half came from Democrats and another 518,346 came from Republicans. Some 430,000 independents have sent their ballots back as well.
Ballots need to be postmarked on or before June 7 and must arrive at a county elections office no later than seven days after Election Day in order to count.
