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Harris: 50–60% 60–70% 70–80% 80–90% Sanchez: 50–60% 60–70% | ||||||||||||||||
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Personal U.S. Senator from California 49th Vice President of the United States Incumbent Vice presidential campaigns   |
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The 2016 United States Senate election in California was held on November 8, 2016, to elect a member of the United States Senate to represent the State of California, concurrently with the 2016 U.S. presidential election, as well as elections to the United States Senate in other states and elections to the United States House of Representatives and various state and local elections.
Under California's nonpartisan blanket primary law, all candidates appear on the same ballot, regardless of party. In the primary, voters may vote for any candidate, regardless of their party affiliation. In the California system, the top two finishers—regardless of party—advance to the general election in November, even if a candidate receives a majority of the vote in the primary election. Washington and Louisiana have similar "jungle primary" style processes for senators.
Incumbent Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer decided to not run for reelection to a fifth term.[1] This was the first open seat Senate election in California since 1992, when Boxer was first elected.[2] In the primary on June 7, 2016, California Attorney General Kamala Harris and U.S. Representative Loretta Sanchez, both Democrats, finished in first and second place, respectively, and contested the general election. For the first time since direct elections to the Senate were mandated after the passage of the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913, no Republican appeared on the general election ballot for the U.S. Senate in California. The highest Republican finisher in the primary won only 7.8 percent of the vote, and the 10 Republicans only won 27.9 percent of the vote among them.[3]
In the general election, Harris defeated Sanchez in a landslide, carrying 54 of the state's 58 counties, including Sanchez's home county of Orange, although Sanchez held Harris to a margin of less than 1% in the Central Valley counties of Kern and Merced. Harris served in the Senate for roughly 4 years as she resigned after being elected vice president in 2020.
- ^ Burgess Everett (January 8, 2015). "Barbara Boxer: Won't run again in 2016". Politico. Retrieved January 8, 2015.
- ^ Ballhaus, Rebecca (January 8, 2015). "The Contenders: Who Will Run for Barbara Boxer's Senate Seat?". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved January 8, 2015.
- ^ Myers, John (June 8, 2016). "Two Democrats will face off for California's U.S. Senate seat, marking first time a Republican will not be in contention". Los Angeles Times.