CA House Races 2026: Real-Time Results

LOS ANGELES, CA — The polls have closed, and the results of California's 52 Congressional races will soon begin rolling in even as it's already clear that voters nationwide have handed control of the U.S. House of Representatives to Democrats. However, some of the tightest races in California are not likely to be decided Tuesday night.

It's been a high-turnout midterm election and a tense final day at the polls, where President Donald Trump and the Justice Department threatened California election workers with criminal prosecution and unleashed monitors to watch operations at voting centers across major Golden State cities.

Scroll Down For Live Election Results In All 52 Congressional Districts

According to a new poll by UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, 63 percent of California voters went into Election Day fearful that the federal government would attempt to stop the counting of votes in a state likely to hand over control of the House to Trump's opponents.

Thanks to rare mid-decade partisan gerrymandering enabled by voters' passage of Prop 50, there are fewer competitive districts on Tuesday's ballot than there have been in years. Democrats were favored to pick up a handful of seats — Districts 1 and 6 and possibly 48 or 22 — on the way to taking Control of the House of Representatives with a comfortable margin, according to multiple polls and the latest ranking by the Cook Political Report.

Races To Watch

A new USC Dornsife poll released over the weekend showed Democratic congressional candidates leading by 8 to 14 percentage points in four California congressional districts redrawn under Proposition 50.

Going into election day, Northern California's Districts 1 and 6 were widely expected to be Democratic pickups, while District 13 in the Central Valley appeared to be the Republicans' best shot at flipping a district.

The Central Valley's District 22 and San Diego and Riverside counties' District 48 will be the biggest test of the partisan gerrymander.

District 22 was always going to be a challenge for incumbent Republican David Valadao, who won his Central Valley seat in a Democratic-leaning district in 2024. After Prop. 50, it’s even more Democratic leaning.

District 48 doesn’t have an incumbent candidate after longtime Republican Rep. Darrell Issa decided to retire. Long a conservative bastion but unsettled by aggressive ICE arrests in the region, the race has been close between Republican Jim Desmond and Democrat Marni von Wilpert.

Finally, the newly gerrymandred District 40 combined deeply Republican districts in Riverside and Orange counties, pitting one of the House's longest serving Republicans, Rep. Ken Calvert against, Rep. Young Kim, who proved her bonafides winning over moderate and conservative voters in her Orange County district.

The Secretary of State and Patch will update the results throughout the night as votes are tallied, and the page will be refreshed for the latest updates. The most competitive House race results are listed here. Scroll lower down in the story for all 52 race results.

Can't see the results? Click here for all November 3, 2026 California statewide ballot measure results.

Intimidation Tactics

Trump has spent months trying to use the power of the presidency to put his thumb on the scale of this year’s elections, which will determine whether his party keeps control of Congress.

His Justice and Homeland Security departments have been involved in a massive hunt for voters who are not U.S. citizens, at one point engaging in a made-for-the-cameras predawn operation that led to more than two dozen arrests in California.

The Department of Justice was making its largest-ever effort to monitor Election Day polling places across all 50 states, countered by an even larger effort among Democrats and allied groups, and at the president's urging had sued to block certification of Alaska’s results if the outcome of the Senate race favored Democrats. A federal judge on Sunday dismissed that lawsuit.

At the same time, Trump’s constant false claims about widespread voter fraud led election officials and Democratic groups across the country to plan for the possibility of immigration agents at voting sites or federal officers seizing voting machines. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement posted a warning on its X account Tuesday that pushed the administration's narrative about noncitizen voting: “We will track you down, arrest you, and prosecute you,” the post read. “There will be no escape.”

The agency did not return a request for comment about the post. The Trump administration has insisted that no armed federal officials would guard the polls, and on Tuesday, none of the steps Democrats most feared had yet come to pass.

Heading into Election Day Tuesday, the most heated battles in California's 52 Congressional districts are taking place in courtrooms.

The uncertainty this election season is less about who or which party will win and more a question of whether the Trump Administration will accept the results.

Live Results In All 52 Races

Ballots, 'Bad Faith' and High Stakes

Though a handful of Golden State swing districts are unlikely to sway the outcome of the fight for control of the U.S. House of Representatives, the U.S. Department of Justice has made legal challenges to voting in California at a furious pace in the final week of the campaign. Multiple hearings are scheduled for Monday through Wednesday.

The U.S. Department of Justice sought to block election officials from counting more than 20,000 ballots, and it has begun issuing subpoenas to election officials while President Donald Trump has openly threatened them with criminal prosecution.

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a federal appeal seeking to set aside thousands of mail ballots from California voters President Donald Trump’s administration claims are noncitizens.

On Tuesday, though, the Justice Department scored a small victory when the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals paused a lower court's ruling that had barred it from intimidating election officials involved in processing disputed ballots in California. Its practical impact was limited because rulings from other courts that are still in effect have blocked similar behavior.

Even the administration’s own record of arrests and charges has demonstrated what research and state investigations have made clear — that instances of noncitizens casting ballots are extremely rare.

The administration's threats targeting voting in California prompted Governor Gavin Newsom Saturday to send letters to Chief District Judges for the four federal district courts in California, raising concerns that the President will attempt to interfere with California's elections.

"I write to alert you to the risk to election integrity of judges issuing a search warrant to seize ballots, election records, or certified voting technology while an election is underway and before the results are certified," Newsom wrote.

Federal prosecutors appear to be pursuing criminal investigations of local and state election officials despite a warning last week by federal Judge David O. Carter to immediately cease, according to Newsom.

"California’s strict chain of custody, documentation, and retention laws related to ballots and ballot materials ensure any evidence of alleged wrongdoing tied to ballots or ballot materials is preserved and appropriately supervised by a court, so there is no legitimate law enforcement reason to seize ballots, ballot materials, and equipment needed to process and tabulate ballots," Newsom wrote. "Indeed, the only reason to do so would be to interfere in a State’s lawful counting of ballots and certifying the results of the election.

"Given the United States Department of Justice’s persistence in advancing this baseless theory of criminal liability, I have grave concerns federal agents will seek search warrants to seize ballots and ballot materials before the election results are certified. The tactics and rhetoric federal officials are using strongly suggest that, having lost repeatedly in federal civil proceedings thus far, they will quickly pivot to the criminal forum. The well-documented weaponization of the United States Department of Justice to serve the partisan and personal ends of the current President support legitimate concerns about further attempts to disenfranchise voters and undermine election integrity, up to and including seeking to prevent certification of results that recent polling suggests will flip control of at least one House of Congress."

"If you want to know why @GavinNewsom is behaving so bizarrely right now, it's because he's fighting overtime to count every illegal vote in the upcoming election. California admitted as much during the court proceedings in our case," First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California Bill Essayli responded on X. "He fights for illegals and noncitizens, and has disdain for American citizens."

Andrew Howe, professor of history in the History, Politics & Sociology Department at La Sierra University, said he expects the GOP to lose control of the House this election and sees an ulterior motive in the Justice Department's legal maneuvers.

"Although the DOJ has cited widespread election fraud, little evidence exists for such claims," he told Patch. "Instead, the motivation underlying the DOJ legal maneuvering appears to be to call the democratic process into question, depressing voter turnout and sowing doubt about election results sure to go against the interests of the current presidential administration."

Cal State University Long Beach Assistant Professor of Political Science Matt Lesenyie said he suspects the administration's legal wrangling is a bad faith effort at altering the media narrative in the face of likely electoral defeat.

"It does not undermine the results. But it does create a media narrative in favor of Republicans," he told Patch. "It’s bizarre territory however because the 'corrupt system' as it’s alleged, has produced a Republican congressional majority. So at what point does this snipe hunt tie up someone like Kim, Calvert. Valadao? It appears to be in bad faith."