Polls for the 2026 General Election have closed in California.
KAZU will provide preliminary local and statewide results as they come in, with live updates on the radio and livestream beginning at around 8:15 p.m.
Election officials in Santa Cruz, Monterey and San Benito counties are planning to release initial tabulation totals shortly after 8 p.m.
These numbers will include all early in-person votes and vote-by-mail ballots processed by election workers up to Election Day or a few days prior.
From there, Santa Cruz County will update tabulation totals every 90 minutes. Monterey County will provide another update at 10 p.m. and will refresh its totals every hour from there.
Follow local results by county at these official sites:
Our California Newsroom partner CalMatters is tallying preliminary statewide results here.
Around the region, voters spoke about how and when they completed and returned their ballots.
Brian Larkins lives in Monterey. He says the issue that brought him out was the wealth tax. "That was one of the big ones for me," said Larkins referring to Prop. 40, the billionaire tax.
It was on Larkins’ mind because recently he had some tightness in his chest. Since his dad had a heart attack this year, Larkins went to the doctor to get his heart checked.
" I got a $2,700 bill for just that," said Larkins, "and what I had to do was think to myself, 'Oh, great, do I take a vacation this year?' I'm a single guy with no kids, and I still have to make those decisions, and that really sucks."
In Marina, Laura Mejia was one of dozens of voters dropping off their ballots at the Marina Community Center.
“ I was literally just parked in my car for the last hour just trying to fill out all, you know, everything from my ballot," said Mejia. "A lot of single parents just don't have time to take off of work or just, you know, throughout the day.”
She works for CSUMB and was also there to pick up her daughter from an afterschool program—making her ballot dropoff, "so much easier!
She said it was, "kinda like a drive-through and just drop it off, you know? But also the kids get to see that their parents are also coming in and making that time to come and vote."
Mitzi Camacho also voted at the Marina Community Center. She's lived in Marina all her life—and a majority of that time has overlapped with Bruce Delgado’s 18-year run as Marina’s mayor.
"He's been mayor since I was in middle school, which was 2009," she said. "I always joke around with that with him, and he's like, 'Wow,' like, 'I'm not that old.'"
When casting a vote for his replacement, Camacho said one question stood out for her: "who do I want this mayor to cater more to locals like us that grew up here, or rather the transplants that are kinda moving into town?"
She said some development projects have attracted people from the Bay and Silicon Valley, bringing change to her hometown.
At the polls in Seaside, affordability was top of mind. Chris Santana lives in Monterey and works at a Nissan dealership.
" I see, what's happening with the war, I see prices going up," said Santana. "Customers are not paying to fix their cars and, I see their faces when I give them prices and I feel for them and I feel for the community. 'Cause a lot of my customers are people that work out in the fields, are immigrants."
Santana says he hopes that the house and senate flip, and that a new Congress will bring about change.
Some of the campaigns the KAZU newsroom is following include:
Salinas Rental Protections (Measure H)
