Elections 2026
Every race that can move your bills: statewide offices, competitive House seats, 21 open legislative seats, and 14 ballot measures. Not who wins the news cycle — who wins your committees.
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A new governor means a new veto pen, new agency heads, and new administration priorities. Every 2027 bill strategy gets re-read against the winner's stated positions. Polling shown with pollster, dates, and sample — snapshots, not predictions.
Federal races that touch Sacramento work: delegation members carry California priorities to D.C., and House outcomes shape the federal funding and preemption fights in your federal nexus watch. Ratings are third-party handicappers', attributed and dated.
Term limits and departures opened these seats — the November finalists below become someone's Assemblymember or Senator on December 7. Know them before they know the building. Full term-limits picture →
A new chair rewrites a committee's politics: the analyses, the amendments they'll accept, the bills that get a hearing. If your bill lives in one of these committees, the election decides your 2027 audience.
Don't guess — model it. Take any race outcome into the Scenario Lab: "what if the AD-12 winner opposes our bill?" Goldie recomputes the odds with the new legislature.
Open the Scenario Lab Ask Goldie about the stakes
Also see: Probability Index · Veto history (the best predictor of the next governor's pen)
FPPC reminder: post-election contributions are still contributions — limits and reporting apply. No contingent fees, ever.
Data as of Oct 1, 2026. Sources: California Secretary of State (voter registration and election calendar), Public Policy Institute of California and UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies (polling), Cook Political Report (House race ratings), FPPC / Cal-Access (campaign finance). Polling figures are snapshots, not predictions — SiLobbyist never predicts winners.