Elections

You may rightly wonder: What kind of statistical black magic is performed behind the scenes to produce any given poll? Here's what to keep in mind:

In recent decades, California's initiative process has come to be dominated by the very forces it was invented to avoid: special interests with lots of money.

California districts with the most affluent students have been averaging more than twice as many local school bond dollars per student as the most impoverished districts, a CALmatters analysis reveals.

How California came to have one of the most powerful, and least flexible initiative processes in the world.

This year, with hundreds of millions of dollars rolling into initiative campaigns over housing and health care, California has hit a new record: The $111 million campaign against Proposition 8 on kidney dialysis clinics amounts to the most money poured into a single side of a ballot measure in the United States—at least since electronic record-keeping began in 2002, and possibly ever.

Our elections reporter Ben Christopher is hosting a Reddit AMA on Tuesday at noon to answer your last-minute questions before Election Day next Tuesday.

As Assembly Democrats and the California Democratic Party seek a two-thirds majority in the Legislature, they've poured $527,000 since Oct. 1 into the campaign to unseat Catharine Baker, the last Republican to hold a Bay Area legislative seat.

A candidate gets his face on a pint of ice cream. A bipartisan deal is reached to make it rain in the Central Valley. A state senator and mayor plan to protest a prop in drag. Here’s a quick recap of what happened across California’s 53 congressional districts this week.

The East Bay Assembly race between Richmond City Councilwoman Jovanka Beckles, a Democratic Socialist, and Democrat Buffy Wicks of Oakland is testing how far to the left some California voters are willing to go. The East Bay Assembly race between Richmond City Councilwoman Jovanka Beckles, a Democratic Socialist, and Democrat Buffy Wicks of Oakland is testing how far to the left some California voters are willing to go.

A new California midterm poll shows public opinion holding steady or coming in pretty much as you'd expect—but dig deeper into every expected result and you'll find something unexpected.