New Gerrymandered CA Congressional District Will Remain In GOP Hands

California Democrats suffered a major setback in the state’s 40th Congressional District after nearly a week of ballot counting ended with two Republicans advancing to the general election.

The result shuts Democrats out of the November contest for a seat they had hoped to target as part of their broader effort to gain ground in the House.

According to Decision Desk HQ results, Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA) finished first with 35.68% of the vote.

Rep. Young Kim (R-CA) came in second with 21.12%, setting up a Republican-versus-Republican general election in November.

The unusual race came after mid-decade redistricting placed Calvert and Kim in the same congressional district, forcing two sitting Republican members of Congress to compete on the same ballot.

The redrawn map has been highly controversial. Republicans have argued that California’s congressional lines already provide Democrats with a substantial structural advantage and that additional redistricting only deepened that imbalance.

Despite those concerns, the result in the 40th District guarantees that the seat will remain in Republican hands.

That outcome denies Democrats a chance to flip the district and gives the GOP an unexpected advantage in a state where Republicans have often faced an uphill battle under California’s election rules and political map.

The two Republicans are running after “mid-decade redistricting further gerrymandered California’s district lines, which already provided a gross advantage to Congressional Democrats far beyond the party’s proportion of the vote in the state,” Breitbart News reported last month.

Rep. Brandon Gill (R-TX) previously endorsed Calvert, pointing to his support for President Donald Trump and his position on immigration.

“It comes down to two things. One is that Ken Calvert is a huge defender and supporter of the president,” Gill said.

“And number two, he’s got a fantastic record on immigration, which I think is the most important issue that we have in front of us today,” he added.

Gill also criticized Kim’s record, noting that she cosponsored a resolution to censure President Donald Trump in 2021 and was an “original cosponsor of the Dignidad Act, a mass amnesty bill — notably with a non-English title — pushed by pro-migration Republicans,” Breitbart noted further.

In a post on Sunday, Eric Daugherty of Florida’s Voice News wrote that Democrats had been “locked out” of California’s 40th Congressional District, “Meaning zero resources must now be spent on defending the seat this November.

“House control could run through California. Federal ‘election month’ should be BANNED by SCOTUS by the midterms so they can’t cheat!” he noted further.

The result comes as President Donald Trump has sharply criticized California’s election system.

Last week, Trump accused “Dumocrats” of stealing statewide elections in California.

The criticism has intensified as vote counting continues slowly across Los Angeles County and other parts of the state.

Reporters who visited Los Angeles County’s 144,000-square-foot ballot processing center on Thursday found numerous empty workstations despite a massive backlog of ballots still awaiting review.

The scene raised fresh questions about the pace and transparency of California’s ballot-counting process, especially as election officials continued working through hundreds of thousands of outstanding votes more than a week after Election Day.

County officials released figures late last week showing that only 77,521 additional ballots had been processed since the June 2 election.

At the same time, officials estimated that approximately 713,180 ballots remained outstanding and still needed to be counted, according to the California Post, which investigated the facility.

During The Post’s visit, large sections of the facility’s workstations appeared empty, while boxes of ballots were visible throughout the center.

“In one area, where ballots that cannot be automatically read by scanners are reviewed by election workers, roughly 25 bins of ballots appeared ready for processing while no employees were seated at nearby desks,” the outlet reported.

“In another section where workers open envelopes and prepare ballots for counting, The Post observed about 75 employees working, despite the area being capable of accommodating more than twice that number,” it said.

The slow pace of counting has drawn criticism from Republican lawmakers and voters who argue that prolonged ballot processing undermines confidence in election outcomes.

For conservatives, California’s system has become a symbol of everything wrong with modern election administration: extended counting periods, late shifts in results, and limited public confidence in how ballots are processed after Election Day.

The 40th District result, however, gives Republicans a rare win in deep-blue California.

Even after a drawn-out counting process, Democrats failed to advance in a race they hoped could become competitive. Instead, voters will choose between two Republican incumbents in November.

With control of the House potentially running through California, the outcome could prove significant well beyond one congressional district.