California's 2026 Stakes: A New Governor, a Full House Delegation and No Senate Race
Kern County voters are helping pick a successor to term-limited Gov. Newsom and all of California's U.S. House members this year, on a ballot with no U.S. Senate contest.
The headline fact of California's 2026 election is an empty chair. Gov. Gavin Newsom is term-limited, so the governor's race is open, and open races for the nation's largest state governorship reshape everything below them: the fields are bigger, the outcome is less predictable, and voters in Kern County are choosing a direction rather than ratifying an incumbent. The new governor will inherit the state's budget, its water fights and its housing shortage the day the oath is taken.
Sharing the top of the ballot are contests for all of California's seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. House control in Washington shapes the federal side of the issues Kern County lives on: farm policy, water infrastructure, energy, highways like SR-99 and SR-58, and the health programs that serve the valley. California has no U.S. Senate race in 2026, which concentrates even more attention on the governor's contest and the House map.
Kern voters received their ballots by mail, as every active registered voter in California did, and the length of this year's ballot rewards reading it at home. County and local contests, school and city questions, and judicial races sit below the state and federal headlines, and they are the part of the ballot where a relatively small number of Kern votes can decide the outcome. Vote centers handle voters who prefer to cast a ballot in person or who need a replacement.
The deadlines are the same in Bakersfield as in Sacramento. Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 3, polls open 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Mail ballots count if postmarked by Nov. 3 and received by Nov. 10, or returned in person to a vote center, drop box or the county elections office by 8 p.m. Tuesday. Conditional registration runs through Election Day at vote centers and the elections office for eligible residents who missed the Oct. 19 deadline, and most voters will not be asked for identification, with a narrow exception for some first-time mail registrants.
However the results land, 2026 sends a new governor to Sacramento chosen in part by Kern County, and a House delegation carrying the valley's interests into a closely divided Washington. It is, as elections go, a genuinely consequential one, and it will be decided by the voters who complete the whole ballot, top to bottom.
