California Senate Forecast & Polls

Click here for the National Senate Forecast

RacetotheWH Forecast & Interactives

Democratic Senator Alex Padilla was appointed to the role back in 2021 by Governor Gavin Newsom after Senator Kamala Harris was elevated to the Vice Presidency. Now, Padilla is running to secure a full second term, against Republican Mark Meuser. Thanks to a series of weird legal quirks, there will be two elections for the very same Senate seat on the same day. The first will decide who will finish the rest of Kamala Harris’s term for the last few weeks of 2022 and the first few days of 2023. The second election will decide who will be the Senator for the next six years. Almost certainly, the winner of each election will be the same, and we are only forecasting the election for the full six-year term.

RacetotheWH launched in the 2020 election cycle, and our forecast was one of the nation's most accurate. It called over 93% of races right, and was more accurate than all of its top competitors at predicting the final margin in close Senate races. We’re projecting the result for all 34 Senate Races up in 2022.