2026 California judges results: Justices Evans and Groban are winning retention with about 71% of the vote

Justices Kelli M. Evans and Joshua P. Groban are winning their retention votes for the California Supreme Court. In the Secretary of State's semi-official count as of 5:18 p.m. Pacific on November 4, Evans has 71.6% yes and Groban has 70.9%. Evans was the one Supreme Court justice with an organized campaign against her, run by a police union PAC, and she is running 0.7 points ahead of Groban statewide. All 62 Court of Appeal justices on the ballot are above 59% yes in their districts.

None of the 64 retention questions is final. Counties are still counting, mail ballots postmarked by Election Day count if they arrive by November 10, and the Secretary of State certifies the results on December 11, according to the election calendar. Our 2026 California judges guide explains what a retention vote does and who all 64 justices are, and our results master guide tracks the propositions, statewide races and House seats. This page covers the judicial results: how Evans and Groban compare with each other and with every Supreme Court result since 1986, the counties where Evans ran behind Groban, and every Court of Appeal justice's yes share.

California's Supreme Court retention vote has Justice Kelli Evans at 71.6% yes and Justice Joshua Groban at 70.9%:

Both Supreme Court questions appeared on every ballot in the state. The statewide totals in the 5:18 p.m. report:

• Kelli M. Evans: 4,541,718 yes (71.6%) and 1,801,454 no (28.4%)
• Joshua P. Groban: 4,504,890 yes (70.9%) and 1,853,084 no (29.1%)

A justice needs a simple majority of the votes cast on the question, and blank votes count for neither side. The California Constitution puts the rule in one line:

"The candidate shall be elected upon receiving a majority of the votes on the question."

California Constitution, Article VI, Section 16(d)(1)

Evans's yes votes exceed her no votes by 2,740,264, and Groban's by 2,651,806. Evans has 36,828 more yes votes than Groban and 51,630 fewer no votes, by our arithmetic from the Secretary of State's figures.

The count still has a long way to go. The feed lists all 23,860 precincts as reporting, which means each precinct has posted at least some results, not that every ballot is in. Two days after the November 2024 general election, county officials estimated that 5,472,423 ballots were still unprocessed, about a third of the total. Two days after the June 2026 primary, the estimate was 3,606,128 ballots, or 39.1% of all ballots cast, by our calculation.

Evans is running ahead of Groban after PORAC's "No on Kelli Evans" campaign:

The Peace Officers Research Association of California PAC ran a website and digital ads under the name No on Kelli Evans, with the disclosure "Ad paid for by Peace Officers Research Association of California PAC (PORAC PAC)." Its central claim was that "in a single year on the California Supreme Court, Justice Evans went on record 63 times to reopen sometimes unspeakable criminal cases that juries and appeals courts had already decided and upheld." No campaign against Groban surfaced.

The 63 is a count of dissents from the court's decisions not to hear a case. In the 2024–25 term, the appellate firm Horvitz & Levy's At the Lectern counted 63 such votes by Evans, all in criminal cases, 69 by Justice Goodwin Liu and 22 by Groban. A dissent from a denial of review is a vote to hear a case, not a ruling that reopens it.

CalMatters reported on October 31 that PORAC's vice president, Ben Therriault, called the effort "a warning shot." Union leaders conceded to the outlet that the campaign probably would not persuade enough voters to remove Evans, and Evans declined to comment on the ads. As of the evening of November 4 Pacific time, the campaign's site still carried its pre-election appeal and no statement on the results.

A comparison of two justices on one ballot can only say so much. Evans and Groban differ in more than the campaign. Governor Gavin Newsom appointed Evans, and this is her first time before voters. Governor Jerry Brown appointed Groban, who won 68.0% in his first retention vote in 2022. The gap between them is 0.7 points, and both shares will move as counties keep counting.

Evans ran behind Groban in 30 of California's 58 counties, including 17 of the 23 where Steve Hilton leads:

The Secretary of State's feed also reports both questions county by county, and California Today compared the two justices' yes shares in all 58 counties. Evans ran behind Groban in 30 and ahead of him in 28. The gaps are small: in 52 counties the two are within two points of each other.

Evans's weakest showings against Groban came in the far north and the Sierra foothills, in counties where Republican Steve Hilton leads the governor's race:

• Sierra County: Evans 50.8%, Groban 55.3%, a gap of 4.5 points
• Modoc County: Evans 45.2%, Groban 48.8% (3.6 points)
• Amador County: Evans 50.3%, Groban 52.2% (2.0 points)
• Placer County: Evans 59.1%, Groban 60.9% (1.8 points)

Hilton leads in 23 counties in the same count, and Evans trailed Groban in 17 of them. In the 35 counties where Democrat Xavier Becerra leads, she ran ahead of Groban in 22. Her largest leads were in Sonoma County (2.4 points), Humboldt (2.3), Tulare (2.2) and Los Angeles (2.0).

Los Angeles County carries much of the statewide result. It cast 1,741,082 of the 6,343,172 votes on the Evans question, 27% of the total, and gave her 75.8% yes to Groban's 73.8%. Statewide, Evans's margin over the no side is 88,458 votes larger than Groban's, and 68,790 of that difference comes from Los Angeles County.

Both justices are below 50% in two counties: Modoc (Evans 45.2%, Groban 48.8%) and Lassen (Evans 43.9%, Groban 45.4%). County results do not decide a statewide question, and only the statewide majority counts.

Two cautions apply to the county numbers. Counties post at different times, and several counties' latest report in the feed dates from election night, so the gaps will shift as the count goes on. Small counties also swing on a few hundred ballots; Sierra County's figures rest on 1,138 votes on the Evans question. The numbers show where Evans ran behind Groban. They do not show why.

Evans and Groban are running inside the range of every California Supreme Court retention result since 1990:

Californians last removed Supreme Court justices on November 4, 1986, when Chief Justice Rose Bird and Justices Cruz Reynoso and Joseph Grodin lost with 33.84%, 39.76% and 43.39% yes, according to the Secretary of State's Statement of Vote. All 29 Supreme Court retention questions since then have passed, as our judges guide documents from each Statement of Vote. The lowest was Justice Armand Arabian's 55.77% in 1990. Every result since 1998 has landed between 65.5% and 75.9%.

Evans's 71.6% would be the highest Supreme Court result since Justice Leondra Kruger's 72.8% in 2018. Groban's 70.9% is 2.9 points above his own 68.0% in 2022, when he was retained to finish Justice Kathryn Werdegar's term, and it matches Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero's 70.9% that year. If the shares hold, the two questions will be the 30th and 31st Supreme Court retention votes in a row to pass since 1986.

All 62 Court of Appeal justices are above 59% yes, led by Tracie Brown's 81.1% in the First District:

Each voter sees only the Court of Appeal justices for their own appellate district, so the 62 results come from six different electorates. The ranges by district in the semi-official count:

• First District (San Francisco Bay Area and the North Coast), 11 justices: 77.6% to 81.1%
• Second District (Los Angeles, Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo), 18 justices: 65.7% to 76.5%
• Third District (Sacramento, the northern Central Valley, the Sierra and the far north), 7 justices: 61.0% to 67.7%
• Fourth District (San Diego, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Imperial and Inyo), 15 justices: 62.4% to 74.7%
• Fifth District (Fresno and the San Joaquin Valley), 6 justices: 59.2% to 65.9%
• Sixth District (Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Monterey and San Benito), 5 justices: 76.4% to 78.9%

The lowest yes share among the 62 is Justice Sonny S. Sandhu's 59.2% in the Fifth District, and the highest is Presiding Justice Tracie L. Brown's 81.1% in the First. The First District results sit close to that district's 2022 range of 77.6% to 80.8%, according to the 2022 Statement of Vote.

Within a single district the spread can be wide, even though every justice faces the same voters. In the Second District, Justice Anne Richardson has 76.5% and Justice Steve Goorvitch has 65.7%, a gap of 10.8 points. In the Fourth District, Justice William S. Dato has 74.7% and Justice Truc T. Do has 62.4%.

California judicial retention results for all 64 justices, semi-official count as of November 4, 2026:

David Sapp, Lisa Rodriguez and Frederick Chung are winning their first Court of Appeal retention votes:

Three names on the appellate ballot belong to judges who have been confirmed but have not yet joined the Court of Appeal. The Commission on Judicial Appointments confirmed them in August, each subject to voter confirmation, for seats whose current holders leave when their terms end, according to the courts' announcements of August 19 and August 20:

• David B. Sapp, Third District, for the seat Justice Ronald Robie is leaving: 62.1%
• Lisa Rodriguez, Fourth District, Division One, for the seat Justice Terry O'Rourke is leaving: 69.2%
• Frederick S. Chung, Sixth District, for the seat Justice Adrienne Grover is leaving: 77.8%

If the results hold, all three take their seats on January 4, 2027. Three justices confirmed at the same August hearings are also on the ballot: Lauri Damrell (Third District, 64.9%), Rashida A. Adams (presiding justice of the Second District's Division Three, 74.2%) and Juliet O. Macaulay (Fourth District, 65.1%).

About 1.7 million fewer votes were cast on the Evans question than in California's governor's race:

The retention questions sit near the end of a long ballot, and many voters skip them. In the same report, the governor's race had 8,079,733 votes: 5,186,216 for Becerra and 2,893,517 for Hilton. The Evans question had 6,343,172 votes, which is 1,736,561 fewer, and the Groban question had 6,357,974.

Because blank votes count for neither side, the share that matters is the yes share of the votes cast on each question. The pattern is not new. In 2022, between 2.4 million and 2.8 million of the 11.1 million Californians who cast a ballot left each Supreme Court question blank, by our count from that year's Statement of Vote.

California's judicial retention results become final when the Secretary of State certifies them on December 11:

The remaining steps follow the Secretary of State's calendar:

1. November 10: last day for mail ballots postmarked by Election Day to reach county elections offices
2. December 3: last day for counties to certify their results
3. December 4: counties send their complete returns to the Secretary of State
4. December 11: the Secretary of State certifies the Statement of Vote

Supreme Court terms begin "the Monday after January 1 following their election," under Article VI, Section 16(a), so Evans and Groban begin full 12-year terms on January 4, 2027 if the results hold.

The court's seventh seat stays empty for now. The Supreme Court's roster still lists a vacant seat, left by Justice Martin Jenkins's retirement in October 2025, and no nominee has been named. Governor Newsom can fill it before he leaves office on January 4, and a nominee confirmed by the Commission on Judicial Appointments would first face voters in 2030. The commission's next hearings, on November 16, cover two more First District nominees, Brian Goldman and Adam Hofmann, according to its hearing notice. Neither was on this ballot.