Election 2024

Santa Barbara Votes: 2024 General Election Results

Follow Live Results for Regional, Statewide, and National Races in the 2024 Presidential Election

Voters cast their ballots on Election Day, November 5, 2024. | Credit: Ingrid Bostrom

It’s the 2024 General Election, and in the biannual independent.com tradition, we’ll be using this page to deliver results, reactions, and reports from the various election night parties happening throughout Santa Barbara County.

Our reporters will be out and about to get the scoop while Executive Editor Nick Welsh writes these updates, which typically run late into the evening.

If you’re wondering who’s winning, who’s losing, what they’re saying, and what they’re drinking, this is the page to stay on all night long. Feel free to send feedback and your own reactions to news@independent.com.

Jump to Election Results:

National and State Results
Regional Results
Local Ballot Measures
CA Ballot Measures

Election-Night Coverage

8:15 Tuesday night. November 5. A gloomy pall hovers over the victory parties of local Democratic candidates and causes held at local bars and night clubs in downtown Santa Barbara.

Even if they all won as they expected — Santa Barbara has become so blue it’s almost indigo — no one had the energy to celebrate. To the extent people were drinking, it was that serious kind that causes I-don’t-care trouble. And the night was just getting started.

Barring divine intervention, Donald J. Trump appeared poised to win a second term, robbing himself in the process of the pleasure of accusing the opposition of having stolen the election. Perhaps he’ll demand a recount.

District 1 candidate Wendy Santamaria on Election Night 2024

On the TV, pundits were discussing the contours of the Diploma Divide and how Trump was winning the votes of people who did not graduate college. It was the clash of political civilizations, one talking head said. The chasm of two Americas.

In Santa Barbara, inoculated in its sweet cocoon from all the encroaching inevitability, life was going on. Votes were being counted. Results posted. With 41 percent of the votes cast, there were no great surprises.

Despite gobs of money spent by landlords, property management companies, and business interests opposed to the idea of rent control, the two Santa Barbara City Council candidates who made rent control their number-one talking point appear poised to win.

Challenger Wendy Santamaria, a professional labor union organizer and charismatic firebrand who made rent control her first, second, and third most important issues, was ahead with nearly 50 percent of the votes. Incumbent councilmember Alejandra Gutierrez, a daughter of District 1 — Santa Barbara’s Eastside — where she had been born, raised, and has worked much of her entire adult life, was behind with 40 percent. Bringing up the rear was Cruzito H. Cruz, now on what may be his eighth attempt for the council. Given that he spent not a one cent, Cruz was taking home a respectable 10 percent.

But the night is still young. Anything can happen.

City Councilmember Michael Jordan (center) on Election Night 2024 | Credit: Ingrid Bostrom

At least that’s what the celebrants are saying as they looking nervously up at the TV screens at the S.B. Biergarten, a Funk Zone brewery where the Democratic Women are gathering. Democratic presidential hopeful Kamala Harris is making up ground, if only by the inches. She now has 153 electoral college votes. Donald Trump has 211. The first one to 270 wins.

In District 2, Michael Jordan — who represents the Mesa — has a commanding lead of 80 percent against a candidate named Terra Taylor who might have spent $100 in a come-out-of-nowhere campaign to take on an inveterate middle of the roader both contrarian and is congenial. Jordan started off his political career — now longer than most people can remember — as a business-minded candidate who has gradually morphed into a quasi-liberal-ish politician. In his last campaign, he had to be talked into registering as a Democrat. In exchange, he won the party’s endorsement. This time around, Jordan — still a Democrat — did not get the endorsement of the local Democratic Party because rent control still remains a bridge too far for him. He is happy to explain why. Why Taylor chose to run against him, no one really understands.

On the Westside — District 3 — incumbent Oscar Gutierrez has taken a sizable lead over challenger Tony Becerra, his former dojo sensei. Although Becerra has a brilliant smile, an irresistible warmth, and lots of donations from local landlords, he was too nice to say anything bad about Gutierrez, who made it his mission to be everywhere all the time. Both candidates are children of Mexican immigrants who grew up in households, where Spanish was the first language.

Councilmember Oscar Gutierrez on Election Night 2024 | Credit: Ingrid Bostrom

Gutierrez takes pride in being accessible. He claimed in one forum he was the most responsive city councilmember in the City of Santa Barbara. He claimed he responded to 27,000 constituent calls, texts, or emails. Becerra is conservative where Gutierrez is progressive. Gutierrez supports rent control and doesn’t sweat the details. No matter what happens, he says, rents always go up. His constituents need to be protected. He lives at home with his mother, who is one of Santa Barbara’s many mom-and-pop landlords who oppose rent control. He and his mother agree to disagree.

The big sleeper story among Santa Barbara city races is Measure I, the half-cent sales tax increase, gently reviled by some councilmembers who say it’s regressive. Measure I was ahead by 62.55 percent. It needs 55 percent to win. The night is still young. Anything can happen. But for the moment, its backers — new city administrator Kelly McAdoo principally — spent the same amount as Cruzito Cruz did: absolutely nothing. In exchange, Measure I promises to generate $17 million a year. Not a bad return on investment should the voting trends hold.

By contrast, backers of Measure P — the $198 million building repair and rebuild bond package spent nearly $400,000. There was an almost desperate urgency to the spending. No social media platform was safe, no mailbox un-intruded upon. The bond was ahead with 64 percent, a reflection in part of widespread community support for Santa Barbara’s still beloved community college. And nearly $350,000 of campaign money — donated by the Santa Barbara City College Foundation — that was spent on ads.

The night is still young. Anything can happen.

Maybe.

Maybe Kamala Harris might pull a come-from-behind-snatch-victory-from-the-jaws-of-defeat maneuver. For what it’s worth — and it’s not a lot — Harris is whomping Trump in Santa Barbara County by a two-to-one margin. Translated, that’s 64 percent to 33. That’s not nothing. But not enough to move the national needle in Harris’s favor. Nationally, that needle remains firmly entrenches on the leaning red side. It’s 9:17 p.m. November 5. A guy named Donald J. Trump is ahead with 230 electoral votes. But a woman named Kamala Harris is inching up from behind with 210. The night is young. Anything can still happen.

But will it?

Republican candidate party at Cody’s Café on Election Night 2024 | Credit: Ingrid Bostrom

The 66 Percent Solution?

Anyone trying to detect a consistent pattern to Tuesday election results — at least in Santa Barbara County — may be in store for a bumpy ride. Based on preliminary returns, two-thirds of county voters picked Kamala Harris over Donald Trump. Slightly less than two-thirds supported Democrat Adam Schiff over former Dodger legend Republican Steve Garvey for U.S. Senate. Schiff, of course, is an incumbent. Congressmember Salud Carbajal, State Senator Monique Limón, and State Assemblymember Gregg Hart all won with roughly two-thirds of the vote against Republican opponents more sacrificial lambs than real contenders. Two-thirds.

But when it came to changing the state law to reduce the percentage of votes needed to pass bond measures for affordable housing projects — Proposition 5 — 52 percent of county voters said no way.

Likewise, 50.77 percent said no to Prop. 6, a measure to abolish involuntary servitude for people behind bars.

Prop. 32, a measure that would increase the state’s minimum wage, garnered just 50.82 percent — hardly a resounding endorsement.

Prop. 33 — which would expand the reach of rent control ordinances — was shot down by two-thirds of the voters.

Likewise, a little less than two-thirds of the voters supported a get-tough-on-crime measure — Prop. 36 — that would make certain forms of theft felonies instead of misdemeanors and would increase penalties accordingly.

When it came to new taxes and bonds, Santa Barbara voters said yes far more than they said no. For example, all bed tax increases — to be levied on visitors — on the ballot in Carpinteria, the unincorporated county, Buellton, and Solvang passed easily. Carpinteria won with 75 percent of the vote, Buellton by 56 percent. That’s one percent more than needed.

ELECTION RESULTS

Below are the latest election results for national, state, and regional races and measures that the Independent has been following. For the most up-to-date and complete local election results, including races and measures not included here, visit the County of Santa Barbara’s Election Results page here. Results are updated throughout the night as ballots are received from the polling places.

National and State Results
Regional Results
Local Ballot Measures
CA Ballot Measures
Election-Night Coverage

Reporting Time: Friday, November 8, 1:03 p.m.

National and State Results

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump | Credit: Wikimedia Commons

President – National Results

(270 electoral votes to win)
Donald J. Trump: 295 electoral votes; 73,587,711 votes (50.7%)
Kamala D. Harris: 226 electoral votes; 69,268,400 votes (47.7%)

Source: apnews.com