page_title: 2018 United States Senate election in California
hierarchical_section_title: 2018 United States Senate election in California
context_page_description: The 2018 United States Senate election in California took place on November 6, 2018, to elect a member of the United States Senate to represent California, concurrently with other elections to the United States Senate, elections to the United States House of Representatives, and various state and local elections.
  Under California's non-partisan blanket primary law, all candidates appear on the same ballot, regardless of party. In the primary, voters may vote for any candidate, regardless of their party affiliation. In the California system, the top two finishers—regardless of party—advance to the general election in November, even if a candidate receives a majority of the votes cast in the primary election. Washington and Louisiana have similar "jungle primary" style processes for U.S. Senate elections, as does Mississippi for U.S. Senate special elections.
  The candidate filing deadline was March 8, 2018 and the primary election was held on June 5, 2018.
  Four-term Democratic incumbent Dianne Feinstein won reelection in 2012 with 63% of the vote, taking the record for the most popular votes in any U.S. Senate election in history with 7.86 million votes.
context_section_description: The 2018 United States Senate election in California took place on November 6, 2018, to elect a member of the United States Senate to represent California, concurrently with other elections to the United States Senate, elections to the United States House of Representatives, and various state and local elections.
  Under California's non-partisan blanket primary law, all candidates appear on the same ballot, regardless of party. In the primary, voters may vote for any candidate, regardless of their party affiliation. In the California system, the top two finishers—regardless of party—advance to the general election in November, even if a candidate receives a majority of the votes cast in the primary election. Washington and Louisiana have similar "jungle primary" style processes for U.S. Senate elections, as does Mississippi for U.S. Senate special elections.
  The candidate filing deadline was March 8, 2018 and the primary election was held on June 5, 2018.
  Four-term Democratic incumbent Dianne Feinstein won reelection in 2012 with 63% of the vote, taking the record for the most popular votes in any U.S. Senate election in history with 7.86 million votes. Feinstein is the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. She turned 85 years old in 2018, leading some to speculate that she would retire in January 2019, as her long-time colleague Barbara Boxer did in January 2017. However, Feinstein stood for reelection for her fifth consecutive term, winning 44.2% of the vote in the top-two primary; she faced Democratic challenger Kevin De León in the general election, who won 12.1% of the primary vote. For the second time since direct elections to the Senate began after the passage of the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913, no Republican appeared on the general election ballot for U.S. Senate in California. The highest Republican finisher in the primary won only 8.3 percent of the vote, and the 10 Republicans only won 31.2 percent of the vote between them.
  In the general election, Feinstein defeated De León by an eight-point margin, 54% to 46%.
caption: County results
  Feinstein:      50–60%      60–70%
  
  de León:      50–60%      60–70%      70–80%