MERCED, California — The first election fought on California's Proposition 50 congressional map has produced its biggest tremor in the San Joaquin Valley. In the 22nd District, which runs from Bakersfield to Hanford, Democratic challenger Randy Villegas leads six-term Republican U.S. Rep. David Valadao by 45,864 votes to 24,471 in the Associated Press count — a margin of 21,393 votes, or roughly 65 percent to 35 percent — while in the neighbouring 13th District, Democratic Rep. Adam Gray is holding about 61 percent of the vote in the Merced seat he captured in 2024 by fewer than 200 votes. The Associated Press has called neither race: 282 of the 22nd District's 575 precincts (49.04 percent) and 511 of the 13th District's 974 precincts (52.46 percent) had reported in the AP tally, and California counts mail ballots for days after election night.

Source: Associated Press election results

The two Valley races were among the most closely watched in the country on November 3, because both sit inside the redrawn map that California voters approved in November 2025 — and because both districts are home to large Punjabi farming and trucking communities, from Merced, Modesto and Stockton in the north Valley to Fresno and Bakersfield in the south. Democrats went into the night already projected to win the U.S. House nationally; the Valley results will help decide how large that majority is, and who speaks in Washington for the Valley's farms, water, health care and immigration concerns.

Valadao's long night in the 22nd

Valadao, a Hanford dairy farmer who has held the seat in almost every election since 2012, is one of the most durable Republicans in Democratic California, repeatedly winning a heavily Latino, heavily agricultural district that votes Democratic for president. This year the ground moved under him twice. Proposition 50 redrew the 22nd District — which covers parts of Fresno, Kern, Kings, Madera and Tulare counties, including Bakersfield, Hanford, Porterville, Delano and Wasco — from a Democratic lean of 13 points to 16 points, according to the California voter-guide analysis of the new lines. And his vote in favour of H.R. 1, the Republican budget law known as the 'One Big Beautiful Bill Act' passed in July 2025, became the centre of the campaign in a district where health coverage is not an abstraction: the old 22nd District had the highest Medicaid enrollment rate of any Republican-held seat in the nation, 64 percent, according to KFF, and roughly half a million people in the district are enrolled in Medi-Cal, California's Medicaid program.

Source: KFF Health News

Villegas, 31, is a first-time congressional candidate who grew up in Bakersfield, the son of Mexican immigrants, working weekends at a swap meet and later in his family's auto repair shop, which he now helps run. The first in his family to attend college, he earned a doctorate and teaches political science at College of the Sequoias in Visalia, and serves as a trustee of the Visalia Unified School District — its only Latino and only Democratic member. Backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, he campaigned on the cost of living, health care — he supports Medicare for All and grew up on Medi-Cal himself — jobs, housing and fixing the immigration system. In the June primary, Valadao led with 41 percent, Villegas took 32 percent, and a second Democrat, Punjabi-American physician and state assemblymember Jasmeet Bains, took 27 percent — a measure of how contested, and how closely followed by the Valley's Punjabi community, this seat has become. The Cook Political Report rated the race a toss-up.

Gray turns a 200-vote seat into a commanding lead

Two years ago, Adam Gray's race was the closest in America: he unseated Republican Rep. John Duarte by fewer than 200 votes to take the 13th District, which covers all of Merced County and parts of Stanislaus, Madera, Fresno and San Joaquin counties. This time there was no midnight drama at his watch party at Blaker Brewing in Atwater. Gray, a Democrat running for re-election for the first time, led Republican Kevin Lincoln II — a former mayor of Stockton, a Marine veteran endorsed early by President Donald Trump — by about 61 percent to 39 percent across the overnight counts published from the California Secretary of State's returns, with 53,536 votes recorded for Gray in the AP tally. In the June primary, Gray had taken more than 40 percent to Lincoln's 28 percent.

Source: The Merced Focus

The contrast between the two incumbents' records on the same law ran through both races. Gray voted against H.R. 1 and campaigned on lowering costs for Californians and supporting Central California's agricultural industry. Valadao voted for H.R. 1 and campaigned on supporting agriculture, veterans and California's water supply, increasing jobs and lowering health-care costs, and protecting Social Security and Medicare, according to his campaign. In the 22nd, Villegas argued the Medicaid work requirements and twice-yearly eligibility checks in the new law — set to begin after the midterms — would strip coverage from Valley families; Valadao's campaign pointed to his long record of delivering federal funding to the district.

The Prop 50 pattern across California

The Valley was not an outlier. In the 6th District north of Sacramento — the seat Republican Kevin Kiley won as the old 3rd District before Prop 50 redrew it — Democrat Richard Pan, a former state senator, led Kiley 72,153 votes to 46,836 (60.6 percent to 39.4 percent) with 67.3 percent of precincts reporting, in returns compiled by The Center Square from the Secretary of State. In the northern 1st District, Democrat Mike McGuire led Republican James Gallagher 76,175 to 55,164 (58 percent to 42 percent); Gallagher had won the seat in a June special election after the death in January of longtime Rep. Doug LaMalfa. In San Diego's 48th District, where Republican Rep. Darrell Issa is retiring, Democrat Marni von Wilpert, a San Diego city council member, led Republican Jim Desmond, a county supervisor, 84,279 to 57,647 (59.4 percent to 40.6 percent) with 71.8 percent of precincts reporting, and had already thanked supporters online. In the 41st, Democratic Rep. Linda Sánchez led fellow Democrat Mitch Clemmons 86,594 to 43,102.

Source: The Center Square

The one heavyweight Republican-versus-Republican fight also came from the new map: Prop 50 threw GOP Reps. Ken Calvert and Young Kim into the same Southern California 40th District, where Calvert led Kim 58,385 votes to 49,726 (54 percent to 46 percent) with 42.8 percent of precincts reporting at 9:30 p.m. Tuesday. California's delegation entered the election with 43 Democrats and eight Republicans among its 52 House seats, one seat vacant since LaMalfa's death. Nationally, AP's balance-of-power tally overnight showed Democrats with 222 seats called and leading in 42 more, against 138 called and 33 leads for Republicans — a Democratic House, with its final size still being written by counts like California's.

What happens next

Neither Valley race is finished. California counts vote-by-mail ballots that arrive after election night, and its counts are famously slow: the state has until December 11 to certify its results, and in 2024 the 13th District was the last House race in the nation to be called. Villegas's 21,393-vote lead in the 22nd is large — Valadao would need to win the remaining vote by an overwhelming margin to close it — but with only about half the expected vote counted, the AP has not called the race, and Valadao had not conceded in the counts published overnight. Gray's lead in the 13th is proportionally similar. The winners will be sworn in with the new Congress on January 3, 2027, when the Democratic House majority takes office — and when the Valley learns whether its voice in that majority runs through Merced and Bakersfield, or whether the count still has a surprise left in it.