Some Sacramento County voters waiting to return ballots with no clear frontrunner

Ballot boxes are filling up with just two days left until California's primary election, but some voters say they're holding onto their ballots as long as possible with no clear frontrunner. 

"Democrats always send them in early, but not this year," said Sacramento County voter Anita Brandon.

With no clear frontrunner for most of this campaign for California governor, some voters have been holding out and putting their ballots on hold.

"We waited until the end to find out how it's going. And I know a lot of Democrats are doing that. I don't want to throw my vote away, I want a Democrat to win," said Brandon.

Many Democratic voters in California are feeling the same way, not wanting to vote for someone who might not make it into the runoff.

"This is of particular concern for Democrats right now because so many of them have heard for the last several months that the polling looked like two Republicans might make it into the runoff," said Paul Mitchell, vice president of Political Data Incorporated.

Mitchell said the latest numbers show 3.5 million ballots have been returned out of the 23 million mailed out, which is about 15%. It seems low, but it is on par with the 2022 election.

He said this year we're seeing faster returns from Republicans.

"I actually think it's very likely Monday will be the largest number of mail-in ballots counties receive this entire election cycle because a lot of voters holding on to those ballots are returning them right now," said Mitchell.

With Republican Steve Hilton and Democrats Xavier Becerra and Tom Steyer leading the pack right now, he said there will be some back-and-forth as ballots come in and as people hit the polls on Tuesday.

"The field we have isn't of the same stature as California voters are used to. We don't have Arnold Schwarzenegger or Jerry Brown or Gavin Newsom on the ballot this year, so this has probably added to voters' consternation of where are we going to go and who are we going to vote for," said Mitchell.

Mitchell is also urging rural voters more than 50 miles away from a vote center to make sure they mail their ballot early because he says ballots are postmarked once they get to the central sorting facility, which could be after election day.