California Voters Reject Proposition 40 Billionaire Tax as Silicon Valley and the Suburbs Vote No

There are ballot measures that ask voters to settle a small question and ballot measures that ask them to settle a large one, and Proposition 40, the one-time tax on California’s billionaires, was firmly in the second category, a proposal that would have taken five percent of the wealth of about two hundred people and turned it into tens of billions of dollars for the state’s health care system. On Monday evening, November 9, 2026, nearly a week after Election Day, the Associated Press called the race, and the answer was no: California voters rejected the measure by about 52.8 percent to 47.2 percent, a margin of roughly 621,000 votes with about 83 percent of the expected vote counted, according to the figures reported at the time of the call. The defeat ended the most expensive ballot campaign in California history, a fight in which opponents spent more than ten times what supporters raised, and it left a set of questions that will shape the state’s politics for years: whether the wealthy will stay, whether the counter-measures on the same ballot will now write a ban on wealth taxes into the constitution, and whether the idea will simply move to Washington, where two of its most prominent backers are already pressing a federal version. The focus of this report is the California voters reject Proposition 40 billionaire tax November 2026 story and what the result means for the state, for the people who would have paid the tax, and for the future of the wealth-tax idea in America.

1. The Result California Delivered

The result of Proposition 40 arrived slowly, as California results always do, and then all at once, in the form of a call from the Associated Press on the evening of Monday, November 9, 2026, six days after voters had cast their ballots on November 3. The delay was not a sign of closeness so much as a feature of the state’s counting, where mail ballots postmarked by Election Day continue to arrive for a week afterwards and the tally keeps moving long after the polls have closed, but by Monday evening the picture had become clear enough for the AP to declare that the no side had won, and the news travelled quickly through the state and beyond it. The measure had been one of the most closely watched questions on the California ballot, not only because of what it proposed but because of the sheer scale of the campaign around it, and the call brought an end to months of argument about whether the richest state in the richest country in the world should ask its richest residents to pay a one-time levy on their fortunes. The result, as reported at the time of the call, was a rejection by a margin that was decisive without being a landslide, a gap wide enough to leave no doubt about the outcome but narrow enough to show that nearly half the electorate had been willing to vote for the tax.

1.1 The AP Call on Monday Night

The Associated Press called the race on Monday evening, November 9, 2026, nearly a week after Election Day, and the timing of the call told its own story about how California counts its votes and how close the race had appeared to be in the days before. The AP’s decision desk does not call a race until the remaining uncounted ballots cannot plausibly change the outcome, and in California that threshold takes days to reach, because the state counts mail ballots that arrive after Election Day and gives counties weeks to finish their work, which is why the result of a statewide measure can remain formally uncalled long after the direction of travel is obvious. In this case the call came after the no side had built a lead of about 5.8 percentage points, with roughly 5.91 million votes against the measure and 5.29 million in favour, according to figures from the Secretary of State cited by the San Francisco Standard on Monday night, and with about 83 percent of the expected vote counted on the AP’s estimate. The call was quickly echoed by other outlets, and by the following morning the rejection of Proposition 40 was the settled fact of the election, reported by the Guardian, by France 24 and by Le Monde, among others, even though the formal certification of the result by the Secretary of State is not due until December 11. The gap between the call and the certification is a reminder that California’s elections are not finished when the networks call them, and that the numbers reported on the night of the call are close to final but not final, with the last ballots still to be counted and the final tally still to be certified.

1.2 A Margin of About 621,000 Votes

The margin of the defeat, about 621,000 votes out of more than 11 million cast, was large enough to be decisive and small enough to be instructive, because it showed a state that was genuinely divided on the question rather than settled against it. With about 83 percent of the expected vote counted at the time of the AP call, the measure was failing by 52.8 percent to 47.2 percent, according to the figures published by the New York Times, and the gap between the two sides, roughly six votes in a hundred, was the kind of margin that leaves both camps with something to claim: the opponents could say the voters had spoken clearly, and the supporters could say that nearly half the state had backed a tax on billionaires, a result that would have been unthinkable a generation ago. The count continued to move after the call, as it always does in California, and later tallies showed the no side at about 52.9 percent and the yes side at 47.1 percent, with roughly 5,789,026 votes against and 5,159,356 in favour in one count published on the evening of November 10, a reminder that the precise percentages would keep shifting until the certification. What did not shift was the outcome, and the margin, whichever count is used, tells the same story: a clear rejection, but not a rout, and a result that leaves the idea of taxing billionaires alive in California politics even as the measure itself is dead.

2. What Proposition 40 Would Have Done

Proposition 40 was, on its face, a simple proposal, and its simplicity was part of both its appeal and its vulnerability, because a measure that can be explained in a single sentence can also be attacked in a single sentence. The proposal was a one-time tax of five percent on the net worth of individuals who were California residents on January 1, 2026, and whose net worth exceeded one billion dollars as of December 31, 2026, a definition that captured about two hundred people, according to the reporting on the measure, and that would have applied to trusts as well as to individuals. The tax would have been a single levy, not an annual charge, and it would have excluded real property from the calculation of a person’s net worth, which meant that the value of a billionaire’s houses and land would not have counted towards the threshold or the bill. The revenue, most of which was directed to health care, was the centrepiece of the campaign in favour, and the union that sponsored the measure, the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, argued that the money could offset federal funding cuts to the state’s health programmes and protect services that millions of Californians rely on. The proposal was, by design, the first of its kind in the United States, a statewide wealth tax aimed at a tiny group of people, and its supporters presented it as a test of whether a state could tax extreme wealth at all, while its opponents presented it as a test of whether a state could drive extreme wealth away.

2.1 A One-Time Tax on About 200 People

The most striking feature of Proposition 40 was how few people it would have touched, and how much money it would have raised from them, a combination that made the measure both easy to defend and easy to attack. The tax would have applied to about two hundred individuals, according to the reporting on the campaign, a group that includes the founders of the state’s great technology companies and a handful of other enormously wealthy residents, and the California Budget and Policy Center estimated that those two hundred people hold a combined wealth of about two trillion dollars, a figure that gives a sense of the scale of the fortunes involved. A five percent levy on that wealth would have produced a very large sum, and the National Taxpayers Union Foundation estimated that the state could have collected about forty billion dollars from the tax, although the same organisation warned that California could lose about twenty-five billion dollars in other taxes if wealthy people left the state in response, a warning that became one of the central arguments of the campaign against the measure. The exclusion of real property from the calculation was a deliberate choice, designed to keep the tax focused on financial wealth rather than on houses and land, and it meant that the bill for any individual would have depended on the value of their shares, their companies and their other financial assets, rather than on the value of the homes they own. The narrowness of the group affected by the tax was, for its supporters, a virtue, because it meant that almost no voter would ever pay it, and for its opponents, a vice, because it meant that the measure singled out a small and identifiable group for a levy that no one else would face.

2.2 The Money Was Meant for Health Care

The money raised by Proposition 40 was, in the campaign’s own telling, the point of the exercise, and the destination of that money, health care, was chosen deliberately, because it is the area of public spending where the need is most visible and where federal cuts have bitten hardest. The measure directed most of its revenue to health care, and the union that sponsored it, SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West, argued that the funds could offset the federal funding cuts that have strained the state’s hospitals, clinics and public health programmes, and that the tax was, in effect, a way of protecting the services that ordinary Californians use every day by asking the state’s richest residents to pay for them. The argument was a powerful one in a state where health care costs are a constant source of anxiety, and it gave the yes campaign a simple and sympathetic message: a one-time charge on two hundred billionaires to keep the clinics open. The opponents answered with a different simple message, that the tax would not raise as much as promised and would cost the state more than it gained, pointing to the National Taxpayers Union Foundation’s estimate that the departure of wealthy residents could cost California about twenty-five billion dollars in other taxes, and arguing that the measure would damage the state’s economy by driving away the very people who fund its startups, its charities and its tax base. The argument over the money, in the end, was an argument over two different visions of the state, one in which extreme wealth is a resource to be tapped for the public good, and one in which extreme wealth is a resource to be kept in place by keeping the tax burden low, and the voters, by a margin of about six points, chose the second.

3. The Money Behind the Campaign

If Proposition 40 was a test of whether California would tax its billionaires, the campaign around it was a test of whether money could buy the answer, and the figures involved were so large that they became a story in their own right. The opposition to the measure spent about 378.4 million dollars against it, according to the tally compiled by CalMatters as of November 9, while the campaign in favour raised about 33.5 million dollars, a gap of more than ten to one that made the contest one of the most lopsided in the history of California ballot measures. Other tallies put the spending even higher, with the Guardian reporting a campaign of nearly 425 million dollars against the measure, and the difference between the two figures is a reminder that campaign finance numbers depend on what is counted and when, with different organisations including different categories of spending and different reporting dates. Whatever the precise total, the contest was, by common agreement, the most expensive ballot campaign in California history, and the scale of the spending shaped the race in ways that are still being argued over, with supporters of the tax saying that the money drowned out their message and opponents saying that the money merely gave voters the information they needed to make up their own minds.

3.1 The Most Expensive Ballot Fight in State History

The campaign against Proposition 40 was, by the measure of money spent, the largest ballot fight California has ever seen, and the scale of it reflected the stakes, because a one-time tax of five percent on two trillion dollars of wealth is a very large amount of money to be fighting over. The opposition spent about 378.4 million dollars, according to CalMatters, a figure that includes the spending of the committees formed to defeat the measure and the contributions of the wealthy individuals who funded them, and the total was large enough to dwarf the spending on almost any previous ballot question in the state’s history. The Guardian, using a broader count, reported nearly 425 million dollars spent against the measure, and the gap between the two tallies is a matter of scope rather than of substance, with both figures pointing to the same conclusion: that the people who stood to pay the tax were willing to spend a very large sum to make sure they never had to. The spending bought television advertisements, digital campaigns, mailers and a ground operation across the state, and it meant that voters in California were exposed to the argument against the measure far more often than they were exposed to the argument in favour of it. The supporters of the measure, by contrast, raised about 33.5 million dollars, a sum that would have been large in any other campaign but that looked small beside the opposition’s war chest, and the imbalance became one of the central facts of the race, cited by both sides as evidence for their case.

3.2 Brin’s $102 Million and a Ten-to-One Gap

The single largest contributor to the campaign against Proposition 40 was Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google, whose giving became a symbol of the race in much the same way that the measure itself became a symbol of the wealth-tax debate. Brin gave about 102 million dollars to the opposition, according to the CalMatters tally, and the Guardian, using filings that covered a broader period, reported at least 132 million dollars from Brin, a difference that reflects the difficulty of pinning down a precise figure in a campaign where money moved through several committees and where the reporting dates kept shifting. Whatever the exact amount, Brin’s contribution was the largest single donation in the history of California ballot measures, and it was large enough, on its own, to outspend the entire yes campaign three times over. The gap between the two sides, more than ten to one in total spending, was the defining feature of the campaign, and it shaped the argument in ways that went beyond the advertisements themselves, because it allowed the opponents of the measure to present themselves as a broad coalition of ordinary Californians while the supporters struggled to get their message heard. The yes campaign’s 33.5 million dollars came largely from the union that sponsored the measure and from its allies, and the contrast between a union-funded campaign and a billionaire-funded campaign became, in the end, a story about the very inequality the measure was designed to address, with the people who would have paid the tax spending more to defeat it than the people who would have benefited from it could spend to pass it.

4. Silicon Valley Decided It

The geography of the vote on Proposition 40 was as revealing as the statewide result, because it showed a measure that was defeated not by the state’s conservative regions alone but by the very places where the billionaires live and work. Silicon Valley, the home of the technology industry and of most of the people who would have paid the tax, voted against the measure by clear margins, and the counties at the heart of the industry delivered some of the strongest no votes in the state. In Santa Clara County, the home of San Jose and of much of the valley’s technology industry, Proposition 40 was failing by 53.4 percent to 46.6 percent, or 273,972 votes to 238,624, in the county returns compiled after Monday’s update, and in San Mateo County, just to the north, it was failing by 54.1 percent to 45.9 percent, according to the same compilation. Those two counties are the places where the measure’s effects would have been felt most directly, and their voters, many of whom work in the technology industry or depend on it for their livelihoods, rejected the tax by margins that were wider than the statewide result. The pattern was not uniform across the Bay Area, and San Francisco, the city at the northern end of the peninsula, went the other way, backing the measure by about 56 percent to 44 percent, according to the San Francisco Standard, but the valley itself, the engine of the state’s wealth, said no, and its vote was decisive.

4.1 Santa Clara and San Mateo Vote No

Santa Clara County and San Mateo County are, between them, the centre of the world’s technology industry, and their votes on Proposition 40 were a verdict on the measure from the people who know the industry best. In Santa Clara County, where the measure was failing by 53.4 percent to 46.6 percent, the no vote totalled 273,972 against 238,624 in favour, a margin of more than 35,000 votes in a county that is home to the headquarters of some of the largest companies in the world and to thousands of the engineers, managers and investors who work for them. In San Mateo County, where the measure was failing by 54.1 percent to 45.9 percent, the result was similar, a clear rejection in a county that sits between San Francisco and Silicon Valley and that has become, in recent years, one of the most expensive places to live in the United States. The voters in these counties had reasons to vote no that went beyond the interests of the billionaires themselves, because many of them work in the industry, own shares in the companies that would have been affected, or depend on the technology sector for their jobs, and the campaign against the measure argued, with some success, that a tax on the founders of the industry would damage the ecosystem that employs them. The result in the two counties was, in that sense, a vote by the technology industry’s workforce as well as by its owners, and it showed that the argument that the tax would drive wealth and jobs out of the state had found a receptive audience in the very places where the wealth is created.

4.2 San Francisco and Los Angeles Go the Other Way

The vote was not uniform across the state’s great cities, and the contrast between San Francisco and Silicon Valley, two places separated by less than an hour’s drive, was one of the most striking features of the result. San Francisco backed Proposition 40 by about 56 percent to 44 percent, according to the San Francisco Standard, a clear yes vote in a city that is, in many ways, the most progressive in the state, and the result there showed that the measure’s argument, that the rich should pay for health care, still had real force in the places where inequality is most visible. Los Angeles, the state’s largest city, also showed major pockets of support for the measure, according to the Los Angeles Times, and the pattern of support in the two great cities, set against the rejection in the valley, suggested a divide within California’s progressive politics, between the cities where the costs of inequality are felt most acutely and the suburbs and the technology belt where the wealth is made. The contrast was not a simple one, because San Francisco is itself home to many wealthy people and to a large technology industry, but the city’s vote showed that the measure’s supporters had found an audience in the places where the housing crisis, the cost of living and the strain on public services are most pressing, and where the argument for taxing billionaires to pay for health care resonated most strongly. The result, taken as a whole, was a map of a state divided not by party, since California is overwhelmingly Democratic, but by geography and by the relationship of each place to the wealth the measure would have taxed.

5. The Governor and the Politics Around the Vote

Proposition 40 was, from the start, a measure that divided California’s Democrats, and the most important division was the one that separated the measure’s supporters from the state’s most powerful Democrat, Governor Gavin Newsom, who opposed it. Newsom’s opposition was a significant fact in the campaign, because it meant that the measure’s backers could not present themselves as the voice of the state’s Democratic establishment, and it gave the opponents a powerful argument, that even the Democratic governor thought the tax was a bad idea. The governor’s position was not, in itself, decisive, since California voters have often approved measures that their governor opposed, but it shaped the politics of the race in ways that mattered, because it allowed the opposition to argue that the measure was too extreme even for a governor who has, on other issues, been willing to take bold and controversial positions. The measure’s supporters, for their part, argued that the governor’s opposition reflected the influence of the technology industry and its donors on the state’s politics, and that the vote was, in effect, a test of whether the Democratic Party in California serves its wealthy donors or its working-class base. The result, a rejection by about six points, suggests that the governor’s position, combined with the scale of the spending against the measure, was enough to carry the day, but it also suggests that the argument is far from over, because nearly half the electorate voted for the tax despite the governor’s opposition and despite being outspent by more than ten to one.

5.1 Newsom’s Opposition

Governor Gavin Newsom opposed Proposition 40, and his opposition was one of the most consequential facts of the campaign, because it broke the usual pattern in which a Democratic governor supports a measure backed by a major union. Newsom’s reasons for opposing the tax were, as reported, practical rather than ideological, centred on the argument that the measure would drive wealthy residents and their businesses out of the state and would cost California more in lost tax revenue than it gained from the levy, an argument that echoed the National Taxpayers Union Foundation’s estimate that the state could lose about twenty-five billion dollars in other taxes if billionaires left. The governor’s opposition gave the campaign against the measure a credibility it might otherwise have lacked, because it allowed the opponents to say that their position was not merely the position of the rich but the position of the state’s elected leadership, and it made it harder for the supporters to present the measure as a mainstream Democratic proposal. The opposition was also, in political terms, a risk for Newsom, because it put him on the opposite side from the union that sponsored the measure and from a large part of his own party’s base, and the fact that he took that risk suggests that he regarded the measure as a genuine threat to the state’s economy rather than as a symbolic gesture. The result vindicated his judgement in the short term, but the closeness of the vote, and the fact that the measure won in San Francisco and in parts of Los Angeles, suggests that the governor’s position may not be the last word on the question, and that the debate over taxing billionaires in California is likely to return in some form.

5.2 The Generational Split in the Vote

The vote on Proposition 40 was divided not only by geography but by age, and the generational pattern was one of the clearest findings of the polling that followed the election. According to the AP Voter Poll, cited by France 24, a majority of voters under the age of thirty voted yes, in favour of the tax, while roughly seven in ten voters aged sixty-five and older voted no, a gap of more than forty points between the youngest and the oldest voters in the state. The pattern is a familiar one in American politics, where younger voters tend to be more supportive of redistributive policies and older voters tend to be more sceptical of them, but the scale of the gap on this measure was striking, and it suggests that the idea of taxing billionaires has a future in California even though the measure itself was defeated. The younger voters who backed the measure are the ones who will be voting for decades to come, and the older voters who opposed it are the ones whose influence will gradually decline, which means that the demographic trend, if it holds, points towards a state that is more, not less, willing to tax extreme wealth in the future. The polling in the lead-up to the vote had already hinted at this pattern, with an October survey by the University of California, Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies finding that fifty percent of likely voters opposed the measure, up from forty-eight percent in August, and forty-two percent in favour, while a separate October poll by the Public Policy Institute of California found fifty-two percent opposed and forty-six percent in favour. Those polls showed a race that was close enough to be winnable for either side, and the fact that support for the measure had declined in the weeks before the vote, rather than grown, suggests that the opposition’s spending and the governor’s position had their intended effect, but the generational split suggests that the decline may have been a matter of timing rather than of a settled rejection.

6. What Happens to Propositions 41 and 42

Proposition 40 was not the only measure on the ballot that dealt with wealth taxes, and the fate of the two companion measures, Propositions 41 and 42, is now one of the most important consequences of the vote. Both measures were designed, in different ways, to block or cancel Proposition 40, and both were placed on the ballot by the opponents of the tax, who wanted to make sure that even if the tax passed, it would not take effect. Proposition 41 and Proposition 42 were, in effect, insurance policies, and the rules governing them were simple: if either measure received more yes votes than Proposition 40, the tax would be nullified, a provision that meant the opponents of the tax had two chances to defeat it, one by voting no on Proposition 40 itself and one by voting yes on the counter-measures. The design of the ballot, with three measures on the same question, was confusing for many voters, and the fact that the counter-measures were on the ballot at all was, for the supporters of the tax, evidence that the opposition was willing to use every available means to stop it. The result of the vote on Proposition 40 made the counter-measures, in one sense, unnecessary, since the tax was defeated on its own merits, but their fate still matters, because one of them, Proposition 42, would write a ban on wealth taxes into the state’s constitution, and that ban would shape California’s politics for years to come.

6.1 The Counter-Measures Designed to Cancel It

Propositions 41 and 42 were placed on the ballot by the opponents of Proposition 40, and their purpose was straightforward: to make sure that the tax could not take effect even if the voters approved it. Proposition 42, a constitutional amendment, would prohibit new state taxes on personal property and certain retroactive taxes, a definition that was broad enough to cover the kind of levy that Proposition 40 proposed, and Proposition 41 was a companion measure with a similar aim, designed to restrict the state’s ability to impose wealth taxes. The two measures were, in the language of the campaign, designed to cancel out the wealth tax, and the rules were explicit: if either measure received more yes votes than Proposition 40, the tax would be nullified, a provision that gave the opponents a second line of defence. The existence of the counter-measures was, for the supporters of the tax, a sign of the lengths to which its opponents were prepared to go, and for the opponents, a prudent precaution, a way of ensuring that a measure they regarded as dangerous could not slip through on a low turnout or a confusing ballot. The fact that the counter-measures were on the same ballot as the tax itself created a complicated set of choices for voters, who were asked to vote on three measures that were, in effect, three different answers to the same question, and the confusion may have contributed to the defeat of Proposition 40, since voters who were uncertain about the tax may have been more inclined to vote no on it and yes on the measures that would block it.

6.2 Proposition 42 Leads but Has Not Been Called

Proposition 42, the constitutional ban on new state taxes on personal property, was leading at the time of the reporting on the vote, but it had not been called, and its final outcome remains one of the open questions of the election. The measure was ahead by about 51.6 percent to 48.3 percent at about the same point in the count at which Proposition 40 was called, according to the reporting on the race, and in Santa Clara County it had 254,042 yes votes and 253,963 no votes in the count reported on Monday morning, a margin of fewer than eighty votes in one of the state’s largest counties. The closeness of the Proposition 42 result, set against the clearer defeat of Proposition 40, suggests that voters were more willing to ban future wealth taxes than they were to approve a specific one, or that the counter-measure attracted support from voters who were uncertain about the tax but certain that they did not want the state to have the power to impose it again. The final result of Proposition 42 will not be known until the count is complete and the Secretary of State certifies the result on December 11, and the outcome matters a great deal, because if it passes, it will write a prohibition on wealth taxes into the California constitution, making it far harder for any future measure of the kind to be enacted. The supporters of Proposition 40 will, if Proposition 42 passes, face not only the defeat of their measure but the closing of the door through which they tried to pass it, and the opponents will have achieved not only a victory in this election but a victory that constrains the state’s politics for years to come.

7. The Federal Echo: Khanna, Sanders and a National Version

The defeat of Proposition 40 in California did not end the debate over taxing billionaires, and within days of the result, two of the idea’s most prominent supporters in Washington were already talking about taking it to the national level. Ro Khanna, the California congressman whose district includes much of Silicon Valley, and Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont, have been pressing a federal version of the wealth tax, and the reporting on the California result noted that both men were continuing to push the idea even as the state’s voters rejected it. The federal version would, in broad terms, do nationally what Proposition 40 would have done in California, imposing a levy on the wealth of the country’s richest residents, and its supporters argue that a national tax would avoid the problem that doomed the California measure, namely that billionaires can simply leave the state to escape it. The argument is a powerful one, because the threat of departure, which was the central argument against Proposition 40, is far weaker at the national level, where leaving the country is a much larger step than leaving a state, and where the tax would apply wherever in the United States a billionaire chose to live. The federal proposal faces its own obstacles, not least the difficulty of passing any tax increase through a divided Congress, but the fact that it is being pressed by two of the most prominent voices on the American left suggests that the idea is not going away, and that the California result, rather than ending the debate, has simply moved it to a larger stage.

7.1 A Federal Wealth Tax Moves to the Front

The federal version of the wealth tax, pressed by Ro Khanna and Bernie Sanders, is the most direct consequence of the California result, because it represents the idea’s next incarnation after its defeat at the state level. Khanna, whose district in Silicon Valley voted against Proposition 40, has been one of the most vocal supporters of a federal wealth tax, and Sanders, who has campaigned on the issue for years, has made it a centrepiece of his argument that the American tax system favours the very rich at the expense of everyone else. The two men argue that a federal tax would solve the problem that defeated the California measure, because a billionaire who leaves California for Florida or Texas would still be subject to a federal levy, whereas a billionaire who leaves the United States altogether would face a far more difficult and costly decision. The proposal, as described in the reporting on the California vote, is still in its early stages, and the details, including the rate, the threshold and the treatment of different kinds of wealth, have not been settled, but the fact that it is being discussed at all, in the immediate aftermath of a defeat in California, suggests that its supporters regard the state result as a setback rather than a verdict. The federal debate will, in the coming months, become the main arena for the argument over taxing billionaires, and the California result will be cited by both sides, by the opponents as proof that voters do not want the tax, and by the supporters as proof that the tax must be imposed nationally, where it cannot be escaped by moving across a state line.

7.2 The Exodus Question That Will Not Go Away

The question of whether billionaires would leave California if the tax had passed was the central argument of the campaign against Proposition 40, and it is a question that will not go away simply because the measure was defeated, because the underlying issue, the mobility of extreme wealth, is now a permanent feature of American politics. The opponents of the measure argued that the tax would trigger an exodus of wealth from the state, pointing to the National Taxpayers Union Foundation’s estimate that California could lose about twenty-five billion dollars in other taxes if wealthy residents left, and to the reports that Peter Thiel, the co-founder of Palantir and PayPal, and Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the co-founders of Google, had already moved some of their assets to Florida. The supporters of the measure answered that the threat was exaggerated, pointing out that Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, had pledged to remain in California, and arguing that the state’s advantages, its universities, its workforce, its climate and its culture, would keep most billionaires in place even if they had to pay a one-time levy. The truth, as with most questions of this kind, is likely to be somewhere in between, and it is, in any case, unconfirmed, because the measure did not pass and no exodus can now be measured against it. The reports of asset movements to Florida are themselves a matter of reporting rather than of settled fact, and the fact that Florida’s voters approved a measure to reform their property tax system on the same day suggests that the state is actively competing for wealthy residents. The exodus question will return the next time a wealth tax is proposed, in California or anywhere else, and the answer will depend, as it always does, on the details of the proposal and on the choices made by the people it would affect.

8. What to Watch Next

The defeat of Proposition 40 leaves a series of questions that will be answered in the weeks and months to come, and the most important of them is the simplest: what happens now, and whether the idea of taxing billionaires in California is dead, dormant or merely delayed. The formal answer will come on December 11, when the Secretary of State certifies the result, and the certification will settle the final numbers, including the precise margin of the defeat and the final outcome of Proposition 42, the counter-measure that would ban future wealth taxes. The political answer will take longer, and it will depend on the choices made by the measure’s supporters, who must decide whether to try again in California, to support the federal version pressed by Khanna and Sanders, or to accept that the idea has been rejected and to move on to other ways of funding health care. The economic answer will also take time, because the argument over whether the tax would have raised forty billion dollars or cost the state twenty-five billion dollars in lost revenue was never settled, and it will be revived the next time the question is asked. The coming weeks will provide the answers, and the answers will shape not only California’s politics but the national debate over wealth, taxation and inequality, a debate that has now been joined in earnest and that is unlikely to be settled by a single vote.

8.1 Certification on December 11

The next formal step in the story of Proposition 40 is the certification of the result by the California Secretary of State on December 11, 2026, a date that will settle the final numbers and the final outcome of the companion measures. The certification is the point at which the result becomes official, and it will confirm the margin of the defeat, the final vote totals for and against the measure, and whether Proposition 42, the constitutional ban on new state taxes on personal property, has passed or failed. The figures reported at the time of the AP call, about 5.91 million votes against and 5.29 million in favour, with about 83 percent of the expected vote counted, are close to final but not final, and the certification will show whether the margin widened or narrowed as the last ballots were counted. The certification will also settle the outcome in the counties that were closest, including Santa Clara County, where Proposition 42 was separated by fewer than eighty votes in the count reported on Monday morning, and it will provide the definitive record of a campaign that was, by any measure, the most expensive in the state’s history. The date is also a deadline for the supporters of the measure, who will have to decide, once the result is certified, whether to accept it and move on or to begin planning a new campaign, and for the opponents, who will have to decide whether to press their advantage by supporting the federal debate or by consolidating their victory in California.

8.2 The Bottom Line

The bottom line of the Proposition 40 vote is that California’s voters, by a margin of about six points, said no to a one-time tax on their billionaires, and that the no was delivered by a coalition that included the governor, the technology industry and a majority of the state’s older voters, against a campaign that was outspent by more than ten to one and that won the support of the state’s youngest voters and of its two largest cities. The result ends the most expensive ballot campaign in California history, it leaves the counter-measure that would ban future wealth taxes still to be decided, and it moves the debate over taxing billionaires to Washington, where a federal version is already being pressed by two of the idea’s most prominent supporters. The measure’s defeat does not settle the question of whether extreme wealth should be taxed, because nearly half the electorate voted for the tax and because the demographic trend points towards a state that is more, not less, willing to consider it in the future, but it does settle the question for now, and it does so in a way that will shape the state’s politics for years. The coming weeks will provide the answers, and the answers will tell us whether the rejection of Proposition 40 was the end of the wealth-tax idea in California or merely the end of its first attempt.

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