California General Election
November 3, 2026
Since 1990, Los Angeles County's highest registered voter turnout (78%) was for the 2008 Presidential election (then between presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain). The county's highest turnout for a midterm general election (half way between President election years) in Los Angeles County was in 2018, during President Trump's first term, counting 57% of registered voters.
Photo from XLNT Foods Corp.
1894. XLNT tamale cart on a street in Los Angeles. More than 100 years before trendy food trucks began flourishing in Los Angeles, more than a hundred tamale wagons roamed the city. These horse-drawn wagons (or tamaleros), traced back to the mid-1800s in Los Angeles, are said to have played a part in the popularity of Mexican food here. They became so ubiquitous that the Los Angeles Herald commented, “The experience of our Eastern visitors will be incomplete” without sampling a Los Angeles street tamale. Restaurant owners weren’t happy then with the tamale wagons. Local newspapers tried painting the wagons as attractions for unsavory patrons and “nurseries of crime.” Efforts were made to outlaw the wagons. Enthusiastic patrons, however, defended their presence. L.A. City Councilman Fred Wheeler stated in 1920, “The tamale put Los Angeles on the map. These wagons are almost an institution of our city. Cabrillo and his sailors are said to have found them here when they landed. Drive these wagons from our streets? Never!” By the late 1920s, however, the wagons quickly began to disappear with the advent of the automobile and some vendors moving to brick-and-mortar. XLNT Tamales Co. continues in business today as XLNT Foods Corporation.
See Tamales, L.A.'s Original Street Food by Gustavo Arellano, L.A. Times.
Although President Abraham Lincoln is considered one of the nation’s greatest presidents, he was not popular in Los Angeles County in his time.
