What to watch for to make California’s primary matter more

The results of California’s primary election won’t have the race-rattling national implications predicted a month ago when there was a contested Republican presidential race. But tucked inside Tuesday’s results will be harbingers of truth about the future of several national and state campaigns.

Polls say the Democratic presidential matchup between Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is a statistical dead heat. If Sanders wins California, the nation’s largest, most-diverse state, Clinton’s campaign will limp into the party’s national convention in July. For the next two months she will have to fight a two-front war: Sanders on her left, presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump on her right. If Clinton wins, pressure will grow on Sanders to shepherd his supporters into Clinton’s flock, something he’s shown no inclination of doing so far.

That’s the marquee race to watch, but the close of polls Tuesday will provide some answers to other political questions as well:

Will all those new voters actually vote? A record-breaking 2.3 million new voters have registered. Roughly two-thirds of them are under 35 and 26 percent are Latino, according to Paul Mitchell, vice president of Political Data Inc., which does a running tally of voter registration.

But so far, only about 10 percent of those new voters have cast early ballots. And only 1 in 8 of early voters have been Latino, leading some — like Mitchell — to wonder what to make of this registration surge.

“The question on Tuesday is who turns out and whether that enthusiasm to register is reflected in enthusiasm to vote,” Mitchell said. “Or was registering just a cathartic exercise in reaction to what they’re seeing happening, and that is where it stops.”

The answer to that question matters, because 60 percent of voters younger than 40 back Sanders, according to last week’s Field Poll, while Clinton enjoys a slight edge (46 to 42 percent) among Latino Democrats.

Will there be a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in November? It’s not looking good, according to the polls. The Field Poll released Friday showed two Democrats — state Attorney General Kamala Harris (at 30 percent) and Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Santa Ana (at 14 percent) — far ahead of any of their numerous Republican opponents. The top two finishers, regardless of party, advance to the general election in November.

If Harris and Sanchez are those two, it would be the first time that a pair of Democrats have squared off in a Senate race — and would represent a devastating blow for the California Republican Party.

Any other outcome “would be a surprising development,” said Melinda Jackson, a professor of political science at San Jose State University.

One key to watch for in Tuesday’s exit polls is “where the independents go,” Jackson said. That could provide a clue as to how a November matchup between Harris and Sanchez might turn out, as the state’s next senator would have to attract moderate and conservative voters to win.

Keep an eye on this wild card: Polls show at least 1 in 4 voters remains undecided. If those voters coalesce around one of the Republicans, it could push that candidate into the top two.

Will Trump do better than Mitt Romney in California? Trump boasts he’s going to put California back in play in the general election. That sounds more like Trump braggadocio than a trend line — a Republican hasn’t won California since George H.W. Bush beat Michael Dukakis in 1988. Last week’s Field Poll concludes that Trump would lose California in a head-to-head matchup with either Clinton (by 19 points) or Sanders (by 29 points).

Here’s another way to forecast Trump’s potential to take California in the general election: Does he win a greater share of Tuesday’s vote than Romney did in the 2012 GOP primary? Like Trump’s this year, Romney’s GOP challengers didn’t actively campaign here four years ago, and picked up 80 percent of the vote.

“If Trump is stuck in the 60s (percent), then that’s a pretty sizable protest vote against someone who is the presumptive nominee,” said Carson Bruno, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. “That’s a reason for the Trump camp to be concerned, because it shows he isn’t bringing the party together.”

Plus, Trump surely wouldn’t like being bested by Romney, an archenemy whom he called “a choking dog” during a recent campaign stop in Fresno.

Could what happens on the Atlantic coast affect what happens on the Pacific coast? Polls in New Jersey — where Clinton has a 17-point lead over Sanders in the RealClearPolitics.com average of polls — close at 5 p.m. California time. Should she win the New Jersey primary and gain enough delegates to secure the Democratic Party nomination, the TV networks will immediately call the state and the nomination for her.

Sanders’ supporters worry that an early nomination call could discourage their voters in California, even as the polls are still open.

“The idea here in California would be that people who are working people, who are getting off work, would think that it’s over,” RoseAnn DeMoro, executive director of the pro-Sanders National Nurses United union, said at a Sanders event on health care issues last week in Emeryville.

“The media would be blasting out the narrative that this is over, and it wouldn’t be over,” DeMoro said. “Not only would it discourage Bernie voters, but all of the other progressive candidates who are running down-ballot also would not have the votes of the people after 5 p.m. if they think this election is over.”

If voters vote to restore the bay’s wetlands, will they want to stop gentrification next? Buried under the presidential primary shadow is Measure AA, which will be on the ballot in the nine Bay Area counties. The measure, which would create a $12-per-parcel tax for the next 20 years, is designed to raise $25 million a year to restore marshes and wetlands along San Francisco Bay.

Because it’s a tax measure, it needs a two-thirds majority to pass. If it does pass, it could lead to more regional ballot measures aimed at tackling issues like housing or transportation.

“If this is victorious, then I wouldn’t be surprised to see Sacramento handing more of this off to regional authorities,” Bruno said. “It goes much beyond what happens in the Bay Area. It could be something that Southern California and the Central Valley start trying to do more of.”

Will independent mail-in voters be able to vote for Sanders? A key to Sanders’ success Tuesday will be whether independent voters turn out for him. The campaign is worried that of the state’s 2.2 million no-party-preference voters, many of the ones who vote by mail won’t be able to cast ballots in the Democratic primary because they didn’t request a Democratic ballot by the May 31 deadline.

Early signs show this could be a legitimate concern. As of last week, roughly 200,000 of the 322,000 nonpartisan voters who had cast mail ballots didn’t include a presidential candidate, according to Political Data and Capitol Weekly.

Sanders pollster Ben Tulchin worries that “there are potentially hundreds of thousands of independents who get disenfranchised ” if those voters didn’t know they had to request a Democratic ballot.

And if they can’t vote, Jackson said “it feeds into this sense among Sanders supporters that the system is rigged. And that could affect how they feel down the road about the political system and the Democratic Party. They are already not aligned with the party. This wouldn’t help.”

Just how establishment is Silicon Valley? While there is no such thing as a “tech vote” — at least not yet — keep an eye on the Democratic presidential results, and the exit polls, in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. And in San Francisco, too, as the Valley stretches farther north now.

While the region’s CEOs and top execs are some of the nation’s top Democratic Party (and Clinton) donors, “there is huge income inequality here,” said Jackson, the San Jose State professor. “And even young, highly educated tech workers who may be making a lot of money still generationally resonate with (Sanders’) message.”

Does Clinton get the Valley’s campaign donations, while Sanders gets its vote?

How much of a loss is a win for Ro Khanna? Eight-term Rep. Mike Honda, D-San Jose, is the favorite to win his primary against challenger Ro Khanna, whom he defeated in the 2014 general election by four points — and in the primary that year by 20 points.

But what’s important to watch Tuesday is Honda’s margin of victory, if he in fact wins. If it’s under 10 percentage points, then Khanna — with the help of independent voters and Republicans — could upset Honda in November. If the margin is over 20 points, that becomes much less likely.

Joe Garofoli is the San Francisco Chronicle’s senior political writer. Email: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com Twitter: joegarofoli

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See The Chronicle’s recommendations for local and state races on the June 7 ballot: www.sfchronicle.com/election/2016/