No Party Preference

Created: June 5, 2012 by the passage of Proposition 28.
Current Party Ranking: Not a political party, but the second largest group of registered voters in California
Highest Office Won: None (Yet)

Not actually a party, the No Party Preference (NPP) designation applies to both voters and candidates who decline to choose a party when registering to vote. The No Party Preference designation was created by the "Top Two Candidates Open Primary Act" [Proposition 14], which passed with 54.1% of the vote in the June 2010 Primary. On voter registration cards, NPP replaced the earlier "Decline to State".

The first two candidates to use this designation (Michael T. Chamness and Mark Lipman) ran in the SD-28 Special Election to fill the vacancy created by the death of Senator Jenny Oropeza. In 2012, six candidates made it to the General Election ballot (including Bill Bloomfield, who received 46% in his run for CD-33). Three NPP candidates made it to the General in 2014 and two in 2016.

The "15 Day Report of Registration" for the 2018 Statewide Direct Primary Election (May 28, 2018) was the first in which No Party Preference voters outnumbered Republicans. Between the June 2018 primary and the March 2020 Primary, No Party Preference voters outnumbered Republican voters for the first time. Republicans regained the #2 spot in registered voters in early 2022.