Alan Cranston won with 49.3% of the vote (3,646,672 votes), ahead of Ed Zschau with 47.9% (3,541,804 votes).
The margin between the first two candidates was 1.4 percentage points (104,868 votes). The party margin (Republican share minus Democratic share) was a Democratic lead of 1.4 points.
Compared with the previous comparable race in the same area, the party margin moved 8.2 points toward Democrats. The winning party changed.
7,398,462 votes were counted in this race, for 5 candidates or options.
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