PROGRAM NOTE: This is Part II of a three-part post on the California recall election, currently underway, that will end on September 14, 2021. Part III will be released later this week. You can find Part I here.
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Earlier this summer, two important California pollsters1 released survey results that were a wake up call for many Democratic voters in the Golden State. The most concerning thing I saw in the polling was the potential for a depressed Democratic turnout which could cost Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) his job despite relatively high approval ratings. A late July poll from the University of California, Berkeley (B/C) found that likely voters oppose the recall of Newsom (D) by 50-47, which is within the margin of error. Among registered voters, it was 51-36 opposed.
These findings present a turnout challenge for Newsom. They also present a persuasion challenge. Remember the adage that “Democrats get what they poll?” It’s fairly accurate for presidential polling. Could it apply here too? That’s unclear. Not only is this not a presidential race and not a regularly scheduled election, it is not even a typical election of any kind. In the UC Berkeley poll, Newsom gains one point when considering registered rather than likely voters. Recall supporters lose nine points among registered voters, but that margin goes to the Not Sures, not Newsom. That could mean that turnout will not matter – unless these voters are truly persuadable (to both vote and vote against the recall). That’s what it looked like a month ago. However, a new poll from Change Research suggests the Newsom campaign may have solved turnout problem (see below).
Before last Thursday (August 26th), the polls showed that the recall question was very close, perhaps a toss-up. The FiveThirtyEight polling average had Newsom winning by just over one point. Despite what you may have heard in the media, Newsom is actually doing better than that in almost every poll. Here’s the catch: the one poll that is really bad for him (and it is really bad) is from the best pollster that’s surveyed this election thus far. SurveyUSA is an A-rated pollster. In its early August poll, it has Newsom losing the recall by nine points! The governor only gets 40% support to remain in office with 51% supporting removing him. Yes, there are nine percent undecided but even if all of them went to Newsom he would still lose. If we remove this poll and consider only the other five polls in July and August before the most recent Change Research survey, Newsom would have been up by 2.7 points instead of 1.2. That’s still much closer than it should be, but it’s much less of a toss-up.
The SurveyUSA poll could be an outlier. We have seen A-rated pollsters have outlier polls before. Until last Friday there had only been one poll since SurveyUSA, a YouGov (B-) poll that has Newsom up 52-48. It is still early to know whether SurveyUSA (or the most recent poll by Change Research or both) is an outlier – and we likely won’t know that until the election is over since there probably will not be many more polls. So, we shouldn’t treat it as if it is definitely wrong. One indicator that it could be correct is the way the Newsom campaign is persuading voters right now, but arguing that voters should be scared not to sit this one out. So, we’ll consider this poll as possibly accurate. There is some interesting data in the poll about how voters are feeling:
“When asked why Newsom should be recalled, a majority of those supporting his recall point to COVID-related issues: 34% cite Newsom's handling of COVID restrictions; 13% the closures of businesses; 4% the closures of schools. Another 10% point to Newsom's attendance at a party while the state was in lockdown. 18% say Newsom's spending decisions are the main reason he should be recalled; 12% say the mishandling of unemployment dollars.”
We don’t see homelessness on this list, which is interesting because so many people mention it when asked about why they are angry at Newsom. Often, I hear folks complain about “spending,” which then spins off to complaints about homelessness, the high cost of living, and other social policy concerns. Nevertheless, I think the general problem for Democrats like Newsom that I outlined in Part I using the illustration of homeless encampments helps explain the context for why voters are upset at the governor in general and why they are more likely to be mad about any of the specific things SurveyUSA finds. There is another reason why we do not see homeless encampments or other issues listed in the survey’s findings: the pollster did not give any other options than listed above (save “wildfires”) as possible reasons why voters would support the recall.
Okay, so far things don’t look so great for Newsom. However, on August 26th - just as I was publishing Part I of this series - Change Research (B-) dropped a poll that was as good for Newsom as the SurveyUSA poll was bad. This poll increased Newsom’s advantage in the FiveThirtyEight polling average from +1.2 to +4.3 points. Could this also be an outlier poll? Is the race still essentially even or does this show late movement towards Newsom? We won’t know for sure until we see some other polls – and, of course, the final result sometime on or after September 14th. This poll does, however, offer some insight into who has already voted now that early voting is underway. And on that point, things look good for Newsom. Nearly as many Democrats as Republicans are saying they will definitely vote, and the Democratic share is up six points since the previous CR poll. Over half of likely Democratic voters have already voted according to these findings.
“In a June poll, Change Research found that only 84% of Democrats said they’d definitely vote. But in the new poll, 92% of all Democrats have either already voted (54%) or say they definitely will (38%) -- still below Republicans’ 98%, but enough to widen the margin among the likeliest voters. What’s more, No voters are returning their ballots at a much faster clip: 58% of No voters say they have already voted, while only 35% of those who have voted Yes say the same.”
Both the SurveyUSA and Change Research used online surveys, so it is difficult to say methodology is why one or the other may be an outlier. In the past election cycle, online polling did as well or better than traditional phone-based polling.
Source: FiveThirtyEight
The only pollster since at least mid-July to use 100% live calling was Republican pollster Moore Information Group (B/C), which last publicly released results on July 26th – before the replacement field was even set. MIG surveyed respondents on potential (but ultimately declined) replacement candidates such as former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (D), Tom Steyer (D), and former state Senate President, 2018 US Senate candidate, and current Los Angeles city councilor Kevin DeLeon (D). MIG found that Republican John Cox was the front-runner with 24% of the replacement vote. While the pollster found that among all voters support was favorable to the recall by six points, among likely voters Newsom was winning by three points. This result is odd since other pollsters have found stronger opposition to the recall among registered voters than likely voters, which means it should be higher among all voters than likely voters. MIG does not give us crosstabs or a questionnaire to examine. It merely informs us that they used a mix of landline and cell phones as their calling method, so we only know so much about their data and methodology.
Four of the most recent pollsters use 100% online samples, including SurveyUSA (which, as you will recall, is rated A by FiveThirtyEight). Change Research is one of two pollsters using a hybrid of online and texting or IVR (robocalling). CR uses text rather than IVR. Emerson (A-) has used both online with IVR and online with text. If online methods are creating some error in the polling it will be seen across all pollsters except MIG. Perhaps MIG is correct about the relative support for the recall among all and just likely voters, and that would be an interesting finding because it goes against every other poll (probably including internal ones considering how concerned the Newsom campaign has been with turnout) and conventional wisdom. It would mean that higher turnout is bad for Newsom. Time will tell, but I am not buying that.
On the second question, a dishonest right-wing talk show host from Southern California appears to have the lead. Larry Elder is a Trump devotee who wants to eliminate the minimum wage and outlaw abortion, which are just two of his radical right-wing positions. However, if you see or hear his ads he will give you the impression he’s just a commonsense moderate looking to restore competent governance. He’s a liar. Also, there is no evidence he would be competent at governing a household, let alone a state with the fifth largest economy in the world.
Among the several dozen replacement candidates on the ballot, Elder is consistently placing first with numbers in the 20s. However, on the SurveyUSA poll, Elder places second behind Democrat Kevin Paffrath, a YouTuber and real estate broker. If that poll is a bad sign for Newsom, it is also a bad sign for Elder. To be sure, there is no evidence that Paffrath would be any more competent a governor than Elder would be – although his politics are likely to be much closer to the average Californian than Elder’s. Change Research finds that a plurality of recall voters have or plan to leave the second question blank – more than say they will vote for the poll’s front-running candidate, Elder. An additional fifteen percent say they prefer our favorite “candidate,” Not Sure.
The Newsom campaign has been encouraging supporters to blank the second question. I have heard from a lot of folks about this and they want to know why. There are at least three reasons. The first is to encourage voters to see this election as a race between Newsom and a Republican. That is, the idea is to convince voters to think of the two questions as one which focuses the choice as either sticking with Newsom - who voters generally support - or electing a Republican that opposes nearly every position that Californians generally support.
The second reason is to delegitimize the replacement election itself. The idea is to make sure that if Newsom loses the recall election, he still wins significantly more votes than the replacement election winner. Additionally, there would be a lot more people participating in the recall vote than in the replacement vote. I assume the goal is to make sure that Newsom - win or lose - gets more votes than all the replacement candidates get together on the second question. It might not make a difference legally (there is a question of the replacement election’s constitutionality, which we’ll address in Part III), but politically it will undermine the ability of a replacement governor - particularly in a state where Democrats have supermajorities in both houses of the Legislature and hold all other statewide offices.
The third reason is less persuasive to me, but a lot of Democratic politicos seem to think it’s important. They fear that the entry of a big-name Democrat on the replacement ballot gives voters permission to recall the governor, which is why the Newsom camp successfully talked several folks out of running. Folks that believe this reason (which only indirectly supports blanking the second question) is valid based on experience in the 2003 recall in which Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante (D) entered the race as a failsafe. The argument is that Bustamante’s entry into the race allowed Democrats to recall Davis. However, Davis - unlike Newsom - was very unpopular in 2003 and Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) won more votes on the replacement election than Davis did on the recall question. I see little reason to believe that Bustamante’s entry into the race made any difference at all on the final result - except maybe Schwarzenegger might have won even more votes if he hadn’t.
I think the replacement election process is illegitimate and potentially unconstitutional. In Part III we will discuss the recall law itself, what political and legal challenges it presents, and what should be done about them in the future.
The two California pollsters are Public Policy Institute of California (A/B) and the Institute for Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley (B/C).