We now have four polls in a row that show the California gubernatorial recall election turning stronger towards No. This morning, Public Policy Institute of California (A/B) and The Trafalgar Group (A-) released new polls. Instead of waiting to include them in Part III of this series (which will cover the recall law and its problems), I am writing separately here.
PPIC finds “No” winning by nearly 20 points (58-39). Our friend Not Sure is practically non-existent, except among independents (but the number is still too low to make a difference). “No” is winning across all demographic, geographic, and economic categories, except one – men (and even there it is 48-51). The last PPIC poll in this race (in late July) found a very close race. The movement towards “No” echoes the recent poll by SurveyUSA (A), which in July found “Yes” winning but earlier this week reported that “No” was now winning by eight points. The past four polls (all in the last seven days) show increasing opposition to the recall.
Trafalgar Group (A-) finds Californians opposing the recall by eight points (52-44). I have been very critical of this pollster in the past for lack of transparency of its methods, but FiveThirtyEight seems to think more highly of them (to be fair, the polling ratings are done with quantitative measures for the most part). With these two new polls today, the FiveThirtyEight polling average for this race has “No” (which means keeping Newsom - FiveThirtyEight uses “Keep” for “No”) up by 8.4 point (52.1 to 43.7).
Source: FiveThirtyEight
Additionally, we found out yesterday that the number of Californians returning ballots is larger than for the same period before the 2020 election.1 As you may remember, the biggest problem facing Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) in this election was depressed turnout. Right wingers are highly motivated in this race as they see it a chance to take down a popular Democratic governor in a state that they cannot win many votes in during a regular election. It appears that the Newsom campaign has solved this problem. The party share of returned votes thus far shows a slight decrease for both Democrats and Republicans and a slight increase for independents compared to 2020, but in raw numbers it is more all around. The problem for the “Yes” campaigners is that there are so many more Democrats than Republicans in Golden State and independents are more likely to align with Democrats (not by much, but indys are not a refuge for Republicans who don’t want to publicly identify with the GOP like it is in, say, Massachusetts).
PPIC finds that COVID is the number one issue for Californians, although other issues (including homelessness) are close behind. While the Newsom campaign’s focus on how right-wing replacement candidates would upend the state’s public health strategy in its advertising, what is happening in other right-wing led states right now might be making a difference too. Some voters have to be thinking, “look what these nuts are doing in Florida and Texas; I don’t want that to happen here!” The latest Handmaid’s Tale saga coming out of Texas cannot be helping the “Yes” cause in California.
For those of you interested in methodology, PPIC uses the old fashioned in-person phone method. It uses the proper mix of landlines and cell phones. This differs from the two other most recent polls from SurveyUSA (online only) and Change Research (online/IVR/text). Trafalgar Group uses a mix of live callers, IVR, text, emails, and “[t]wo other proprietary digital methods we don’t share publicly.” PPIC is a non-partisan pollster. Change Research is a Democratic pollster. SurveyUSA polls for clients (although I am not sure who its client was for its latest polling). Trafalgar Group is a Republican pollster. All of these samples have been of likely voters.
LATE ENTRY: We have a fifth poll (third today) finding “No” winning by eight points. It is from Redfield & Wilton Strategies (B/C) and brings the FiveThirtyEight polling average up to 11.3% margin for “No.”
Today’s numbers show the amount of returned ballots is about even at the same point from 2020. There are more ballots starting to come in from Republican voters, but that’s to be expected as we get closer to election day (September 14th).