Final Polls Show Strong Support for Prop 50’s Reapportionment

A day before voting ends for Proposition 50, California voters appear poised to approve Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to gerrymander the state’s congressional districts in Democrats’ favor.

Recent opinion polls show strong support for the Yes side. Newsom’s campaign is flooding the airwaves with star-studded advertisements and drowning out its opponents’ faint final pitch to voters. And the governor has even asked supporters to back off on donations, as the influx of contributions was crashing the state’s campaign finance website.

“You can stop donating now. Thank you,” proclaimed the subject line of an email from Newsom’s campaign to supporters last week. “We have hit our budget goals and raised what we need in order to pass Proposition 50.”

If approved, the measure would temporarily suspend California’s current congressional maps, which were drawn by an independent citizens commission, and replace them through 2030 with districts drawn by Democratic insiders.

The plan would have little impact on South Bay congressional districts.

The big changes would occur in Marin and Sonoma and northern counties, where the current 1st District, represented by Republican Doug LaMalfa, would be cut in half, with its coastal counties, including Sonoma and Marin, included in a revised 2nd District, represented by Democrat Jared Huffman. The plan also would change boundaries for LaMalfa’s 1st District and the 4th District, represented by Democrat Mike Thompson, creating two Democrat-majority districts.

Newsom and his allies say California must counter mid-decade gerrymandering efforts in Republican controlled states such as Texas, Missouri and North Carolina in order to give Democrats a fair chance to win back the U.S. House of Representatives in next year’s midterm elections. Mail-in voting has already been underway for more than four weeks.

Some of Prop. 50’s major opponents are also privately resigned to the reality that the measure will pass, despite putting on a defiant game face.

“I don’t run away from a fight,” insisted Rep. Doug LaMalfa, a Republican from Oroville whose district would be dramatically altered under the new maps, at a recent No on 50 press conference.

But just moments before, LaMalfa also conceded that the opposition was “outnumbered two-to-one” when it came to spending in the crucial final days of the campaign.

“We are outgunned on the fundraising side,” he said.

A spokesperson for the No on 50 campaign did not respond to an emailed request for comment.

Two of California’s most reputable nonpartisan pollsters last week found that a solid majority of likely voters are supporting, or have already voted for, Prop. 50.

The Public Policy Institute of California found that 56% of likely voters said they would support the measure, compared to just 43% who said they would oppose it. The survey also found that nearly seven in 10 Californians, regardless of party, said the outcome of the special election was “very important” to them. That’s a record high level of interest in a ballot measure.

“The PPIC survey has not registered such a high level of interest in a ballot proposition since we began measuring it over 20 years ago,” said its survey director, Mark Baldassare. The poll relied on responses from 943 likely voters and had a sampling error margin of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.

The Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies found an even larger gap between Yes and No voters, with a whopping 60% of likely voters saying they’d vote to pass Prop. 50 and just 38% who would vote no. Similarly to PPIC, the IGS poll also found an extraordinarily high level of engagement, with 71% of likely voters saying they had heard “a great deal” about the measure.

“There are a lot of indicators that suggest the Yes side is going to win comfortably,” said Mark DiCamillo, IGS’ director of polling, in an interview.

The poll interviewed 4,946 Californians who had already voted or were considered likely to vote and had a sampling error margin of plus or minus 2 percentage points.

DiCamillo noted Prop. 50 was likely defying conventional wisdom on ballot measures, which gives the No side an advantage with undecided voters who want to preserve the status quo, because of the hyperpartisan and nationalized message.

“The results suggest that Democrats have succeeded in framing the debate surrounding the proposition around support or opposition to President Trump and national Republicans, rather than about voters’ more general preference for nonpartisan redistricting,” said Eric Schickler, co-director of IGS.

Still, Democrats are taking nothing for granted and are investing heavily in mobilizing their voters. The Yes campaign has rallied tens of thousands of volunteers to knock doors, make phone calls and send texts to up to 16 million voters, said campaign spokesperson Hannah Milgrom. Newsom will also be traveling across the state as part of the final push.

 

One Comment

  1. Dem hypocrisy never ends. CA dem hypocrisy is HUGE at every turn. Guess how many states have NO dem representatives? NONE. Guess how many states have NO Republican representatives? 6. 6 states the dems have gerrymandered so completely that the 50% who voted for Trump have NO REPRESENTATION. Then there are the states like Illinois who have gerrymandered so blatantly that there is 1 or 2 with the dem reps in double digits for the ENTIRE STATE. There are 11 more of those. Dems have gerrymandered EVERY STATE TO THE MAX and CA is the LAST ONE. HYPOCRITES!!! Texas was merely doing what the dems have been doing for the LAST DECADE. Dems are clearly the NEW CONFEDERATES. Just like the democrats were the slave owners, the authors of the Dredd/Scott laws, fought the 14th amendment, and fought the Equal Rights Amendment and MORE. Dems are the same civil war era HYPOCRITES there have always been. They just use useful idiots of the millennial and Genz generations to do it. WAKE UP CA!!!! YOU ARE BEING FOOLED…..or worse YOU ARE TRAITORS. Which is it? There is no other choice.

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