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Divided We Stand

Divided We Stand
New book about the 2020 election.

Thursday, January 19, 2017

California Opinion

In Defying the Odds:  The 2016 Elections and American Politics (forthcoming soon from Rowman and Littlefield), we note that California was an outlier in the election, heavily favoring Clinton, installing Democratic supermajorities in the state legislature, electing a Democratic senator with no GOP opposition in the general election.

A release from the Hoover Institution:
As Donald Trump prepares for his swearing-in as the nation’s 45th president, a new survey by the Hoover Institution at Stanford University shows that most Californians aren’t in line with several key proposals that could impact the entire country.
Hoover’s Golden State Poll, administered by the survey research firm YouGov and designed in conjunction with Stanford's Bill Lane Center for the American West, finds Californians bearish on Trump’s prospects – 36 percent believe he’ll succeed; 46 percent say he won’t.
While a majority of survey respondents (55 percent) favor lowering personal income taxes, other aspects of the Trump agenda are far less popular.
48 percent of Californians believe the state would be worse off if Obamacare is repealed while 34 percent said it would be better off with repeal.
45 percent of the respondents said Californians would be worse off with a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico while 35 percent said the state would be better off with the wall.
Other facets of the Trump agenda were above water, but not overwhelmingly so. Forty-one percent of survey respondents see ending what Trump has labeled "unfair trade practices" as a California net-positive, with 35 percent taking the opposite view. Forty percent see school vouchers for low-income kids as a positive; 29 percent believe vouchers are detrimental. For full poll results, go to the Hoover Golden State Poll.
“The numbers aren’t a surprise given that Donald Trump was the least popular presidential candidate in California since the Great Depression and (Franklin Roosevelt's) re-election,” said Bill Whalen, a Hoover research fellow who studies California and national politics. “What does stand out: despite other attitudinal shifts since the election, any warmer feelings about Trump haven't touched the Golden State.”