Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Among other things, it discusses the impact of social issues. It also discusses state elections. The biggest off-off-year election is the CA recall.
Momentum has turned strongly against the effort to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom with just days to go before voting ends, a change that comes after a deluge of political ads and support from leading Democrats who have slammed the effort as a Republican power grab.
According to a UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll cosponsored by the Los Angeles Times released Friday, 60.1% of likely voters surveyed oppose recalling Newsom compared with 38.5% in favor of ousting the governor. Fewer than 2% of likely voters remained undecided or declined to answer, suggesting the issue is largely settled in the minds of California voters.
The findings, which were gathered by pollsters between Aug. 30 and Sept. 6, align with results from a batch of recent independent polls, all of which showed a decisive advantage for Newsom as the Sept. 14 recall election approaches.
Shane Goldmacher at NYT:
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s bid to fend off a recall in California has been bolstered by an infusion of tens of millions of dollars from big donors in recent months that delivered him an enormous financial advantage over his Republican rivals in the race’s final stretch.
There had been moments over the summer when Mr. Newsom, a Democrat, had appeared vulnerable in public polls, as California’s unique recall rules seemed to provide an opening to conservatives in one of the most reliably Democratic states in the nation. But Mr. Newsom raised more than $70 million this year into an account to battle the recall, much of it in July and August, allowing him and his allies to dominate the television airwaves and out-advertise his opponents online.
California has no limits on donations to recall committees, and Mr. Newsom has taken full advantage of those loose rules. His contributions have included an early $3 million from Reed Hastings, the chief executive of Netflix; $500,000 from the liberal philanthropist George Soros; and $500,000 from the Hollywood producer Jeffrey Katzenberg. Dr. Priscilla Chan, a philanthropist and the wife of the Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, contributed $750,000, and the real estate magnate George Marcus gave $1 million.
