A majority of voters say they are voting ‘yes’ on California’s Proposition 50, according to a new poll.
Some 62 percent of likely voters in the heavily Democratic state said they are voting ‘yes’ on the ballot measure championed by California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, while 38 percent said they would vote ‘no’, according to the poll by CBS News and YouGov.
The proposal would temporarily set aside congressional districts created by an independent commission and replace them with reshaped districts drafted by Democrats to add five Democratic U.S. House seats in California to counter President Donald Trump’s moves in Texas to gain five Republican districts before the 2026 midterm elections.
Why It Matters
The outcome of Proposition 50 could determine which party wins control of the closely divided House, and whether Democrats will be able to blunt Trump’s power in the second half of his term. If successful, Newsom, who is widely viewed as a likely 2028 presidential contender, would likely receive a publicity boost for spearheading the plan.
What To Know
The poll was conducted between October 16 and 21 among 1,504 registered voters in California. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.8 points for registered voters, and plus or minus 3.6 points for likely voters.
The poll found that among those who are supporting the measure, most are thinking about the national implications.
Some 75 percent of likely voters said they were voting ‘yes’ to oppose Trump, while 70 percent said they were voting ‘yes’ to oppose national Republicans.
The poll found that 50 percent of registered voters say their vote on Proposition 50 is about national issues and politics, while 45 percent said it was about California issues and politics.
The poll found that 41 percent of those voting ‘yes’ were doing it, at least in part, to support Newsom. However, he was more of a motivating factor for those voting ‘no’—more than half of likely negative voters said a reason for their vote was to oppose the governor.
The survey found Newsom’s overall job rating with California voters is positive, with 53 percent saying they approve of the job he is doing and 47 percent saying they disapprove.
According to a ballot tracker, more than 1.5 million Democratic mail ballots have been returned so far, compared to about 850,000 Republican ballots. Registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans by nearly 2-to-1 in California.
What People Are Saying
Grant Davis Reeher, a political science professor at Syracuse University, told Newsweek: “If California goes ahead and approves this measure, I think it is the most powerful symbol yet of the depths of the political polarization in the United States.
“Without saying that they’re doing the right or the wrong thing, what I want to say is it just illustrates more powerfully than anything else we’ve seen before, just how divided the country is on a party basis that the voters of California, heavily Democratic, are willing to set their district-drawing processes aside and consciously engage in more extreme gerrymandering and a less democratic practice of drawing their districts, but they’re willing to do that in order to counter some perceived partisan threat. I think that’s very powerful.”
Costas Panagopoulos, a professor of political science at Northeastern University, told Newsweek that the poll’s findings “suggest that, for most voters, the redistricting battle in California is all about Donald Trump. Most Californians clearly view Trump as a threat to their state, and their vote on Prop. 50 seems to be driven more so by opposition to Trump than other partisan considerations. It seems to me that most voters in California object to Trump’s mid-cycle push to redraw congressional maps in red states and perceive Prop. 50 as an opportunity to redress this overreach.”
Newsom said during a virtual event with former president Barack Obama on Wednesday: “We’re fighting fire with fire. We’re not fighting with one hand tied behind our back. And we move forward in a way that I don’t think the president or members of Congress expected, and that is we move forward by putting the maps, not only through the California legislature with two-thirds of their support but now in front of the voters in the most transparent and democratic way possible.
“It will be the first maps ever to be in front of the voters in the United States of America. It’s temporary. It’s transparent and it’s democratic.”
Obama said during the event: “The problem that we are seeing right now is that our current president and his administration is explicitly saying that we want to change the rules of the game midstream in order to insulate ourselves from the people’s judgment. They want to change around the maps, not the way it’s always been done every 10 years after a census. They want to do it before any election in which they’re worried they might lose.
He added: “The essence of Prop 50 is to say that if you are going to play that game, then we are going to try to counteract that abuse of the system. And as a consequence of California’s actions, we have a chance at least to create a level playing field in the upcoming midterm elections.”
The California Republican Party has said Proposition 50 would take the state “backwards.”
The party says on its website: “Californians created the gold standard for fair elections: independent, citizen-led redistricting that ensures voters pick their representatives, not the other way around. Prop 50 would tear that down, even temporarily, and hand the power back to Sacramento politicians. That’s not progress, that’s going backwards. Voters are supposed to choose their representatives, not the other way around.”
Arnold Schwarzenegger, the former Republican California governor, urged voters to reject Proposition 50, telling the Associated Press: “It is insane.”
He added: “It doesn’t make any sense to me that because we have to fight Trump, to become Trump. Two wrongs don’t make a right.”
What’s Next
Voting began earlier this month and concludes November 4.
