Consistent majority

Polls show consistent majority support for controversial Prop. 50

By Anabel Sosa, Kimberly Alters

With the Nov. 4 special election around the corner, a handful of polls now show a majority favoring the passage of Proposition 50, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposal to redraw California’s congressional maps to favor Democrats.

A new poll from CBS News published Wednesday showed a whopping 62% of likely special election voters would vote in favor of redistricting. Just 38% said they would vote no. CBS News polled 1,504 registered California voters and then asked certain questions of respondents who said they were likely to vote in the special election. It was conducted from Oct. 16-21, a period when President Donald Trump has ratcheted up his attacks on California and San Francisco specifically.

Among voters likely to cast a ballot on Prop. 50, 51% said they’d do so specifically to oppose Trump.

The CBS News poll has a margin of error of 3.6 percentage points for questions asked of likely voters, meaning that no matter what, the results show a solid majority of those voters in support of Prop. 50.

Those findings come after another recent poll, published by the research firm co/efficient in early October, that found 56% of voters saying they would vote in favor of Prop. 50. Another 36% said they would oppose it. The firm polled 976 likely special election voters via phone and text between Sept. 29 and Oct. 1. There was a margin of error of 3.14%.

The most recent polling indicates that voter attitudes toward the measure have grown even more positive than they already were in early polling returns a few months ago.

The co/efficient poll asked voters if the millions of dollars pledged to support the campaign, along with the overall hype from Democratic leaders across the country, swayed their views on redistricting. The answer was a resounding yes, though in opposite directions: 78% of Democratic respondents said support from former President Barack Obama and Newsom made them more likely to support Prop. 50, while 83% of Republicans said it made them less likely.

Forty-four percent of voters said they were less likely to vote for the measure knowing that it could cost taxpayers upward of $200 million, despite the state being in a $20 billion budget deficit. Overall, 93% of all respondents said they had at least either seen, read or heard something about Prop. 50. So far, nearly $139 million has been spent on campaigning, according to California Secretary of State filings.

A second poll from mid-September, conducted by Emerson College, similarly found that just over half of voters would vote yes on the measure. The survey of 1,000 registered and active California voters found that 51% of them would vote to pass Prop. 50 — an increase compared to a poll that had previously been conducted for a hypothetical redistricting measure, said Spencer Kimball, the executive director of Emerson College Polling.

Thirty-four percent of respondents to the Emerson poll said they opposed Prop. 50, while 15% were undecided. The poll was conducted from Sept. 15-16 and has a margin of error of 3 percentage points.

Taken together, the new data shows an increase in Prop. 50’s support since the summer.

One poll conducted by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies at the end of summer found just 46% of likely voters said it was a good idea to change the boundary lines of congressional maps in California. Another 36% said it was a bad idea. Meanwhile, another 48% said they would vote in favor of Prop. 50, while just over 30% said they’d vote against it. Twenty percent said they were undecided. Among voters who regularly vote each election, support went up to 55%.

That poll was published in late August, just around the time that the newly drawn U.S. House maps were approved by the California Legislature.