{"id":36113,"date":"2025-11-03T17:11:25","date_gmt":"2025-11-03T17:11:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/36113\/"},"modified":"2025-11-03T17:11:25","modified_gmt":"2025-11-03T17:11:25","slug":"polls-positive-for-prop-50-as-voting-winds-down-this-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/36113\/","title":{"rendered":"Polls positive for Prop 50 as voting winds down this week"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Poll<\/a>Poll workers collected ballots at San Diego County Registrar of Voters. (File photo by Chris Stone\/Times of San Diego)<\/p>\n

This story<\/a>\u00a0was originally published by CalMatters.\u00a0Sign up<\/a>\u00a0for their newsletters.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A day before voting ends for\u00a0Proposition 50<\/a>, California voters appear poised to approve Gov. Gavin Newsom\u2019s plan to gerrymander the state\u2019s congressional districts in Democrats\u2019 favor.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Recent opinion polls show strong support for the Yes side. Newsom\u2019s campaign is flooding the airwaves with\u00a0star-studded advertisements<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0drowning out<\/a> its opponents\u2019 faint final pitch to voters. And the governor has even asked supporters to back off on donations, as the influx of contributions was\u00a0crashing the state\u2019s campaign finance website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can stop donating now. Thank you,\u201d proclaimed the subject line of an email from Newsom\u2019s campaign to supporters last week. \u201cWe have hit our budget goals and raised what we need in order to pass Proposition 50.\u201d<\/p>\n

If approved, the measure would temporarily suspend California\u2019s current congressional maps, which were drawn by an independent citizens commission, and replace them through 2030 with districts drawn by Democratic insiders.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u2019s midterm elections. Mail-in voting has already been underway for more than four weeks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Some of Prop. 50\u2019s major opponents are also privately resigned to the reality that the measure will pass, despite putting on a defiant game face.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t run away from a fight,\u201d insisted Rep. Doug LaMalfa, a Republican from Oroville whose district would be\u00a0dramatically altered<\/a>\u00a0under the new maps, at a recent No on 50 press conference.<\/p>\n

But just moments before, LaMalfa also conceded that the opposition was \u201coutnumbered two-to-one\u201d when it came to spending in the crucial final days of the campaign.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are outgunned on the fundraising side,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for the No on 50 campaign did not respond to an emailed request for comment.<\/p>\n

Two of California\u2019s most reputable nonpartisan pollsters last week found that a solid majority of likely voters are supporting, or have already voted for, Prop. 50.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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 \u201cvery important\u201d to them. That\u2019s a record high level of interest in a ballot measure.<\/p>\n

\"\"A \u201cNo on Prop 50\u201d sign at the Kern County Republican Party booth at the Kern County Fair in Bakersfield on Sept. 26, 2025. Photo by Larry Valenzuela, CalMatters\/CatchLight Local<\/p>\n

\u201cThe PPIC survey has not registered such a high level of interest in a ballot proposition since we began measuring it over 20 years ago,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019d 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 \u201ca great deal\u201d about the measure.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are a lot of indicators that suggest the Yes side is going to win comfortably,\u201d said Mark DiCamillo, IGS\u2019 director of polling, in an interview.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe results suggest that Democrats have succeeded in framing the debate surrounding the proposition around support or opposition to\u00a0President Trump<\/a>\u00a0and national Republicans, rather than about voters\u2019 more general preference for nonpartisan redistricting,\u201d said Eric Schickler, co-director of IGS.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

CalMatters<\/a>\u00a0is a nonpartisan and nonprofit news organization bringing Californians stories that probe, explain and explore solutions to quality of life issues while holding our leaders accountable.<\/p>\n

READ NEXT\n\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Poll workers collected ballots at San Diego County Registrar of Voters. (File photo by Chris Stone\/Times of San…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36114,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[7,16629,1525,4059,5037,1362,1361,74,76,75],"class_list":["post-36113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-california","tag-congressional-maps","tag-democratic-party","tag-gerrymandering","tag-gov-gavin-newsom","tag-prop-50","tag-proposition-50","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36113\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}