What Went Down At The California Recall Election: Live Results

I wonder if Republican advertisers felt that voters had made up their mind about how Newsom handled COVID-19, and if that wasn’t enough to get them riled up and ready to vote for a recall, maybe pointing out some other perceived failings would be.

We actually just published an article over at Inside Elections that speaks to this! According to data from the media analytics firm Kantar, Republican advertising actually avoided messaging on COVID-19 in favor of more traditional lines of attack. For instance, taxes featured in 67 percent of all GOP TV ads, and housing and homelessness featured in just over 50 percent. COVID-19 was mentioned in just 7 percent of GOP ads.

Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, COVID-19 featured in 60 percent of TV ads, indicating that Democrats now think Newsom is particularly strong on the issue even if he’s had a few missteps.

It does seem like the recall, at least for a while, was how some voters projected their frustration with the state’s very real issues onto California’s top leader. Everything is extreme in California these days, from the weather to the cost of housing, and it’s understandable that residents would be looking for someone to blame. Maybe Newsom brought some of this on himself by overpromising when it came to issues like housing reform — but I wonder if some Californians have also realized that Newsom’s potential replacements don’t have easy fixes for these problems, either, because no one does!