What Went Down At The California Recall Election: Live Results

It’s hard to say how much this might’ve impacted the recall, but it does feel like over the last few years, the state’s housing and homelessness crises have reached a boiling point. In the latest PPIC poll, 18 percent of respondents identified either homelessness or housing costs and availability as the top issue facing the state, making it the second-most important issue behind the COVID-19 pandemic. Republican candidates have honed in on Newsom’s handling of the state’s homelessness crisis, and other politicians in the state are facing recall attempts that cite their handling of the crisis. And after years of bills languishing in committee, the California state legislature passed a major zoning reform bill last month — the first major steps toward addressing the state’s housing crisis since then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed a package of bills in 2017.

Indeed, recall organizers had fewer than 750,000 signatures as of Nov. 17, the original signature deadline. That’s far short of the approximately 1.5 million that were needed.

It’s possible this recall only managed to qualify for the ballot because state courts gave the organizers an extra four months to gather signatures due to COVID-19, unlike the previous five efforts against Newsom that failed. But Republican frustration with Newsom’s COVID-19 response may have also generated more energy to support the recall effort. At the very least, we can say it was primarily a GOP-motivated campaign because the more Republican a county was in the 2020 election, the higher its share of recall signatures tended to be.