What Went Down At The California Recall Election: Live Results

To Nathaniel’s earlier point, the preliminary exit polls suggest that Californians — specifically those who took the trouble to vote in the recall — feel pretty good about where the state is in terms of the pandemic, and don’t want to backslide. More than two-thirds of recall voters feel like the state’s coronavirus situation is getting better or staying the same. And in addition to the 69 percent support for the school mask mandate, 63 percent say they see getting vaccinated as more of a public-health responsibility than a personal choice.

Also of note: COVID-19 ranks as the No. 1 issue on voters’ minds — ahead of homelessness, wildfires, crime and the economy.

We’ll be back right before 11 p.m. Eastern/8 p.m. Pacific when the polls close. But in the meantime, we got a great question from Danny Adams on YouTube, who wondered why California has recall elections at all. Here, FiveThirtyEight copy editor Maya Sweedler and politics podcast host Galen Druke discuss how recall elections got passed into law in the state, and whether than law can be changed:

The early exit polls also indicate that Elder is fairly unpopular among voters, with just 34 percent viewing him favorably and 49 percent viewing him unfavorably. That’s in contrast to the winner of the 2003 recall election, Schwarzenegger, who had a 50 percent – 45 percent favorability rating heading into that election. Two things stand out here, both good for Newsom. First, that 83 percent of voters have an opinion on Elder, who until a few months ago was not well-known outside of conservative circles, suggests that the Newsom team was able to effectively define him negatively. Second, it suggests that Democrats bet right when they declined to put up a replacement candidate.

With an unpopular Elder leading the polls and no big-name Democrat to vote for, Democratic voters really do have a binary choice: Newsom or Elder, and they don’t want Elder. In 2003, voters had Bustamante or they had Schwarzenegger, who didn’t seem so bad, either.