What Went Down At The California Recall Election: Live Results

I don’t know, Nathaniel. As we’ve written previously, this was a hard race to poll, with it being held at an irregular time and the fact that a lot of votes have been cast by mail. It wouldn’t be that unusual for the polls to be off by at least a few points from what our final polling average said. Newsom certainly would want a healthy single-digit margin (think +8 points), but I think even that could be a strong performance for him when this is all said and done.

With poll closing time now having come and gone, ABC News is reporting a few more nuggets out of the preliminary exit polls. Newsom is 55-43 approve-disapprove among recall voters. Elder meanwhile is 34-50 favorable-unfavorable.

One reason it’s challenging to assess this race is that it’s not a standard matchup between a Democrat and a Republican: The ballot question frames the election as a referendum on Newsom. This YouGov poll, for example, showed that Newsom would win by larger margins if he had head-to-head matchups against each of his Republican opponents.