What Went Down At The California Recall Election: Live Results

To answer your question, Micah, Newsom’s campaign definitely emphasized the COVID-19 issue in a lot of their messaging, running ads calling Elder an “anti-vaccine Trump Republican.” I think it’s definitely a strong issue for him when feelings about pandemic policy are sharply polarized by party and Democrats have such a strong edge over Republicans in California. On the other hand, other issues like homelessness and housing affordability may not have such clear partisan battle lines.

Oof, that’s a tough one, Micah. It certainly makes for a pithy slogan for Democrats looking to take on Republicans in 2022 who have either been resistant to enacting policies to help curb the spread of COVID-19 or have flat-out refused to do so, but I worry that’s too neat of a narrative by half. I largely side with what Jacob said. To be sure, COVID-19 played a role in this recall, but I don’t think it’s something we can extract too much from and apply elsewhere.

Micah, I think the more succinct description of the campaign is, ‘I’m a Democrat, you’re a Democrat, let’s get this over with.’ Everything else is secondary to that, which also makes answering the second point tougher. We’ll have a better look at a more competitive state when Virginia holds its gubernatorial contest later this year. But California is its own beast, and I’d be wary of applying much of what we see here to swing states.