California voters are not entirely on board with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D-CA) efforts to redraw the state’s congressional map, according to a new poll, putting an upcoming ballot measure on issue in jeopardy.
Newsom plans to put a redistricting plan on the ballot and take the matter to voters in a special election in November. The redistricting provisions, which are expected to boost Democrats by five House seats, passed the state legislature on Thursday. They now require only a final green light from voters through the governor’s Proposition 50 ballot measure in order to be implemented.
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However, a critical portion of the California electorate remains undecided about whether to back the ballot measure. When asked if they would vote in favor of the gerrymandering efforts if it appeared on the statewide special election ballot on Nov. 4, 20% said they were undecided, according to a University of California, Berkeley, Institute of Governmental Studies poll conducted for the Los Angeles Times.
Nearly one-third said they would vote no, while 48% said they backed the proposal.
“That’s not bad news,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of the Berkeley IGS Poll. “It could be better. With ballot measures, you’d like to be comfortably above 50% because you got to get people to vote yes, and when people are undecided or don’t know enough about initiatives, they tend to vote no just because it’s the safer vote.”
Part of the tension lies in the fact that the November election would bypass an independent commission responsible for overseeing redistricting efforts.
Voters approved the independent redistricting commission through a pair of ballot measures in 2008 and 2010 that enshrined the commission into the state’s constitution, leading state Republicans to decry Newsom’s latest tactic as “undemocratic.”
Under Proposition 50, the districts drawn by Democratic lawmakers would be in effect for House races in 2026, 2028, and 2030, after which the authority to draw political maps would revert to the independent redistricting commission.
Voters unsure about temporarily taking away power from the independent commission they approved years ago include some Democrats, according to the latest polling. Newsom will need to push them into his camp in the coming months in order to drive his ballot measure across the finish line.
One in 5 Democrats polled said they were undecided, while a quarter of voters with no party preference said the same.
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“That suggests there are a bunch of votes left on the table,” said political scientist Eric Schickler, the co-director of the Berkeley Institute that conducted the poll. “While I wouldn’t be surprised if the margin narrows between now and November, this is a good place for the proposition to start.”
The poll, which surveyed 4,950 registered voters online in English and Spanish, was conducted from Aug. 11 to 17 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 1.5 percentage points.