Analysis
On Aug. 6, President Donald Trump made his first Twitter statement on California’s summer fire season, which started on June 1. Unlike his statement on last year’s Wine Country fires, when the president tweeted condolences to victims of the fires and support for the firefighters, Trump used these latest natural disasters to troll California with nonsense.
Analysis
On any given day, thousands of jailed people are awaiting trial, sentencing or hearings in any of California’s 58 counties. Many are in custody because they cannot afford to post bail. Legislation to allow people to be free while their case is in the Legislature and its fate will be decided by midnight Aug. 31 when lawmakers adjourn.
Analysis
A financial advisory firm called WalletHub recently issued a study listing the states according to how patriotic they are. Care to guess where California wound up? With July 4 loomimg, we thought we’d take a look. We’re 44th out of the 50 states.
Analysis
Since 2015 Capitol Weekly has been conducting polling to inform readers about policy and politics in the Golden State. This latest installment is an exit poll of voters done by Capitol Weekly using data and tools from Political Data, Inc. This polling focuses on early voters who cast ballots in the mail or at early voting centers. The full survey includes more than 11,000 respondents surveyed over a three-week period of ballot returns.
Analysis
Is something wrong with public polling in California? The 2018 election season has been raucous, even weeks before the first votes are cast. And one of the contributing factors has been the seemingly erratic public polling, particularly in the top-of-the-ticket races. The veteran political observers at CalBuzz have called this year’s polling a “muddled mess.”
Analysis
With all the headlines about Cambridge Analytica and the potential that millions of Facebook users had their data leaked to third parties, there is one obvious question on the minds of candidates and consultants: What will this mean for continued use of digital ads in my campaign? The answer: Probably nothing.
Analysis
Whether you liked it or not, the state Board of Equalization successfully blocked a gas tax increase. This saved Californians 4-cents-a-gallon at the pump, but handed Gov. Jerry Brown and lawmakers a $617 million hole in the state budget. What caused this rather dramatic policy move? I keep being drawn to the extraordinary events surrounding the 2011 redistricting of the BOE, which has four directly elected members.
Analysis
Clearly, Washington, D.C., and Sacramento share many things in common — including such negatives as a hyper-heated political culture, insularity and a pervasive sense of entitlement. And California’s Legislature is obviously based upon the federal legislative model. Nonetheless, their legislative rules are different, so let’s take a look at some of the major distinctions.
Analysis
It hasn’t been long since we learned of a presidential campaign that used personal information gleaned from Facebook apps to enhance voter files, and target voters and their friends with political messaging. This campaign was so sophisticated that they could identify people who would be swayed by particular messages, were more persuaded by messages about immigration, education, or health care, were likely or unlikely to vote, or even were likely to volunteer or donate money.
Analysis
ANALYSIS: The public opinion polling industry in many ways is at a crossroads. For years public polls were run with live telephone interviews using a system of “random digit dialing” or RDD, which allowed a poll to be based on samples which would be naturally balanced since all potential voters had the same probability to be administered a phone survey.
A firefighting helicopter takes water from a golf course pond in Stevenson Ranch near Santa Clarita. (Photo: Krista Kennell, 2007)
