Shifting expectations among California voters

OPINION – California Speaks, a new statewide survey of California voters from Lucas Public Affairs in partnership with Seven Letter, found that Californians are most concerned about the rising costs of living – but also that the catastrophic LA wildfires represent a watershed moment for California and its leaders.

Democrats and Republicans agree overwhelmingly that affordability, high prices and inflation are their greatest concerns, ranking well above issues like health care, DEI and climate change. This makes it all the more significant that the vast majority of respondents are still willing to pay more for wildfire prevention efforts and to address the state’s homelessness crisis.

The California Speaks findings signal key shifts in how voters think about the issues that affect their lives and how the state should respond. As thousands of proposed bills begin to make their way through the legislature, the findings offer policymakers, business and civic leaders data-driven insights to shape state policy and communications.

LPA and Seven Letter Insight conducted the survey in late February/early March and in the wake of the state’s most devasting wildfires in Los Angeles, amid California’s enduring homelessness crisis and alongside a wave of executive orders and funding cuts at the federal level. The survey captured the views of a representative sample of 1,000 California voters ages 18 and older.

Our survey found that after the high cost of living, affordable housing and homelessness are the second and third most significant concerns, respectively, among Democrats. For Republicans, immigration is the second highest concern, with crime and public safety and lowering taxes tied for third.

Despite partisan differences, we found strong agreement across respondents about how the state should invest to solve persistent problems.  While voters want to increase funding to address nearly every issue, a significant majority said they’d like to see more investment in housing, disaster preparedness and public safety. They’d also be willing to pay more for programs to reduce homelessness and efforts to ensure resiliency and disaster preparedness.

Overall, voters want state government to make investments with the most tangible and immediate impacts over longer-term solutions.

A significant majority (78%) voiced support for policy improvements to protect Californians from the dangers of wildfires, and said that prevention infrastructure, emergency response, forest management, and improved building codes in fire-prone areas are more important than ever. But while they agreed that extreme weather is increasing in the state, addressing climate change is not their most important priority.

In fact, Californians are so concerned about the economic and personal threats posed by wildfires that a plurality favored easing environmental regulations like the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) to accelerate wildfire prevention and mitigation projects. Similarly, there was significant support for relaxing land use and environmental restrictions to increase the supply of new housing and other infrastructure projects.

Resiliency and policies to make California less vulnerable to the impacts of disasters like wildfires emerged as a leading driver of voter support. Loss of homes and the displacement of families in the Los Angeles wildfires weighed heavily on California voters. While recognizing that climate change will increase the cost of living in California, a majority said they’d be willing to incur personal economic pain to protect the state from future natural disasters.

For example, there was bipartisan support (79%) for paying more to subsidize wildfire insurance in high-risk areas, and 71% of those questioned supported reallocating state funds for wildfire prevention. Interestingly, 94% of voters said that property owners should take responsibility for mitigating their own wildfire risk, instead of government entities, insurance companies and utilities.

There are shifts in the expectations the electorate has of their state government, particularly as it relates to cost-of-living and addressing the most recent crisis. But voters also seem willing to invest in solutions with measurable impacts in their daily lives. We hope this set of data provides some new insights to policymakers and other leaders at this pivotal time for the state.

Jessyca Sheehan is Executive Vice President at Lucas Public Affairs, a Sacramento-based strategic communications and public affairs firm. Matt George is a partner and Head of Research at Seven Letter, a bipartisan, national strategic communications, public affairs and research firm based in Washington, DC.