Ballot boxes in Foster City for the November 2020 general election. (Photo: MariaX, via Shutterstock)The state’s House delegation – now at 53, but likely to drop by one seat after the new redistricting – stood at 46 Democrats and only seven Republicans after the 2018 elections. But last year, Republicans captured four seats from Democrats — which caught political observers by surprise.
Last week Capitol Weekly and the McGeorge Capital Center for Law & Policy presented a Post-Mortem of the 2020 Election, a half-day online conference in which a score of experts and insiders discussed the results of the election and provided a look-ahead at what they mean for 2021 – and beyond. This event was held on Thursday, November 5. We broadcast audio from each of the presentations as individual episodes of the Capitol Weekly Podcast.
Left to right: Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Beto O'Rourke, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg. (Illustration: Tim Foster)
California political data guru Paul Mitchell joins Capitol Weekly’s John Howard and Tim Foster to talk about — what else? — the 2020 elections. Who’s up, who’s down and who’s burning through their dough?
A view of the House of Representatives, with members and their visiting families. (Photo: Mark Reinstein)A number of California’s Republican-held House seats face fierce challenges from Democrats, and the tally of votes in these tight races may not be completed for days, even weeks, following the election. That’s the message in Capitol Weekly’s survey of more than 20,000 mail-in voters across California who cast their ballots prior to election day.
Republican candidate for governor John Cox talks to reporters before launching a statewide bus tour in Sacramento. (Photo: AP/Rich Pedroncelli)Republican John Cox, running for governor, wants you to realize a few things. California has the highest poverty rate in the nation. Our schools are failing. Millions of forgotten Californians cannot afford decent housing. Millions more must choose between buying a half-tank of gas or groceries for their families. And all of this happened on Gavin Newsom’s watch.
A voter casts a ballot in the 2016 election in Ventura County. (Photo: Joseph Sohm, via Shutterstock)The chatter online and in the media is all about the June 5 Primary Election. But, for those of us working in these races, the election has been ongoing for weeks. In fact, as of Memorial Day weekend, 1.25 million California voters have cast ballots, approximately 20% of the expected total turnout of by-mail and poll voters.
Image by Tim Foster, Capitol WeeklyOne of the state’s most respected polls has begun incorporating online surveys for the first time, underscoring the increasing difficulty of relying on telephone questioning. The Field Poll, which was founded in 1947, started using online surveys to gather voter opinion on nine of the 17 statewide ballot propositions that will appear on the Nov. 8 ballot.
Erin Schrode, candidate for the 2nd Congressional District. (Photo: Teens Turning Greeg. org Twenty-five-year-old Erin Schrode, a Democrat, is running for the House in the 2nd Congressional District, which includes coastal counties north of the Golden Gate Bridge to the Oregon line. She is the youngest candidate in any of California’s 53 House races and may be the youngest in the nation. She actually turned 25 during the campaign – the minimum required age to serve in the House.
Image by Tim Foster, Capitol WeeklyCalifornia’s 2014 primary election had its fair share of surprises, but none was greater than David Evans, a virtually unknown candidate for state controller who was just seven-tenths of 1 percent away from beating both Betty Yee and John Perez to capture the coveted second spot and move on to the general election. This was a shock to political insiders, most of whom had never heard of him.
The attitudes of voters. Illustration by Niroworld, via Shutterstock.Friday night, my wife Jodi got home after a long week. Trying to decide what we should do, she flipped through some channels, looking at the networks, a couple sports channels, a few news channels, HBO and Showtime, and then finally announced “I don’t think there’s anything good on TV, let’s go see a movie.”