Image by Cagkan SayinThere’s only two weeks before the completion of the 2024 March Primary and early numbers are suggesting an historically low turnout. Will this have an impact on a big race like the US Senate contest? Maybe.
CAPITOL WEEKLY PODCAST: Veteran California political data expert Paul Mitchell joins us to talk about his recent CA120 column examining shifting behavior by California’s Latino and Asian voters. We also look at California’s confusing Presidential Primary ballot, and the recent Berkeley IGS Poll that found Rep. Barbara Lee in fourth place – behind Republican Steve Garvey – in the race to fill Sen. Feinstein’s seat.
Image by Jim ValleeEven if former President Donald Trump stays on the California Republican primary ballot, there will be more than a quarter-million voters who have previously voted in a Republican Presidential primary who won’t find him on their ballot. And over 650,000 voters who previously voted in the Democratic primary who won’t find President Joe Biden on theirs.
Signs at a site in San Francisco show the way to the polls. (Photo: Kevin McGovern, via Shutterstock)Going into this gubernatorial primary election, one could have rightly expected to see a pretty good turnout. There are more than 30 open legislative seats for the first time in nearly a decade and competitive congressional races after the shakeup of redistricting. But with just a few days to go, we are at just 13% total turnout statewide. In some key battlegrounds, like the hot L.A. Mayor’s race, turnout is even lower at just 10%,
A voter casts his ballot in the vote center at the Pantages Theatre in Los Angeles. (Photo: Ringo Chiu, Shutterstock)ANALYSIS: Ballots have been mailed to all 22 million California voters and many have already been returned. As has been the pattern for the last several election cycles, this begins a month-long stretch where most voters will cast their ballots by mail or at in-person voting centers. Some will wait until Election Day and vote at the polls, but that is a declining portion of the electorate.
A Sacramento political rally for presidential contender Pete Buttigieg, who has since dropped from the race. (Photo: Chris Allan, via Shutterstock)For the past year, we’ve been conducting tracking polling of the dozens of candidates for the Democratic nomination. A consistent thread in those surveys was change: The front runners shifted from former Vice President Joe Biden to Massachusetts Sen.Elizabeth Warren to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. Yet, everything has changed in the last 36 hours, and we are now set for one of the most tumultuous California election nights in recent history.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA - February 15, 2020: Voting Season Starts for California Democrats - Kevin McGovern, ShutterstockVoters in California have been casting ballots for nearly a month. In total, more than 2.5 million voters have returned ballots, and in-person voting has begun in 15 counties. The big question is what these early numbers mean for turnout.
A sign at a political rally urging Democrats to register to vote. (Photo: AlessandraRC, via Shutterstock)Despite the several avenues for nonpartisans to obtain a presidential primary ballot, we now have the data from all 58 counties. Remarkably, only 9% of California’s growing independent and vote-by-mail population have successfully obtained a partisan presidential primary ballot. For 91% of nonpartisan voters, there is no presidential race on the ballot they received in the mail.
In the wake of the Iowa Caucus debacle, the first-in-the-nation New Hampshire Primary takes on added significance in a presidential primary race that appears to have blown wide open. Veteran California political consultant Steve Maviglio is from the Granite State – and served in the New Hampshire House of Representatives.
California's 25th Congressional District. (Map: Federal Elections Commission)It’s been a wild year for politics in 2019, from the national to the state scene, and one of the wilder spots is California’s 25th Congressional District. The year started off with Democrats cheering as millennial Katie Hill took the seat, flipping it blue after a 25-year run in Republican hands.