An illustration of the unknown road ahead. (Image: Pro-Studio, via Shutterstock)California faces many challenges now. One is the climate emergency. Another is economic recovery. Add COVID-19 positivity. That is a partial list. You get the picture. Why imagine scenarios for the Golden State over the next decade or century? We turn to Marina Gorbis.
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.
The crowded Venice Beach Boardwalk in Los Angeles. (Photo: PPIC)The Census Bureau released total population numbers for California, suggesting a significant slowdown in the state’s population growth. But these numbers do not include the last half of 2020, and they do not tell us why population growth has slowed. We won’t have official census counts of this information for many months. But we do have population estimates from the California Department of Finance through the first few months of the pandemic.
Mark DiCamillo at the offices of the Institute for Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley. (Photo: IGS)To anyone who follows California politics, Mark DiCamillo is a familiar name indeed. He directed the Field Poll for decades, and he now heads the Berkeley IGS Poll at the Institute for Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley. He sat down with Capitol Weekly’s John Howard and Tim Foster to talk about the latest trends in opinion surveying and how these may play out this election year.
Voluminous data displayed on a computer monitor. (Photo: Dimitri Nikolaev)Data wizard Paul Mitchell and Capitol Weekly are joining forces to regularly explore contemporary issues of importance to our readers in a new column called “CA120.” Gun control, the environment, education, state budgeting and, of course, California elections. On occasion, we hope to offer profound insight. And at other times, we’ll use the data just to have fun.