SAN JOSE, Calif. — The upcoming recall election could be a closer battle than originally predicted.
Asked whether Gov. Gavin Newsom should be recalled, 43% of voters in a new Emerson College/Nexstar Media poll said yes. Just 48% said they would vote to keep him in office, and 9% said they weren’t sure.
While the recall effort still appears to be on the losing side, support for booting Newsom from Sacramento appears to have grown significantly from February, when only about 36% of voters surveyed in a poll by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies said they wanted to remove Newsom from office. A March Emerson/Nextstar poll found that 42% of voters wanted to keep the governor, while 38% supported the recall.
And on the question of which candidate should replace Newsom, conservative radio host Larry Elder, a last-minute addition to the field, has moved to the top. While 53% said they were undecided, 16% named Elder, with just 6% naming businessman John Cox and 6% naming former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, two contenders who were previously polling at the front of the pack. Just 4% said they’d vote for reality star Caitlyn Jenner.
The poll of 1,085 voters, which has a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points, was conducted July 19-20.
Even if Newsom survives the Sept. 14 election, with ballots set to be mailed in mid-August, the latest poll suggests the governor faces an uphill battle when he is up for re-election in 2022. Fifty-eight percent of voters said they think it is time for a new governor in 2022, while 42% say they would re-elect Newsom. Not quite half, 49%, of voters said they approve of the overall job Newsom is doing, while 42% disapprove.
Voters are especially divided when it comes to his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, which has helped fuel the recall effort. A third of voters said he had done a poor job, while 19% said he’d done a fair job, 28% said he’d done a good job and 20% said his performance was excellent.
Just 11% of voters said Newsom had done an excellent job of handling wildfires, while 9% of voters labeled his handling of the current drought excellent. On homelessness, just 7% of voters said Newsom’s performance was excellent, while 52% gave him a poor rating.
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