With a new poll Tuesday night, political pundits in California have more ammunition for their sense that voters will approve Proposition 50 and give Democrats carte blanche to replace the state’s independently-drawn congressional districts with maps designed to punt members of the GOP from the U.S. House of Representatives.
In a new survey of likely voters by the Public Policy Institute of California, 56 percent said they plan to vote yes on Proposition 50 — dubbed the Election Rigging Response Act — and 43 percent said they would vote no. The poll follows others that recently showed majority support for the measure and comes as supporters trounce opponents in fundraising and spending ahead of the Nov. 4 election. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has taken the lead on stumping for the proposition, took the unusual step on Monday of telling his supporters to close their wallets.
“We have hit our budget goals and raised what we need in order to pass Proposition 50,” reads the email sent to supporters. “You can stop donating.”
Amy Thoma Tan, a spokesperson for the “No on Prop. 50” campaign funded by megadonor Charles Munger Jr., said the policy institute is a “legit” polling outfit.
“It’s not entirely surprising,” she said of the polling result. “We’re being outspent two-to-one.”
A spokesperson for “Yes on 50” did not immediately return a call for comment. Tan said her team is continuing its campaign to persuade the millions of voters who still haven’t returned their ballot. Munger, a longtime proponent of independent redistricting, has funded advertisements that Prop. 50 would take California backwards by replacing the work of the state’s Independent Redistricting Commission, which is tasked with drawing unbiased political boundaries. Newsom and the slew of Democrats campaigning for the measure have emphasized that the state would only temporarily use gerrymandered political maps.
Mark Baldassare, survey director at the policy institute, said Prop. 50 is unusually “high-profile” for a ballot measure.
In the survey, 68% of likely voters said the outcome of the special election is “very important.” Baldassare said that’s the most interest he’s ever seen in 20 years of asking California voters about ballot measures. It’s probably the case because of the measure’s national significance, he said: If passed, Prop. 50 could help Democrats retake the House in the 2026 midterm elections and block elements of President Donald Trump’s agenda. Its relevance is still up in the air, however, as Republicans in other states move to re-draw districts to give their party an edge.
The survey of 943 likely voters throughout the state had a sampling error of 4.1 percentage points. The polling institute conducted the survey from Oct. 7-14.