One year into the coronavirus pandemic and with nearly a year left in his term, a majority of Californians are done with Gov. Gavin Newsom, a new poll from Emerson College says.
Commissioned by Nexstar, the corporate owner of Fresno’s television duopoly and Bakersfield’s KGET-TV, the statewide poll found that 58.3 percent of Californians were ready for someone new to serve as Governor in 2022.
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41.7 percent of polled voters said they would vote to re-elect Newsom to a second, four-year term.
The poll, which sampled 1,000 registered Californians, had a margin of error of 3 percent.
The poll comes as welcome news to Newsom’s top rivals in a recall or 2022 match-up.
“Nearly 60 percent of Californians are ready to turn the page on Gavin Newsom’s failures,” Gustavo Portela, press secretary for former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer said. “Democrats, Republicans, and Independents are all ready for change. Gavin Newsom has ignored the needs of the people of California for too long. Kevin Faulconer is ready to provide a new direction and lead a California Comeback.”
While Newsom’s unpopularity reaches an all-time high, Californians are not fully sold on recalling Newsom in 2021, however.
The Nexstar/Emerson poll shows the recall trailing 38 percent to 42 percent, just outside the margin of error.
However, a sizable 13.9 percent of voters are undecided on the recall, leaving Newsom’s ouster on a razor’s edge.
Another 6.1 percent indicated to pollsters that they wouldn’t vote in a recall election.
By party, nearly 12 percent of Democrats, 40 percent of No Party Preference, and more than 86 percent of Republicans backed the recall effort.
Shortly after the poll was released, Newsom – who spent recent months deflecting questions from reporters about the momentum of the recall – launched a campaign seeking to recast the ouster effort as being aligned with President Donald Trump.
However, recall organizers note that 31 percent of signatories on the current recall petition are either Democrats are not registered with a party preference, a voter bloc driven to sign-on by Newsom’s coronavirus response.
Newsom is now set for a national TV sit-down on ABC’s talk show The View on Tuesday.
