Recalling What's Ahead

My predictions don't matter.  I read polls and read news analyses.  But polls can be flexible, and new analyses cover a lot of ground.  Still, I can make predictions -- which, while somewhat informed, are meaningless, since it's the end result in reality that matters.

That said, I think Gavin Newsom will not only not be recalled, but the margin won't be especially close.  (To be clear, "won't be especially close" is still much closer than it should be.  It should 80% "No" and 20% Republican far-right lunatic fringe.)

Over the summer, when the recall election was qualified, Nate Silver's fiverthirtyeight.com showed that the governor had a respectably safe 10.8 point margin.  It stayed between there and 6.7 points through early August.  Then, on August 4, for reasons I haven't been able to figure, since I don't recall any Major News Story the days before, it plummeted to a margin of only .2 points. 

But the last two weeks, the numbers have steadily risen.  Up to a margin of 6.4 points a week ago, then up to 8.6 last Friday, and Nate Silver now shows a 10.5 point margin yesterday.

In fact, last week, the Public Policy Institute of California (to which Silver gives a very good A/B rating) had the margin in favor of Gov. Newsom by 18.5 points.  That's clearly an outlier, but given the direction of the polls in Nate Silver's more-balanced studies, the difference is narrowing.

Yes, these are just polls, snapshots in time, as they're often referred -- but there are two reasons I'm inclined to believe them.

The first is that, before these poll results were released, I'd read article that said now that the focus of the recall had changed from "Should Gov. Newsom be recalled" to, in essence, being seen as a race between Gov. Gavin Newsom and far-right radio host Larry Elder, the likely winner of the 45 recall candidates, that that should work strongly in Gov. Newsom's favor.  After all, whatever one feels about Newsom, California is still a very strong Democratic state -- by about two to one -- and the reality of replacing a liberal Democratic governor with a right-wing Republican radio host nut job with no experience is unacceptable.

And the second reason is that every voter in the state is sent a mail-in ballot.  And once those would come in the mail, I thought the recall would shift from being, "Let's send a message about..." whatever and become focused on, again, the reality that this is an actual election, and the Democratic governor could really, truly be kicked out of office.  And, as noted, Democrats outnumber Republicans in California by around two to one.  As it happens, the shift up in the polls for Gov. Newsom began to occur shortly after mail-in ballots were received.  Cause and effect, or coincidence?  I don't know.  I only know that it's what I thought might happen.  And it did.

Early results show that mail-in ballots are coming from Democratic voters and giving Newsom a solid lead.  But that's not terribly meaningful, but it has long been believed that the mail-in votes would favor Democrats while Republicans would go to the polls.  Still, if these numbers hold, it's very bad for the recall effort

First, as I've noted a couple of times here, California is very heavily Democratic.  The bigger the margin to keep Gov. Newsom, the less likely there would even be enough Republican votes to overcome that.  Second, if the news story keeps building about the big lead Newsom has, though could depress Republican turnout, since the recall is the only thing on the ballot.  And third, even with early voting, who knows what conditions could keep someone from going to the polls, especially if they plan to vote on September 14 Election Day.

There's one other factor that benefits Gov. Newsom -- the Democrats are bringing in the big guns.  This last week before voting, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar and Vice President Kamala Harris are all coming to the state to campaign and get out the vote.  There's zero people on the Republican side who are -- or really can -- do the same thing.

Amusingly, Trump sycophant Candace Owens sent out a tweet yesterday about how it was "great news" for the Elder campaign to hear that Kamala Harris was going to be campaigning in California against the recall, because she was (apparently) so unliked.  Man, talk about East Coast far-right myopia!!!

I sent back a reply to her that Kamala was SO liked in California that voters here elected her Attorney General twice, elected her United States Senator, and with Joe Biden, voted for them as President and Vice President by a margin of 29 points!  

So, yeah, if this is what Republicans consider "good news" for Larry Elder, I'd hate to see their bad news. 

Actually...I have.  It's the poll results.  And they're not only very problematic for the recall, but they're getting progressively worse by the day.

Yes, they're only polls.  And yes, this is only a guess on my part.  And in the end, all this above is empty to the point of meaningless.  And Democrats still have to push hard to get the vote out, since that's the only thing that matters.

But man, I'd hate to be on the other side of the aisle.

And this Republican insanity to overturn an election only cost the state $276 million.

Whatever happens on September 14 -- even if Gov. Newsom is retain -- California has to change its election laws, for all the reasons I wrote here.  Happily,. polls show that a strong majority in the state agree.