By Connie Sullivan —
On Tuesday, September 14, Californians went to the polls to vote for or against the recall of Governor Gavin Newsom. Or, in many cases Californians voted prior to September 14 via mail-in ballots or in-person at an early vote center.
When I visited the LA County Registrar’s office on September 16, I learned that 83% of LA County voters had voted by mail-in ballot. That percentage could change as the vote count of late-arriving mail-in ballots and in-person provisional ballots gets added into the final count.
Here on the Peninsula, the vast majority of precincts voted against the recall. The most glaring exception was Rolling Hills, where both precincts voted overwhelmingly to recall the Governor. In Palos Verdes Estates, one precinct voted to recall the Governor and the other precinct voted to retain him. In each case, the vote was very close. Both Rolling Hills Estates and Rancho Palos Verdes each had one precinct that voted Yes on the recall, which were out of sync with the rest of the precincts in those two cities. Most of this information comes from the interactive map the LA Times placed on their website, which can be accessed here [Editor’s Note: accessing the link may require a LA Times subscription]: https://www.latimes.com/projects/newsom-recall-election-results-southern-california-analysis/#nt=contextualNav
The map shows data for the entire LA, Orange and San Diego counties and is fun to play with.
A couple of patterns emerged from the recall election. One, the counties with high COVID vaccination rates tended to vote to retain the Governor, and the low vaccination rate counties voted to remove him.
Also, much has been made of a troubling (for Democrats) decline in support for Newsom among Latino men. His win percentage among this group, while still positive, is smaller than in 2018. This seems to echo the Latino male 2020 support for Trump vs. Biden. The party will be looking closely at this phenomenon to try to understand it.
Thank you for all the above information. It was helpful.