SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The November election is one week from Tuesday, and about 13% of eligible voters have returned their ballot so far.
Newsom has been campaigning up and down the state this week but not for himself. He’s campaigning for Democrats in tight races and for Proposition 1, which would enshrine the right to abortion in the state constitution.
To put it quite simply, political data guru Paul Mitchell said Governor Newsom is “extremely” safe.
"The fact that they (Republicans) lost that recall election, the fact that a lot of their top tier candidates ended up in single digits in that recall election, the fact that they had gone to their donors and asked a lot of them for that recall election only to have it fail, really was the Republican Party and a lot of that establishment using up their resources," Mitchell said.
He said Newsom can afford to focus on other races.
“I think most of the attention is being paid to the key congressional races around the country," Mitchell said. "There were seven seats that Democrats picked up in 2018, and Republicans clawed back four of those in 2020. So those seats in their reconstructed form are some of the most closely watched.”
Political Analyst Steve Swatt said midterms usually punish the party in power, and Republicans only need to win five more seats nationally to take back control of the house.
“Since the Civil War, there have been 48 midterm elections, and the party of the president has lost 37 of those," Swatt said. "Since 1974, the average defeat for the president's party in these midterm elections has been 23 seats.”
One of the issues with not having an exciting race at the top is that It’s more work to get people to turn out to vote for races further down the ballot.
"The saving grace for Democrats might be the fact that they can now focus on Prop 1 and try to make this election kind of a polarized election around choice and around the Supreme Court," Mitchell said.
However, Swatt is skeptical it will make much of a difference.
"Governor Newsom has spent $5 million of his campaign fund doing some Prop1 advertisements to try to get California Democrats to the polls," Swatt said, "But I don't think that's going to be enough to really surge the vote in the state of California."
As of Tuesday, about 2.8 million ballots are in.
"I think by this point, we would have expected to see a little bit higher numbers, but there's really not a good comparison to this election," Mitchell said.
He said the last gubernatorial election in 2018 had a huge blue wave, and only seven of the 58 counties had mail-in ballots. Today, every county does.
Some of the closer congressional races to watch are taking place in the Central Valley and Southern California. Redistricting happened from the local level to the national level, so you have Democrats who are running in more red areas and vice versa.
President Biden is going to be in San Diego Thursday and Friday campaigning for one of those close races. He’s campaigning for Democrat Mike Levin. The non-partisan Cook Political Report rated that race as a toss-up.
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