One of the most important things to remember in election season is that most voters do not fall into neat political boxes. However, some are more inconsistent than others. No voters contradict themselves more than those who cast their ballots in California.
The Public Policy Institute of California recently dropped its big “Californians and Their Government” poll ahead of the 2024 elections, detailing everything from how Californians feel about candidates on the ballot to their view of ballot propositions. The most notable result was from polling on Proposition 36, which would increase some felony sentences for criminals and allow felony charges for serial thieves and shoplifters, among other things. Prop 36 is poised to pass in a landslide, with the PPIC poll finding 73% of Californians supporting it to just 28% in opposition.
That is an overwhelming majority of the state’s residents who are fed up with pro-criminal policies that make their communities unsafe. Yet Prop 36 is needed only because California Democrats pushed a previous proposition to lessen criminal penalties as part of the state’s reforms aimed at keeping criminals out of jail because of dislike of “mass incarceration.” Despite this, Californians are still willing to hand power to Democrats who made crime worse despite being enraged by the results and being faced with having to clean up that mess with a statewide ballot proposition.
Take Vice President Kamala Harris. A California resident, the Democratic presidential nominee was the state’s attorney general when Proposition 45 (which Prop 36 is partially repealing) passed. Harris has refused to take a public position on Prop 36, despite its overwhelming popularity, meaning it would only be beneficial for her to support it. That suggests Harris opposes the measure, which isn’t a surprise given her criminal justice “reform” record.
But even as Californians overwhelmingly support Prop 36 and cracking down on crime, they also want to put Harris into the presidency. Californians support Harris 59%-33% in PPIC’s poll. The same is true of Rep. Adam Schiff, the Democrat running for U.S. Senate in California, who also tacitly endorses the status quo by refusing to weigh in on Prop 36. Schiff is leading in the PPIC poll by 63%-37%.
If you bring it down to a more local analysis, you can see a similar cognitive dissonance. In terms of issues, the top three Californians highlight, according to PPIC are “the economy, including the cost of living and jobs” (35%), housing costs (18%), and homelessness (12%). All are issues that California Democrats have failed to address (or, in the case of homelessness, made worse). State Democrats have instead prioritized making it easier for schools to hide student gender transitions from parents or on climate initiatives forcing people to change their ways of life. (Climate polls at 5% in the PPIC poll as a top issue).
Despite this, the PPIC poll found that Democrats are leading Republicans in House races in California 61%-38%. The poll also found that 57% of Californians disapprove of their current House representative, compared to 39% who approve. Yet the same voters have sent 40 Democrats to the House and just 12 Republicans. Somehow, 61% of Californians are voting for a Democrat for the House, 57% disapprove of their current representative, and 77% of those representatives are Democrats.
Similarly, 54% of Californians disapprove of their representatives in the State Assembly and State Senate, with just 42% approving. Similarly, 77% of California state senators are Democrats, and 78% of assemblymen are Democrats. California Democrats have a supermajority in the state legislature despite their approval being underwater. As a whole, the state legislature has a 56% disapproval rating with just 42% approval.
The same holds for Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA). Newsom’s approval is underwater, with 44% approving and 53% disapproving. That includes 56% disapproval among independents, with just 38% approving. That is remarkably similar to the negative numbers Newsom was seeing in 2021 during the recall campaign against him. In August 2021, a San Diego Tribune poll found that 51% of voters wanted to remove Newsom from office, with just 40% wanting to keep him.
Yet political gravity reasserted itself a month before that recall election, and Newsom coasted to safety 62%-38%. He then won reelection the next year, 59%-41%, showing some decay in support but still a comfortable lead for a politician that California voters don’t like.
Newsom isn’t able to run for reelection again, but the next governor of California will almost certainly continue to push the state down his failing liberal path (with a presidential loss, the next governor of California may even be Kamala Harris). Currently, 60% of Californians think the state is going in the wrong direction, and 62% think bad economic conditions are on the horizon for the state over the next year.
With those numbers, you would think California voters would want to end the Democratic monopoly on state power. But is there really any doubt that they will reelect Democrats to massive legislative majorities and eventually elect a Democrat as governor again in 2026? Again, they support Harris for president 59%-33%, even as 69% think the United States is on the wrong track under the administration of which she is a part.
None of this should make sense. Californians think the state is heading the wrong way, think all the institutions of power run by Democrats are doing a terrible job, and want to use statewide ballot propositions to overturn Democratic policies, but they also want to reelect all the Democrats who have been in charge and who oppose the voter-led attempt to reverse their policies. It is a level of cognitive dissonance that seems impossible.
But voters, in general, are not particularly rational or ideologically consistent, and it would be naive to expect them to be. People can and usually do hold views that, in logic, are mutually exclusive. California voters just manage to take that to the incoherent extreme, where they think everything is wrong but want all the wrong people to continue controlling everything as the state continues in the wrong direction.
The explanation for this, surely, is that voting is largely tribal and emotive, even those it has a direct effect on practical policy where the rubber meets the road. Voters want safe neighborhoods, affordable housing, and inexpensive energy, all of which they’re more likely to get from the Republican government. But many of them, especially in California, also want to be part of the “progressive” political tribe. Democratic leaders and message manufacturers have done a better job than their Republican counterparts of persuading voters that they, not their opponents, are on the side of the little guy, are more humane and caring, and are not motivated by a lust for power or wealth. It is tiredly bogus, but it has worked.
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It does a lot to explain why California is so poorly run. Californians know their state is failing, yet refuse to hold the guilty Democratic Party accountable. Newsom knows he can give preferential treatment to his Hollywood friends and violate his own COVID-19 lockdown restrictions without worrying about voters tossing him out in a recall campaign or reelection campaign. State legislators know they can pursue whatever partisan liberal priorities they want without delivering what their districts want because they will get reelected anyway. California voters have given state Democrats a blank check, or in this case, a blank ballot, to do whatever they want.
Regardless of which party wins or loses nationally, two things are certain: California Democrats will win, and California voters will lose. It is a shame for such a naturally gifted state that has the potential to deliver for so many people, and yet it is exactly the fate to which California voters have consigned themselves.
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