Newsom Calls for 'Unprecedented' Voter Turnout as New Poll Shows His Lead Widening
SAN JOSE (KPIX) -- With under a hundred hours left for California voters to turn in their ballots in the governor's recall election, a new UC Berkeley poll released Friday showed Gov. Gavin Newsom keeping his job.
"A very comfortable advantage for the governor at this point," said UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies Director Mark DiCamillo.
In July, the UC Berkeley IGS poll showed voters were nearly split in half on the recall but a more recent poll shows 60.1 percent of voters saying Newsom should stay.
DiCamillo said half of California's 22 million voters are expected to turn in their ballots for the recall election. With more than 7 million ballots already counted, DiCamillo said it would take a massive turnout by Republicans on Tuesday to unseat Newsom.
"Which our poll doesn't seem to indicate that that's the case," he said.
"Pollsters could be wrong on what we're expecting right now and there could be more Republican enthusiasm waiting on that Election Day," said San Francisco State University political science professor Jason McDaniel.
The governor is getting support from the White House. On Monday, Pres. Biden is expected to rally with Newsom in Long Beach to encourage voters to vote "no" in the recall election.
"We're going to win this election and the way we do that is to turn out the vote," Newsom said to a group of reporters in Sacramento after he turned in his ballot.
Meanwhile, just two days after Republican gubernatorial candidate Larry Elder cut a campaign event short when a woman threw eggs at him, Elder appeared re-energized on the campaign trail.
"I believe that I can fix California, we've got problems here," he said. "I figured that I would do well in this race and, frankly, I'm not doing it for money. In fact, I'm losing money. I'm certainly not doing it for fame."
Despite the lead in the polls, Newsom is pushing voters to turn out. Another UC Berkeley poll shows 50 percent of voters feel that state leaders are handling the pandemic well, Thirteen percent to 15 percent think the government isn't doing enough and a third of voters believe the government is doing too much.
"This whole recall process has been weaponized," said Newsom. "Turn out in unprecedented numbers on September 14 so that we can put all this nonsense to rest."