California voters overwhelmingly back the tough-on-crime ballot initiative that has dominated political discussion ahead of November’s election, according to a new statewide poll released Wednesday.
Seventy-one percent of likely voters said they support Proposition 36, which would strengthen criminal penalties for repeat offenders of drug and theft crimes. The poll, conducted by the Public Policy Institute of California, found that just 26 percent would vote against it.
Asked which measure on this year’s ballot they are most interested in, 26 percent of likely voters named Prop 36 — far more than any of the other nine issue questions on the ballot in November. Three in four said they believe the outcome of the vote on Prop 36 is very or somewhat important.
The measure also got support from across the political spectrum: 85 percent of Republicans said they would vote “Yes” on Prop 36, as would 73 percent of independents and 63 percent of Democrats.
Prop 36 got the highest support among this year’s slate of 10 ballot measures.
Prop 3, a constitutional amendment that would remove dormant language banning same-sex marriage from the state constitution, also saw strong support among California’s likely voters: 68 percent support it, compared with 31 percent who oppose it. And 63 percent of likely voters said they would vote “Yes” on Prop 35, a measure to make permanent a tax on certain health care plans in order to fund Medi-Cal.
A majority of likely voters also say they would vote “Yes” on the two bonds on the November ballot — Prop 2, a $10 billion school construction bond, and Prop 4, a $10 billion bond to fund climate-related projects. Sixty-five percent said they would vote “Yes,” on Prop 4, and 54 percent said they would vote “Yes” on Prop 2.
The margins are tighter for other measures. A slim majority of voters would back both Prop 33, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation-backed measure to allow local governments to enact rent control restrictions (51 percent), and Prop 34, targeted at the AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s political activities (53 percent).
Voters were split on Prop 32, which would raise the minimum wage to $18 per hour: 50 percent support the proposal, compared with 49 percent who oppose it.
Just two of the 10 measures got less than 50 percent support: Prop 5, which would lower the voter threshold for approving public housing projects, and Prop 6, which would change the state constitution to outlaw involuntary servitude.
Just because a measure has support from a majority of voters is no guarantee it will pass: Ballot measures are prone to significant swings in public opinion over the course of a campaign.
Data from nearly two decades’ worth of surveys from the Field Poll, a longtime California statewide poll, found that to have a better than even chance of being approved by the voters, a ballot measure needed to start out with a statistically significant lead. Even then, just 60 percent of those measures were actually approved at the ballot box.
The PPIC poll also found Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris leading former President Donald Trump in California by 31 points, 60 percent to 29 percent.
Adam Schiff, the Democrat running for U.S. Senate, holds a similarly large lead over his Republican opponent, Steve Garvey: Schiff beats Garvey 63 percent to 35 percent.
Fifty-six percent of those surveyed in California said they were satisfied with the choice of candidates in the presidential race, up from just 36 percent who said the same back in April, when President Joe Biden was still Democrats’ presidential candidate.
The PPIC poll surveyed 1,071 likely voters between Aug. 29 and Sept. 9, and has a margin of error of +/- 3.7 percentage points.
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