By admin 
Support for a ballot measure to tax billionaires slid six points since September as California’s ultra-wealthy class spend hundreds of millions of dollars opposing the measure, according to a newly released poll from the Public Policy Institute of California released one week before the Nov. 3 election.
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The October poll found just 46% of likely voters would vote yes on Proposition 40, the billionaire’s tax, while 52% would vote no. That’s a flip from the September polling, when 52% of likely voters considered themselves a Yes vote. The latest polling was conducted from Oct. 16 to Oct. 22.
The 6% lead for the No side falls outside the poll’s margin of error, which was around 3% according to PPIC.
The decline was among the most noteworthy changes in polling about the November ballot, PPIC poll director Mark Baldassare told The Sacramento Bee. Democratic gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra maintained a 24-point lead over Republican Steve Hilton in the governor’s race, up from a 22-point lead in September. A majority of voters continue to tell pollsters they’re more likely to vote for a Democrat than a Republican for the U.S. House, though the survey does not break down the state’s contested battleground district races.
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Proposition 45 slips into minority support
Meanwhile, the split over another of the election cycle’s most contentious measures, a bid to reform permitting under the California Environmental Quality Act, remained tight. However, for the first time in PPIC’s polling the measure, Proposition 45, faces opposition from a slim majority of likely voters. Now, 50% of respondents told PPIC’s pollsters they’d vote against it, while 46% said they planned to back it and 4% remain undecided.
A month ago, 49% of likely voters said they were a yes on the measure, while 46% were a no.
Prop. 45 would impose deadlines on agencies to complete CEQA reviews and on courts to resolve lawsuits for eight categories of building projects. Proponents, which include business interests, home builders and utility companies, say it will speed projects that California communities are dying to build, but that are hampered by cost increases and delays from CEQA litigation. Opponents say it too heavily tilts the judicial and regulatory scales toward approving projects over community objections. It also gives developers a route to sue the government over project denials.
The tight margins, after campaigning by both sides, show the measure is a tricky one for Californians who value environmental protections but are frustrated by the state’s high housing and utility costs, Baldassare said. In the same survey data, more than half of Californians named the cost of living, inflation and housing costs as the most important issues facing the state.
“This is a tough one for people to figure out how they should vote on this,” Baldassare said of Prop. 45. “I think it’s one of the propositions that people are most conflicted about.”
The tight polling reflects divides around the proposal that have played out in some unusual ways. Though a majority of Republican voters favors Prop. 45, 41% remain opposed in the latest PPIC poll, and some county-level Republican parties have split from the state central committee, which endorsed it. Affordable housing groups have also split over the measure, and some prominent elected Democratic officials who have called for CEQA reforms in the past, such as Gov. Gavin Newsom, have stayed on the sidelines.
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The California Democratic Party opposes Prop. 45, and the coalition against it is composed principally of environmental organizations and labor unions.
The two sides have clashed mightily over data centers, which are broadly unpopular with the public and which the No campaign says could make a bid for the streamlined permitting process, something the Yes side strenuously denies.
Voters in earlier polling indicated broad support for reforming CEQA, if not necessarily for the specifics of Prop. 45. Of likely voters, 73% told PPIC this summer they’d vote yes on a proposal to modify environmental reviews for housing, transportation, health, water and clean energy projects. At the time the question did not carry the specific ballot language for the measure.
Election security
PPIC’s pollsters were calling voters amid an extraordinary period of clashes between federal and state officials over California’s election security. U.S. Department of Justice attorneys sued the state in an attempt to force a review its voter rolls, and last week brought highly publicized charges against 28 California residents they said voted illegally because they are not U.S. citizens. State officials have defended California’s electoral systems and accused the Trump administration of sowing doubt and chaos ahead of the midterm election.
A majority of Californians maintain confidence in the state’s ballot counting. Of likely voters, 63% have either “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the state’s election system, according to the poll, while 15% said they had only “some confidence” and 22% said they had “very little confidence.” Seven in 10 likely voters support sending a vote-by-mail ballot to every active registered voter before each election.
Proposition 39, which is conservative Assemblymember Carl DeMaio’s answer to what he says are widespread, bipartisan concerns about the state’s election security, continued in the latest PPIC poll to be underwater, with just 41% saying they’d vote for it. Prop. 39 would require voters to bring a government-issued ID to polling places or write the end of an identification number on mail ballots. It also requires county officials to scrub voter rolls for citizenship.
As economic worries grow, Newsom’s popularity dips
Governor Newsom’s favorability ratings have dipped in the last months of his eight-year tenure as state leader. Just 47% of polled adults and 49% of likely voters told PPIC this month they approved of his job performance. It is the first time his job performance rating has dipped in the PPIC poll below 50% since last October. About 7 in 10 Democrats and 1 in 10 Republicans approve of the governor, and he is more popular in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles than elsewhere in California, PPIC found.
Newsom is widely considered to be planning a presidential bid in 2028. His dip in the polling this month seems less attributable to any new policy position or statements than to just a general gloom among California residents about the state’s direction, Baldassare said. A large majority of voters, 79% are pessimistic about the economy, around 73% say their income isn’t keeping up with inflation and 55% say the state is headed in the wrong direction.
“This is just general unhappiness,” Baldassare said. And, “what you’re seeing in our poll from that general unhappiness is now some majorities saying they disapprove of their governor and their Legislature.”
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