Voters in poll side with Newsom, Democrats on Prop. 50

The statewide ballot measure introduced by California Democrats on Nov. 4 to aid the party’s efforts to gain control of the U.S. House of Representatives and suppress President Trump’s agenda came out ahead by a significant margin in new polling released Thursday.

Six in 10 likely voters support Proposition 50, a proposal by Gov. Gavin Newsom and his allies to redraw the state’s congressional districts to increase the number of Democrats in Congress, according to a poll by the UC Berkeley Institute of Government Studies co-sponsored by The Times. About 38% of likely voters oppose the ballot measure.

In off-year special elections, 71% of voters wary of the secretive and complex process of redistricting said they had heard a significant amount of information about the ballot measure, according to the poll.

“This is extraordinary,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of the IGS survey. “Even though it is an esoteric issue that does not affect their daily lives, it is an issue that voters pay attention to.”

That may be because roughly $158 million was donated in less than three months to major campaign committees supporting and opposing the measure, according to campaign fundraising reports filed with the state last week. Voters in the state were bombarded with political ads.

Californians who watched Tuesday night’s World Series game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Toronto Blue Jays saw this firsthand.

In the opening minutes of the game, former President Obama, Newsom, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and other leading Democrats spoke in favor of Proposition 50 in an ad that would have cost at least $250,000 to air, according to a Democratic media buyer unconnected with the campaign.

According to the poll, the distribution among voters was highly partisan; More than 9 in 10 Democrats support Proposition 50, while a similar share of Republicans oppose it. Of voters who belong to other parties or identify as “no party preference,” 57 percent supported the ballot measure, while 39 percent opposed it.

Only 2% of likely voters surveyed said they were undecided, which DiCamillo said was highly unusual.

He said historically undecided voters, especially independents, often oppose ballot measures they are undecided on and prefer to stick with the status quo.

“There’s generally always been a rule of thumb: look at the undecideds in recent polls and assume the majority will vote no,” he said. “But this poll shows there are very few of them. Voters have a stake in that.”

The poll found Proposition 50 ahead by wide margins in voter-rich urban areas of Los Angeles County and the San Francisco Bay area. Voters in Orange County, the Inland Empire and the Central Valley were fairly evenly split.

Redistricting battles continue in states across the country, but California’s Proposition 50 has received a large share of national attention and donations. Newsom’s committee supporting Proposition 50 raised significantly more money than the two main committees opposing it; So much so that the governor this week told his supporters to stop sending checks.

The U.S. House of Representatives is controlled by the GOP but is narrowly divided. The party that wins control of Congress in the 2026 midterm elections will determine whether it can continue to implement Trump’s agenda or become subject to investigations and possibly another impeachment effort.

California’s 52 congressional districts (the most of any state) are currently determined by an independent, voter-approved commission every ten years after the U.S. census.

But after Trump this summer urged GOP leaders in Texas to redraw their districts to increase the number of Republicans in Congress, Newsom and other California Democrats decided in August to ask voters to allow a rare mid-decade partisan redrawing of the state’s district lines. If Proposition 50 passes, it could potentially add five more Democrats to the state’s congressional delegation.

Supporters of Proposition 50 have portrayed their efforts as a proxy fight against Trump and his policies, such as immigration raids and the deployment of the National Guard to the streets of Los Angeles, that have overwhelmingly affected Californians.

Opponents of the proposal have focused on the mechanics of redistricting, arguing that the ballot measure subverts the will of California voters who enacted the independent redistricting commission more than a decade ago.

“The results suggest that Democrats have succeeded in framing the debate surrounding the proposal around support or opposition to President Trump and national Republicans, rather than voters’ overall preference for nonpartisan redistricting,” IGS co-director Eric Schickler said in a statement.

Early voting data shows the pro-Proposition 50 message is a success.

Nearly 5 million Californians had voted as of Tuesday — about 21% of the state’s 23 million registered voters, according to trackers run by Democratic and Republican strategists.

Democrats far outnumber Republicans among registered voters in the state, and they outnumbered Republicans in returned ballots, 52% to 27%. 21 percent of the votes of voters who had no party preference or supported other political parties were returned.

The Berkeley/LA Times poll’s findings mirrored recent surveys by the Public Policy Institute of California, CBS News/YouGov and Emerson College.

Among voters surveyed by the Berkeley/LA Times poll, 67% of Californians who have already voted support Proposition 50, while 33% said they oppose the ballot measure.

The proposal also had an advantage among those who planned to vote but had not yet voted; 57 percent said they planned to support the effort, while 40 percent said they planned to oppose it.

But 70 percent of voters who plan to vote in person on election day, Nov. 4, said they would vote against Proposition 50, according to the poll. Less than 3 in 10 people who said they would vote at their local polling place said they would support redistricting, a rarity in the middle of the decade.

These numbers underscore a recent shift in the way Americans vote. Historically, Republicans voted early by mail, while Democrats voted on election day. But that dynamic has been upended in recent years as Trump questions the security of early voting and mail-in voting; He recently criticized Proposition 50.

“No Mail or ‘Early’ Voting, Yes to Voter ID! Watch how fraudulent the California Prop Vote is! Millions of Ballots are being ‘sent out’” Trump wrote on social media platform Truth Social:. “GET SMART REPUBLICANS BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE!!!”

GOP leaders across the state have pushed back on such messages without calling out the president. They urge Republicans to vote early, arguing that waiting to vote only gives Democrats a greater advantage in California elections.

Among the arguments promoted by the campaigns, the survey found, is that voters agree with every argument put forward by supporters of Proposition 50, particularly that the ballot measure would help Democrats gain control of the House of Representatives while countering Trump and his attempts to rig the 2026 election. But they also agreed that the ballot measure would further diminish the GOP’s power in California and that they do not trust partisan state lawmakers to draw congressional districts.

The Berkeley IGS/Times poll surveyed 8,141 registered California voters in English and Spanish from Oct. 20-27. Results are estimated to have a margin of error of 2 percentage points in either direction for the overall sample and larger numbers for subgroups.