How hard would it be for Gov. Gavin Newsom to lose tonight’s special election?
“It would simply take a giant revolt among California Democrats,” CNN’s John King said, going on to describe the political context in the state ahead of today’s recall election.
“Let’s go back to the history. 2018 Gavin Newsom wins the election with 62% of the vote. California is an overwhelmingly blue state. Fast forward to 2020 and the presidential election… Joe Biden wins by an even greater percentage, 63.5% to 34% for Donald Trump. California even more voter registration trending even more in favor of the Democrats,” King explained. “Not only would all the Republicans have to turn out and vote against him, a lot of Democrats would have to vote against him or stay home. It’s that perfect storm of a revolt among Democrats that it would take. The polling suggests that won’t happen, but we will be counting votes in a little while.”
King told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that populous counties are the ones to watch tonight to get an early glimpse on which direction the results will go in.
He pointed to Los Angeles County, the most populous county in the state that has a “huge part of the Democratic base.”
“It will tell us, are Latinos voting? What is the percentage? How many Democrats are saying, ‘Sorry, governor, we want to recall you.’ The largest county in the state will give us a good glimpse of that,” he said.
The second largest county, San Diego, is also one to watch. “Republicans or recall supporters need to flood out here,” King explained.
Orange County is another key county to pay attention, “recall supporters need an overwhelming turnout here. If this is blue tonight, Gavin Newsom will stay in his term as governor.”
Smaller red counties are areas where recall candidates would need to gain traction, King said.
“You see all these red counties? Most of them don’t have a lot of people in them. Only two, only two of the top ten in terms of population counties in California, were red back in the last governor’s race. So the smaller counties, it’s just like the Trump election in 2020, not only do the recall supporters have to win these smaller red counties, the turnout has to be overwhelming,” he explained.
Watch John King’s Magic Wall analysis here:
