Prominent measures leading in state poll
Four of November’s most visible ballot measures are carrying leads into the final months of the 2016 campaign, a new Public Policy Institute of California poll has found.
Proposition 64, which would legalize the recreational use of marijuana, holds a solid 60 percent to 36 percent lead among likely voters, pulling in majority support in every part of the state and with every ethnic group.
Even Republicans, typically California’s most conservative voters, only oppose legalization by a 46 percent to 52 percent ratio. Those against the measure, though, really don’t like it, with 59 percent saying that the outcome is “very important” to them.
Proposition 56, which would boost the tax on cigarettes by $2 per pack, also has a healthy lead, 59 percent to 36 percent. But Mark Baldassare,
director of the PPIC poll, warned that other tobacco tax measures have led late in the campaign, only to be buried under a flood of negative TV advertising from tobacco companies.
Proposition 55, an initiative that would extend the temporary tax increase on high earners established by Prop. 30 in 2012, also has majority support, with 54 percent in favor and 38 percent opposed. There’s a huge partisan split in the vote, with 78 percent of Democrats in favor, compared with only 15 percent of Republicans. A slim majority of independents, 51 percent, favor the tax extension.
The tightest race is for Prop. 51, the $9 billion school construction bond. It hasn’t cracked the magic 50 percent mark needed for victory yet, with 47 percent of those surveyed in favor and 43 percent opposed. That’s potentially bad news for supporters, since support for ballot measures — especially money measures — often wanes as election day nears.
The poll, taken from Sept. 9-18, is based on a telephone survey of 1,055 likely voters and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points. — John Wildermuth Death penalty uncertainty: A November initiative to repeal the death penalty in California is favored by 48 percent of likely voters and opposed by 37 percent, but its prospects for passage are uncertain, according to a Field-IGS poll scheduled for release Thursday.
The history of controversial ballot measures shows that those failing to win more than 50 percent support in pre-election surveys often fall short because previously undecided voters wind up joining the opposition, said Field Poll director Mark DiCamillo .He noted that a death penalty repeal initiative in 2012 led 45 to 38 percent in a poll taken a week before the election but wound up losing 52 to 48 percent.
Proposition 62, like the 2012 measure, would abolish capital punishment and replace it with a sentence of life in prison without parole. The poll, taken Sept. 7-13, found strong support among Democrats, independents and residents of coastal counties, with 60 percent backing in the Bay Area. Younger voters were more likely to support Prop. 62 than older ones, and majorities of whites and Asian Americans also favored the measure.
The poll also reported uncertain prospects for Prop. 66, a rival initiative sponsored by prosecutors and police groups, which would retain the death penalty and seek to speed up executions by setting tight deadlines for court rulings and limiting appeals. It was supported by 35 percent of likely voters and opposed by 23 percent, with 42 percent undecided. If both measures win a majority, the one with the most affirmative votes will become law.
When likely voters were asked the simpler question of which penalty they preferred for firstdegree murder, 55 percent favored life without parole and 45 percent favored death, with virtually no respondents undecided, the polling organization said. That compares with a 48 to 40 percent preference for life without parole in 2011 and a 44 to 37 percent preference for death when the question was first asked in 2009.
The responses come from an online survey, in English and Spanish, of 942 Californians who said they plan to vote in November and reflect the state’s overall voting population, the polling group said. Because of the methodology, Field Research considers the percentages reliable with no margin of error, DiCamillo said.
— Bob Egelko Russian alarms: A new website called PutinTrump.org went live Wednesday. It’s the product of veteran journalists terrified by what they see as the most dangerous and overlooked issue of the election: alleged attempts by Russian President Vladimir Putin to tip the presidential election to Republican Donald Trump.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, warned back in July that Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee was an “electronic Watergate.” The Russian hacking, which also unearthed former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s emails, are only a part of the story, said PutinTrump.org founder Bill Buzenberg, former head of news for National Public Radio and former chief of the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization.
Buzenberg said there is evidence that Trump is in debt to Russian oligarchs, but “we don’t know how much because we can’t see his tax returns.”
Trump was famously confused about Russia’s annexation of Crimea. His posture toward the takeover and his questioning of U.S. support for NATO allies have also raised wide alarms.
Two recent examples are an investigative piece in Newsweek on the dangers Trump’s foreign business ties pose to national security, and a U.S. News and World Report story on Putin’s attempted influence on the election.
A choir of Republican foreign policy hands is refusing to support Trump but worries that a lot of GOP voters tell themselves, “‘Well, maybe it’s OK,’ ” Buzenberg said. “We’re trying to say, this is really not OK.”
— Carolyn Lochhead