SAN DIEGO — A survey conducted by the Yankelovich Center for Social Science Research at UC San Diego found wide-ranging support among every demographic, income and party group in California for making "major changes" to California's recall process, it was announced Thursday.
However, it also found divergence along party lines for which reforms in particular voters would get behind.
The survey also reveals what voter roll records cannot: that the people participating in California's 2021 election were not representative of the state. Recall voters tended to be older, richer and whiter than both the state's registered voter population as a whole and the electorate that participated in the last presidential election in 2020.
The survey was conducted during the week of the 2021 recall election with 2,812 respondents reflective of California's registered voter population. It was led by UCSD political scientist Thad Kousser, co-director of the Yankelovich Center, and political science doctoral student Cassidy Reller.
"Our findings suggest that as we discuss reforms to California's recall process, we shouldn't be focused on simply making recalls harder to initiate, we should be focused on making them more representative," Kousser said. "Our findings also suggest that if state leaders want to craft a suite of proposals that would have broad appeal to the entirety of our state's population, they may want to bring voters of every party affiliation, as well as independent voters, into the discussion."
One idea gaining support to encourage more widespread voter participation from all groups: breaking the recall into two separate elections. The first would determine whether or not there would be a recall. Depending on the outcome, another, separate election would later be held to choose a replacement.
"Have it where it is really open to strong candidates on both sides, because that that is part of what really brings out a big and broad electorate," Kousser explained.
A unique feature of the survey, Kousser said, is that the polling was done both in the two days prior to the Sept. 14 contest and in the two days following, that is both before people knew the outcome of the election -- that the Democratic governor had survived the recall and that Republican Larry Elder had garnered the most votes as a replacement candidate -- and after the results were known. This allowed the researchers to assess whether support for reform was contingent on the outcome.
Researchers found that in fact, it was outcome-contingent, as satisfaction with the process rose among Democrats after the election and fell among Republicans.
"Going in to the recall Republicans were pretty excited and satisfied with the process, Democrats not so much," Kousser said. "But after they heard the results, Republicans were more dissatisfied, and Democrats were happier with the process."
The only reform that was supported by a majority of all respondents was to limit the grounds for recall elections to "concerns about corruption or criminal acts." Overall, two-thirds of respondents supported the idea and only 26% opposed it. While there was some partisan divide over this proposal -- 76% of Democrats in favor compared to 61% of Independents and 52% of Republicans -- it still had majority support in each of these groups.
"Democrats, Independents, and Republicans....all of them by a majority favored this idea," Kousser told News 8.
Other survey findings include that voters back creating a reform commission, but are also open to legislative proposals for reform, and that there is a deep partisan divide over concerns about election fraud that grew even wider after the election.
Any changes to the state's recall process would first have to be approved by California's voters in a statewide referendum, which could potentially be on the ballot as soon as November of 2022.
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