Latino Vote Realignment (CA)

[Skill and Chance]

Can we please wait until >95% of the votes are in to establish any basis for 'granular' analysis like that? This goes for both sides btw, not just OP: Newsom's margin keeps narrowing as more of the election-day vote keeps coming in (not unlike 2020), so places like San Bernandino/Riverside could still easily end up flipping. Kind of hilarious to make bold claims about Latinos shifting D without Trump on the ballot when only 40% of the vote in Imperial County is in and the recall is already doing two points better than Trump/slightly better than Cox there.

But not enough votes have been counted to run the conclusive analyses that political analysts are hungry for, including: At what levels did Latino voters and young people turn out? What happened in rural areas? And what do the results mean for California’s hotly contested U.S. House seats?

Out of the more than 9.1 million votes tabulated as of Wednesday, nearly 64% supported keeping Newsom in office. The Associated Press estimates that about 13 million people voted, meaning as many as 4 million ballots are still uncounted — making a granular analysis of voter behavior or demographics almost impossible.

That hasn’t stopped analysts from trying, though.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-09-15/california-recall-how-many-ballots-are-left-to-be-counted

The single biggest thing this recall proves is not that there will be a D wave in 2022 (this was a D+30/D+29 state even in a R-leaning/neutral year), but that turnout this high (with every voter being mailed a ballot) will almost always reflect the state's partisanship despite what patterns unreliable early polling identifies in turnout/party enthusiam (this was also a major reason behind the polling failure in MT in 2020). Combined with the embarrassing R campaign in this state, there is nothing surprising about this result (I had NO falling slightly short of 60%, looks like it will end up slightly above it).

I don't think the CA recall is particularly relevant for 2022, but it could be very relevant for VA and NJ 2021.  They are both very high in college+ voters who favor strict COVID measures and they both have election rules that encourage high turnout like CA.  Early voting in VA starts tomorrow.

[Skill and Chance]

Speaking of Imperial, here's the latest update:

NO 10,296 62.05%
YES 6,296 37.95%

They are <50% in, though, so you can't make assumptions from this.  Most important indicators so far are Riverside and San Bernardino right of Orange (!) plus Newsom < Biden in San Diego and L.A.  So far it's Newsom > Biden in the Bay area and Biden > Newsom everywhere else, most notably in SoCal.

[Skill and Chance]

It's also worth noting that if this trend really takes off, Republicans eventually have an EC problem.  It's not ideal to end up winning Florida and Texas by 12 while losing NY and CA by 12, especially if Dems start breaking through more in high floor/low ceiling Southern states.   

[Skill and Chance]

Speaking of Imperial, here's the latest update:

NO 10,296 62.05%
YES 6,296 37.95%

New results:

NO 12,111 63.04%
YES 7,101 36.96%

Which means that this

Imperial County is right of the state at this election

is no longer true.

They are only 43% in.  Given what has happened in the rest of SoCal with the second half of the vote, I would be shocked if Imperial doesn't fall under 60% No.