Unofficial California Recall Prediction Thread

[politicallefty]

Last minute prediction, but I'll say No by 21%. The momentum really seems to be on Newsom's side. Not at all surprising, but I think the map looks like 2018 except that Orange, Riverside, and Merced Counties are all up in the air. Among the smaller counties, it's possible Lake votes Yes, but I think Nevada County will definitely vote No.

[OSR stands with Israel]

No by 11

[Burke Bro]

Fails 56-44. Elder falls just short of 40% on the second question, with Praffath coming in a surprisingly  strong second place.

[Pouring Rain and Blairing Music]

Voted “No, by 18-20”

So, No wins by about 59.5-40.5. Basically I don’t think No/Newsom will hit 60, but he will be very close. We’ll see in less than a week as to who’s right.

10 minutes before polls close and I think No will break 60% at this point.

Other predictions:
Inyo votes Yes
Kiley doesn’t win any counties

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

No by 18

[Pouring Rain and Blairing Music]

Voted “No, by 18-20”

So, No wins by about 59.5-40.5. Basically I don’t think No/Newsom will hit 60, but he will be very close. We’ll see in less than a week as to who’s right.

10 minutes before polls close and I think No will break 60% at this point.

Other predictions:
Inyo votes Yes
Kiley doesn’t win any counties

"No" is leading in Inyo County 53-47.

Inyo County going for Biden doesn’t look like much a fluke anymore.

Well then…

I’ll go find a crow from the side of the road and eat it for breakfast lol _/s

[Pedocon Theory is not a theory]

Definitely standing by this one.

[Antonio the Sixth]

No 59% - Yes 41%, +/- 3 points in either direction.

No might actually get over 62%, which would make this a miss (best type of miss, though!).

[SevenEleven]

Reposting from the main thread.

Four counties flip from 2018:

• Orange County (barely, under a point)
• San Bernadino County
• Merced County
• San Joaquin County

San Luis Obispo was really close in 2018, but it shifts hard left from then. Lake also shifts a few points left and does not flip. Nevada County has a similar margin to 2018. Ventura and San Diego vote to keep by around 10 points and 11-12 points respectively.

Overall margin is Remain +17 to Remain +18. Elder wins the replacement vote by large margins as expected, with Paffrath getting second, and Faulconer third.

lol

[TodayJunior]

By this time tomorrow night at 11PM eastern, Newsom will be declared the winner. "No" will win +26 or 63%/37%, not too dissimilar to Biden's margin last year. Enthusiasm doesn't matter when the math is just not there. It's bc Dems are engaged now and whatever shrinking Republican demographic was there has shrunk even further due to GOP flight to other states. Going forward, Republicans hitting 40% (or holding Dems to just below 60%) on any statewide race here should be considered a respectable loss.

Honestly, if the erosion continues even further, I could see California being a 70/30 or even 75/25 state.

Looks like it’s going to be even more “No” than I even thought. That went out with a mighty whimper. Three takeaways here:

1. Trump is still a viable punching bag and Dems are going to use this over and over again for multiple cycles to come, and it will work in any/every state that voted for Hillary Clinton and perhaps Arizona and Georgia bc of where these states are headed.

2. Newsom successfully nationalized this race and made this a choice instead of a referendum on him, where local/state issues were front and center.

3. As California continues to see conservatives flee bc they’ve thrown up their hands and given up, this will be a 70/30 state by the end of the decade. The best the Gop can hope for is 60/40 no matter who the candidate is.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/09/14/us/elections/results-california-recall.amp.html

[BoiseBoy]

Reposting from the main thread.

Four counties flip from 2018:

• Orange County (barely, under a point)
• San Bernadino County
• Merced County
• San Joaquin County

San Luis Obispo was really close in 2018, but it shifts hard left from then. Lake also shifts a few points left and does not flip. Nevada County has a similar margin to 2018. Ventura and San Diego vote to keep by around 10 points and 11-12 points respectively.

Overall margin is Remain +17 to Remain +18. Elder wins the replacement vote by large margins as expected, with Paffrath getting second, and Faulconer third.

lol

Merced, Riverside, and San Bernadino could still possibly flip. I was mostly off about San Joaquin. Looking like I got the replacement order right so far.

[Minnesota Mike]

Anyone going to talk about how bad the polls were? 538 av had NO +16, it's probably going to end up 8-10 points higher than that.  Polling really is broken.

[Non Swing Voter]

Anyone going to talk about how bad the polls were? 538 av had NO +16, it's probably going to end up 8-10 points higher than that.  Polling really is broken.

This does seem like something particularly hard to poll.  But yeah polls are garbage generally lately.  It seems like pollsters over-weighted Dems in 2020 so now they've corrected that by over-weighting the GOP.  My best guess based on the county results is that they underestimated how strongly white college educated voters would swing to Dems ("No").

[Pericles]

Anyone going to talk about how bad the polls were? 538 av had NO +16, it's probably going to end up 8-10 points higher than that.  Polling really is broken.

It looks like it was a race that was ripe for a polling error-there weren't that many polls to begin with, there was a big late shift in the polls, and it was the classic type of race where the polls and the partisanship of the state didn't match (usually it's ones in Republican states like TN 2018 so it was nice to see Dems benefit).

[Progressive Pessimist]

Anyone going to talk about how bad the polls were? 538 av had NO +16, it's probably going to end up 8-10 points higher than that.  Polling really is broken.

I'm actually happy that polls are underestimating us too now. It's still a terrible situation when it comes to our ability to trust polls, but it isn't so universally pro-Republican with biases and errors anymore it seems.

[Pouring Rain and Blairing Music]

Anyone going to talk about how bad the polls were? 538 av had NO +16, it's probably going to end up 8-10 points higher than that.  Polling really is broken.

I'm actually happy that polls are underestimating us too now. It's still a terrible situation when it comes to our ability to trust polls, but it isn't so universally pro-Republican with biases and errors anymore it seems.

I’m really wondering if there’s a Trump factor that makes elections hard to poll. 2016 and 2020 had issues and Trump was on the ballot, while 2018 polls were generally better (though with some exceptions). The issues we saw here with the recall seems like they could’ve been caused by trying to overcorrect. That and polls have historically underestimated Dems in CA.

[politicallefty]

With the final unofficial results basically in, I felt this is worth bumping.

As for my own prediction:

Last minute prediction, but I'll say No by 21%. The momentum really seems to be on Newsom's side. Not at all surprising, but I think the map looks like 2018 except that Orange, Riverside, and Merced Counties are all up in the air. Among the smaller counties, it's possible Lake votes Yes, but I think Nevada County will definitely vote No.

I feel really good about this prediction, although I suppose it wasn't a stretch considering the margin is basically the same as 2018. I didn't nail the margin, but I was damn close. The only change with the 2018 map is that Merced voted Yes for the recall, but voted for Newsom in 2018. It had a pretty decent swing against Newsom, along with Stanislaus to the north. Riverside stayed just barely against Newsom, as it did in 2018 (one of several counties where Democrats drop off in off-year elections). Newsom held on to Orange County and with a decent swing for him. Nevada County has definitely solidified itself in the Democratic column, if it hadn't already. Lake County didn't fall, but its time in the Democratic column appears to be on borrowed time, voting only 49-51.

Most of the county swings were marginal in either direction, with the Bay Area having a more pro-Newsom swing than anywhere else. The biggest swing against Newsom was ultra-Republican rural Lassen County. I'm not sure what happened there. Not only did it go from 22.7-77.3 against Newsom in 2018 to 84.2-15.8 in support of the recall, but it also had a noteworthy turnout increase of over 12%. That might easily be the biggest turnout increase in the state (I looked over a number of counties and couldn't find anything like it, although I didn't scour the state), which is very strange for a rural county that experienced noteworthy population decline the past decade.