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      Revocatoria en California: estas son las claves

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      Los primeros informes sugieren que la gran base demócrata de California apoya al gobernador Newsom, que arrasó en 2018, cuando fue electo. En la boleta hay más de 40 contendientes para sustituirlo.Los votantes de California decidirán el martes si destituyen al gobernador Gavin Newsom, lo que pone fin a una elección peculiar que ha transcurrido en medio de una pandemia y ha sido observada con atención como uno de los primeros grandes indicadores de la dirección política que tomará el país después de que el presidente Joe Biden asumió el mando.Los demócratas se sienten cada vez más confiados y anticipan que Newsom permanecerá en el cargo y evitarán lo que sería un desastre para el partido en California, el estado más poblado del país. Si Newsom es revocado, su reemplazo más probable sería Larry Elder, un presentador de la radio conservadora que ha hecho una carrera atacando las causas liberales.Pero el hecho de que el gobernador demócrata de un estado que Biden ganó por casi 30 puntos porcentuales se vea obligado a luchar para conservar su puesto ha puesto de manifiesto las vulnerabilidades de los líderes que parecían bien posicionados antes de la pandemia de coronavirus.Los demócratas intentan motivar a los votantes sin la presencia del expresidente Donald Trump en la papeleta y una derrota –e incluso una victoria muy ajustada– crearía dudas sobre la influencia política de Biden, que hizo campaña a favor de Newsom la noche del lunes.Los principales republicanos que compiten por reemplazar a Newsom se han alineado con Trump y sus afirmaciones infundadas de que la elección de 2020 estuvo amañada, una señal temprana de la falta de voluntad o incapacidad del partido para distanciarse del expresidente.Incluso si la naturaleza peculiar de las elecciones revocatorias de California no ofrece un barómetro perfecto del estado de ánimo nacional, hay mucho en juego, incluido el liderazgo de la quinta economía más grande del mundo. Los expertos políticos de ambos partidos señalan que el destino de Newsom podría tener consecuencias nacionales de gran alcance, dado el poder del gobernador para nombrar un nuevo senador en caso de que surja una vacante.El gobernador Gavin Newsom en un mitin de la campaña “Vota No” en Sun Valley, California, el domingoAlex Welsh para The New York TimesA los votantes se les ha pedido responder dos preguntas: ¿Newsom debe ser revocado? Y, si eso sucede, ¿quién debe reemplazarlo? En la boleta aparecen 46 candidatos, alrededor de la mitad de ellos son republicanos y también participan siete candidatos certificados que pueden añadirse a mano.El ganador gobernará por el resto del mandato de Newsom, que concluye en enero de 2023. Sin importar el resultado, habrá otra elección en poco más de un año.Las urnas cerrarán a las 8 p.m. hora del Pacífico. Sigue nuestra página de resultados y cobertura de la elección y sus implicaciones en nytimes.com.Esto es lo que estaremos monitoreando mientras llegan los resultados:¿El gobernador podrá sobrevivir a la revocatoria?Los primeros resultados sugieren que la gran base demócrata de California apoya a Newsom, quien fue electo en 2018 con una gran ventaja. La campaña del gobernador ha presentado la campaña revocatoria como un intento de los republicanos de Trump por hacerse con el poder.Si Newsom es revocado, será porque una gran cantidad de electores independientes y demócratas votaron en su contra, lo cual en California sería señal de un giro significativo e improbable a la derecha.La duda es si el gobernador gana con margen amplio o estrecho. Durante un tiempo, las encuestas parecían indicar que los probables votantes no se mostraban muy entusiasmados respecto a Newsom, lo que causó un torrente de apoyo por parte de grandes donantes así como la aparición de personajes demócratas de importancia nacional, entre ellos Biden.Una victoria decisiva de Newsom, como predicen algunas encuestas recientes, lo fortalecería de cara a una campaña para un segundo mandato en 2022 y quizás incluso lo posicionaría para ocupar un cargo a nivel nacional. Pero si Newsom se queda en la gobernatura por solo un par de puntos porcentuales, podría enfrentar un desafío primario el próximo año.¿Cuántos republicanos van a votar?Los republicanos representan solo una cuarta parte de los votantes registrados de California. Desde la década de 1990, cuando las posturas antiinmigrantes del partido alejaron a los latinos, su número ha disminuido. Los proponentes de la revocatoria la han presentado como una forma de fiscalizar el poder de los demócratas, que controlan todas las oficinas estatales y la Legislatura. Los republicanos también dicen que la batalla ha animado la base de su partido.Pero el apoyo republicano y el dinero para la revocatoria no se acercan al gran fondo de financiación y a la operación con que cuenta Newsom. Y la candidatura de Elder parece que ha presentado al Partido Republicano como de extrema derecha, para estándares de California. El apoyo para los moderados como Kevin Faulconer, exalcalde de San Diego, se registra en cifras inferiores al 10 por ciento, según los sondeos.Partidarios de Larry Elder se reúnen durante una parada de campaña en el Ayuntamiento de Monterey Park el lunesAlex Welsh para The New York TimesLos críticos del Partido Republicano durante el mandato de Trump dicen que si no logran revocar a Newsom esto podría disminuir aún más la influencia republicana en California y acentuar la polarización del país.¿Cómo votarán los latinos?Los latinos son el grupo étnico más numeroso de California, comprenden alrededor del 30 por ciento de los votantes registrados y son un gran grupo demócrata que ha dado forma a la gobernanza del estado durante décadas.No obstante, y para consternación del partido de Newsom y gran interés de los partidarios de la revocatoria, los latinos no han acudido rápidamente a participar, en parte debido a la distracción —muchos votantes están más ocupados sorteando la pandemia— y a la ambivalencia, tanto respecto a Newsom en particular como al Partido Demócrata en general.Los críticos han advertido que los demócratas de California han asumido, equivocadamente, que el electorado latino se sentiría motivado por el recuerdo de las políticas antiinmigrantes republicanas, en lugar de apostar por atraer a los latinos con una visión para el futuro.Esto ha avivado la especulación sobre la posibilidad de que en California y el resto del país el voto latino, de rápido crecimiento, esté disponible para los candidatos dispuestos a esforzarse por conectar con estos electores. Luego de que los republicanos se llevaron una parte significativa del apoyo latino en todo el país durante la elección de 2020, la ausencia de los latinos en las urnas podría generar un nuevo episodio de introspección demócrata.¿Cuán influyentes serán las boletas de votos por correo?A cada votante registrado y activo en California se le envió una boleta como parte de una extensión de las reglas de votación pandémica. El sistema, iniciado en 2020 para mantener seguros a los votantes y los trabajadores electorales, ayudó a aumentar la participación a más del 70 por ciento en las elecciones presidenciales. Este mes, los legisladores votaron para que el sistema sea permanente.Los funcionarios electorales de California dijeron que la votación transcurrió sin problemas en 2020. Pero los republicanos han dicho que las papeletas enviadas por correo invitan a la trampa, lo cual es similar al reclamo, sin fundamento, que hizo Trump al decir que los demócratas se habían valido de estas boletas para robar la elección presidencial.La semana pasada, en una participación en Newsmax, el expresidente aseguró, sin proveer evidencia, que la elección revocatoria estaba “probablemente amañada”.Los grupos conservadores que buscan evidencias de fraude electoral han estado pidiendo a los californianos que reporten si reciben por correo papeletas para personas fallecidas o votantes que no residen en su dirección.Las advertencias sobre el voto por correo parecen haber surtido efecto: los republicanos se muestran reacios a aceptar la práctica, una tendencia que preocupa a algunos en el partido dado que más estados están adoptando el sufragio enviado por correo. Aun así, la noche antes de la elección, casi 40 por ciento de todos los votantes registrados habían emitido su voto, una proporción considerable que sugiere que la comodidad de votar anticipadamente y por correo tendrá un efecto positivo en la participación durante una elección en una temporada inusual.Los votantes entregaron las boletas a las puertas del juzgado del condado de Alameda, en Oakland, el lunes.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesEso es un buen augurio para Newsom, que depende de la enorme base de votantes demócratas del estado: cuanto mayor sea la participación general, dice su campaña, mejores serán sus posibilidades.Sin embargo, los analistas están atentos ante la posibilidad de que haya grandes cantidades de votantes republicanos que acudan a votar en persona el martes y se preguntan si los votantes latinos los acompañarán.¿Qué relación tiene el voto con la pandemia?De no ser por el panorama creado por la COVID-19, es probable que Newsom no estaría pelando ahora por mantener su cargo. Pero últimamente ha hecho algunos progresos. Los casos han bajado este mes en California, el uso de mascarillas en interiores es una realidad en muchas zonas del estado y alrededor del 80 por ciento de las personas elegibles se han vacunado con al menos una dosis.En las últimas semanas, Newsom ha alardeado del enfoque de California, señalando que los requisitos de uso de cubrebocas y vacunación han reducido los nuevos casos a la mitad de las tasas reportadas en los estados gobernados por republicanos.Los californianos indican que no hay tema que les importe más que controlar al coronavirus. El amplio apoyo a favor de Newsom, más allá de los votantes demócratas, podría indicarle a otros funcionarios —incluso en otros estados, que tienen elecciones a la gubernatura el año entrante— que las políticas de salud firmes pueden tener un buen impacto político.Otros candidatos demócratas en la boleta este otoño también han apoyado medidas como el uso de mascarilla obligatorio y los requisitos de vacunación al tiempo que llaman la atención sobre la posibilidad de que sus oponentes republicanos pudieran dar marcha atrás a esas medidas. Biden también ha presentado políticas más estrictas y un discurso más duro dirigido hacia los gobernadores republicanos.¿Qué papel tiene Trump en la contienda?Durante cuatro años, los demócratas disfrutaron de enormes ganancias gracias a Trump. El expresidente motivó a los activistas del partido a trabajar para contrarrestarlo, ayudó a sus candidatos a recaudar montañas de dinero en efectivo para la campaña y llevó a sus votantes a las urnas en cifras récord.Newsom ha intentado sostener esa fuente de inspiración y a menudo advierte que el “trumpismo” persiste en la vida política estadounidense. Su elección revocatoria es la primera gran prueba para saber si el espectro del expresidente sigue teniendo poder para movilizar a los votantes liberales al tiempo que anima a los moderados a seguir votando por demócratas.Del lado republicano, los principales candidatos se han entregado al manual de estrategia política de Trump, al hacer afirmaciones, infundadas, de fraude de elección y votos “amañados”. Elder se ha rehusado a indicar si piensa aceptar los resultados de la elección.No todos los republicanos están de acuerdo con esta estrategia. A algunos les preocupa que pueda ocasionar que algunos republicanos se queden en casa porque creen que sus votos no serán respetados, y la baja participación podría dar crédito a ese argumento.Shawn Hubler es corresponsal en California con sede en Sacramento. Antes de unirse al Times en 2020, pasó casi dos décadas cubriendo el estado para Los Angeles Times como reportera itinerante, columnista y escritora de revista. Compartió tres premios Pulitzer con el equipo Metro del periódico. @ShawnHublerLisa Lerer es una corresponsal de política nacional que cubre campañas electorales, votaciones y poder político. @llerer More

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      When Will We Know the California Recall Election Results?

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      Californians have been voting early for weeks in the election to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom.But it is unclear how long it will take to get a definitive answer on whether he will keep his job.Depending on the number of early ballots and the amount of in-person voting on Tuesday, the math could be clear within a few hours of when the polls close at 8 p.m. Pacific time, election experts say. But if the race is tighter than expected, weeks could pass while the counting drags on.Recall attempts are a fact of political life for governors of California. But they do not usually make it onto the ballot, and Californians have gone to the polls only one other time to determine whether the state’s top officeholder should be ousted. That was in 2003, when Gov. Gray Davis was recalled and replaced by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Since then, the state’s voting rules and electorate have changed substantially.Because of the safety concerns arising from the coronavirus pandemic, ballots were mailed early to all of the state’s 22 million or so registered and active voters in the 2020 election. Voters can return their completed ballots by mail, deposit them in secure drop boxes, vote early in person or vote at a polling place on Tuesday.Nearly 40 percent of registered voters have already cast ballots, but many Republicans have indicated that they plan to vote in person, citing — without evidence — a concern that election officials in the Democrat-dominated state will tamper with their ballots. Studies after the 2020 election found that the system had worked smoothly, with no systemic voter fraud.Early Democratic ballots have outnumbered Republican ones by two to one, with overwhelming majorities of voters in both parties telling pollsters they plan to vote along party lines. Mr. Newsom is a Democrat, as is about 46 percent of the electorate.But that margin is expected to tighten as Republican voters — who represent fewer than a quarter of registered voters — head to the polls.Vote counts are notoriously slow in California because the state is so massive. The law for this election allows county officials to open and process early ballots as they come in, but those results cannot be shared with the public until the polls close, said Jenna Dresner, a spokeswoman for the California secretary of state’s office.California has 58 counties, and each processes its ballots differently. Results often land later in larger counties, such as Los Angeles County. Officials have 30 days to complete their official canvass and must give vote-by-mail ballots postmarked on Election Day a week to arrive. The certified count is not expected until Oct. 22.Significant partial counts should be available within a couple of hours after polls close in some key areas, such as the Bay Area and Orange County. And the electoral math in California should offer some strong clues about the outcome, said Paul Mitchell, a vice president of Political Data Inc., a nonpartisan supplier of election data.Because so many voters are Democrats, he said, the higher the turnout, the better Mr. Newsom’s chances are of beating the recall. If the overall turnout hits 60 percent, he said, the proposed ouster of Mr. Newsom is almost mathematically impossible. More

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      in US Politics

      Condom ‘stealthing’ is a vile practice. California is right to ban it | Moira Donegan

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      OpinionUS politicsCondom ‘stealthing’ is a vile practice. California is right to ban itMoira DoneganTwelve per cent of women have experienced stealthing – and 10% of men have perpetrated it. The law is finally catching up Tue 14 Sep 2021 06.19 EDTLast modified on Tue 14 Sep 2021 06.20 EDTShe told him a condom was “non-negotiable,” and that if he would rather not use one, she would leave. The young woman, identified as “Sara” in a 2017 study, describes the encounter, saying, “I set a boundary. I was very explicit.” Yet she then discovered that her partner, a man she’d been seeing for a couple of weeks, had secretly removed the condom during sex.“I ended up talking to him about it later,” Sara told the study’s author, the feminist civil rights attorney Alexandra Brodsky. “He told me, ‘Don’t worry about it, trust me.’ That stuck with me, because he’d literally proven himself to be unworthy of my trust.”The man who removed the condom was telling her to trust him not to put her at risk for the potential consequences of unprotected sex – for STD infection, or for unplanned pregnancy. But if he was someone she could trust on those issues, he never would have removed the condom in the first place.Sara was a victim of a phenomenon that 12% of women say they have experienced, and that 10% of men say they have perpetrated, but which for years has had no legal recognition and no name other than the one given to it by its practitioners: “Stealthing”, the non-consensual removal of a condom.Now, the violation experienced by Sara and others may finally be made illegal, at least in one state. A bill introduced by California Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia has passed both houses of the state’s legislature, and would make non-consensual condom removal a civil offense. It now awaits a signature from Governor Gavin Newsom.If the bill goes into effect, it would give victims the power to sue men who removed condoms without their permission for the non-criminal charge of sexual battery and open the door for monetary damages. The Wisconsin and New York legislatures are considering similar bills. If California’s is signed, the state will become the first in the nation to recognize stealthing as a violation in law.Because the bill makes stealthing a civil offense, not a crime, it does not create the possibility that perpetrators will serve prison time. Instead, it makes them liable for fines and penalties if their victims prevail in court. (The pending bills in Wisconsin and New York do have criminal provisions.) But Brodsky believes that the worthiness of a civil avenue for justice should not be overlooked. “I’m glad to see California pursuing this approach,” she told me. “In my experience, many survivors find the kinds of outcomes available in civil litigation – including money damages – more meaningful and useful.”Brodsky points out that civil courts have lower burdens of proof and offer rewards for the victims, not only punishments for the assailants. The symbolic value of the bill, too, is worth noting: the possibility for stealthing victims to have their day in court, and be remunerated for the harm they suffered, offers a route to recognition for a kind of sexual abuse that institutions have historically ignored.For women like Sara, the reality that what their partners did to them was not right is intuitive. In Brodsky’s study, victims of stealthing recount being worried about STIs and pregnancy. These worries, they observed, seem to fall almost exclusively on their shoulders, even though the removal of the condom had not been their idea and had happened without their permission. One woman, referred to as “Rebecca”, told Brodsky that after the incident, her assailant refused to help her pay for emergency contraceptives.“None of it worried him,” she said. “It didn’t perturb him. My potential pregnancy, my potential STI. That was my burden.” Rebecca had a reason to be worried: a 2019 survey on stealthing found that men who engaged in the practice were much more likely to be infected with an STD than men who didn’t (at a rate of 29.5% to 15.1%) and were much more likely to have sired an unintended pregnancy (at a rate of 46.7% to 25.8%).But in addition to the medical and material concerns, women and others who have been victims of stealthing describe the incidents as degrading, hurtful and wounding to their self-respect. The removal of the condom represents a willingness to discard their preferences, an indifference to their safety and a contempt for their right to control their own bodies – and all of this comes from men who, only a few moments earlier, they had believed they could trust.There is empirical evidence to support their sense of betrayal: the 2019 survey found that men who engaged in stealthing also had greater hostility towards women. In Brodsky’s study, a review of online communities for stealthing practitioners supports the notion that non-consensual condom removal by heterosexual men is motivated by misogynist disdain; the men, quoted at length, spoke of their own contempt for women and scorn for their partners’ desire for a condom in terms that I will not repeat here.Stealthing poses high-stakes material risks to victims, as well as deeply felt harms to their dignity. It is galling that the practice was not already illegal. Both our law and our culture have a long history of ignoring gendered violence, and of lacking the rhetorical frameworks that make such harm legible – even when, as seems to be true in the case of stealthing, that harm is very common.Rebecca, the survivor quoted in the 2017 study, said that she fielded many calls about the practice in her job at a local rape crisis hotline. “The stories often start the same way: ‘I’m not sure this is rape, but …’”Melissa Sargent, the Wisconsin state representative who has sponsored the anti-stealthing bill there, also says she has been contacted by women who say they were victims of stealthing. “Everyone has their own story,” Sargent told the Associated Press. “But the common thread is, this happened to me, I knew it wasn’t right, but I didn’t know what to call it.”One hope is that the passage of the California law might help such victims know what to call it. The stealthing bill can help make clear and definite what might have otherwise been an inchoate sense of having been wronged. With the passage of the California bill, stealthing victims will be able to see themselves as worthy of dignity, of having a right to control their own bodies, and of being entitled to negotiate their own sex lives without coercion or tricks. And the law will see them that way, too.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionGenderRape and sexual assaultSexCaliforniacommentReuse this content More

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      How large is Newsom's lead in the California recall election polls?

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      After the polls overestimated Democratic candidates in 2016 and 2020, it is reasonable to wonder whether Gov. Gavin Newsom’s lead in the California recall election might prove as illusory as Hillary Clinton’s lead in Wisconsin or Joe Biden’s in Florida.It’s not impossible. But Mr. Newsom’s lead now dwarfs the typical polling error and is large enough to withstand nearly every statewide polling miss in recent memory.Opposition to recalling Mr. Newsom leads by 17 points, 58 to 41 percent, according to the FiveThirtyEight average. Polls in 2020 overestimated the Democrats by an average of about five percentage points.There was no state in either the 2016 or 2020 presidential elections where the final polls missed by 17 percentage points. Perhaps the worst recent polling miss — Senator Susan Collins’s comfortable nine-point victory after trailing in the polls by three points — is in the ballpark, but would still fall five points short of erasing Mr. Newsom’s lead.Many of the most embarrassing and high-profile misses for pollsters, such as the seven-point polling errors in Wisconsin in 2016 and 2020, might still leave Mr. Newsom with a double-digit victory.It is hard to find many precedents for such a large polling error. According to Harry Enten, a writer at CNN, there are only four cases in the last 20 years where the polling average in a race for governor was off by at least 15 percentage points.Mr. Newsom’s opponents can hope that the idiosyncrasies of a recall election might make it more challenging for pollsters than a typical general election. Special and primary elections often have larger polling errors.But the polls were fairly accurate in the last California gubernatorial recall and dead-on in the high-profile effort to recall former Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin in 2012. The high turnout in early voting in California so far tends to reduce the risk that an unusual turnout would contribute to a particularly large polling error.And California is not a state where the polls have missed badly in recent election cycles. The largest polling errors have been in Wisconsin, Maine and other states with large numbers of white working-class voters. That’s not California. Just 22 percent of California voters in 2020 were whites without a four-year college degree, the second lowest of any state, according to census data.Perhaps as a result, statewide polling in California has generally been fairly accurate.Joe Biden led the final California polls by 29.2 points, according to FiveThirtyEight.He won by 29.2 points. More

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      When Will Californians Know the Recall Election Results?

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      Californians have been voting early for weeks in the election to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom.But it is unclear how long it will take to get a definitive answer on whether he will keep his job.Depending on the number of early ballots and the amount of in-person voting on Tuesday, the math could be clear within a few hours of when the polls close at 8 p.m. Pacific time, election experts say. But if the race is tighter than expected, weeks could pass while the counting drags on.Recall attempts are a fact of political life for governors of California. But they do not usually make it onto the ballot, and Californians have gone to the polls only one other time to determine whether the state’s top officeholder should be ousted. That was in 2003, when Gov. Gray Davis was recalled and replaced by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Since then, the state’s voting rules and electorate have changed substantially.Because of the safety concerns arising from the coronavirus pandemic, ballots were mailed early to all of the state’s 22 million or so registered and active voters in the 2020 election. Voters can return their completed ballots by mail, deposit them in secure drop boxes, vote early in person or vote at a polling place on Tuesday.Nearly 40 percent of registered voters have already cast ballots, but many Republicans have indicated that they plan to vote in person, citing — without evidence — a concern that election officials in the Democrat-dominated state will tamper with their ballots. Studies after the 2020 election found that the system had worked smoothly, with no systemic voter fraud.Early Democratic ballots have outnumbered Republican ones by two to one, with overwhelming majorities of voters in both parties telling pollsters they plan to vote along party lines. Mr. Newsom is a Democrat, as is about 46 percent of the electorate.But that margin is expected to tighten as Republican voters — who represent fewer than a quarter of registered voters — head to the polls.Vote counts are notoriously slow in California because the state is so massive. The law for this election allows county officials to open and process early ballots as they come in, but those results cannot be shared with the public until the polls close, said Jenna Dresner, a spokeswoman for the California secretary of state’s office.California has 58 counties, and each processes its ballots differently. Results often land later in larger counties, such as Los Angeles County. Officials have 30 days to complete their official canvass and must give vote-by-mail ballots postmarked on Election Day a week to arrive. The certified count is not expected until Oct. 22.Significant partial counts should be available within a couple of hours after polls close in some key areas, such as the Bay Area and Orange County. And the electoral math in California should offer some strong clues about the outcome, said Paul Mitchell, a vice president of Political Data Inc., a nonpartisan supplier of election data.Because so many voters are Democrats, he said, the higher the turnout, the better Mr. Newsom’s chances are of beating the recall. If the overall turnout hits 60 percent, he said, the proposed ouster of Mr. Newsom is almost mathematically impossible. More

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      in Elections

      How Will Gavin Newsom Survive the California Recall?

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      LOS ANGELES — In the waning days of the campaign to save his job, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California assessed the stakes as nothing short of saving democracy. The possibility of being recalled from office had woken him to the fragile state of the political system, which he compared to … a Fabergé egg.“This is like a Fabergé egg, so to speak, in terms of democracy,” he said. “It’s not a football. You can’t throw it around. It’s delicate. Democracy is delicate. I didn’t realize how delicate it was, and now I’m starting to appreciate how delicate it is and how important this race is, not just for me.”That belated realization has animated the final weeks of this odd campaign, and when the votes are counted after the polls close on Tuesday, they appear very likely to break in the governor’s favor. Yet the election seems destined to be neither a morality play about democracy nor an endorsement of Mr. Newsom and his record. It is more prosaic than that: a lopsided battle between a reasonably popular Democratic incumbent who often seems more self-absorbed than self-aware and a conservative radio talk show host who is arguably to the right of Donald Trump, in a state Mr. Trump lost by 29 percentage points.What the recall does tell us is that California — one of the bluest states in the country — is not so different from other places in being subject to the gravitational tug of partisan forces. Even if Mr. Newsom prevails by a wide margin, the recall has underscored Californians’ continuing ambivalence about his leadership. A victory will be less a vote of confidence than a resounding rejection of the right-wing Republican agenda, a message Democrats hope will resonate beyond California.This should not even be close — and perhaps, despite earlier alarmist polling that suggested a tight race, it never was. On the up-or-down question of whether to recall Mr. Newsom, support for his removal has been consistently about 40 percent, slightly more than the share of the vote that Mr. Trump received in 2020. Mr. Newsom, elected by a large margin in 2018, has just presided over a staggering $76 billion budget surplus that enabled the state to spend generously on myriad programs and people — from elaborate vaccine lotteries to $600 stimulus checks.California Democrats outnumber Republicans by nearly two to one, and no Republican has won statewide in 15 years. To defeat the recall, Mr. Newsom needs only to make sure enough Democrats vote. Polls and the large turnout of Democrats in early voting suggest he will do that.The political calculus has been complicated by several factors: the topsy-turvy nature of the Covid pandemic and its hardships, without which the recall would not have made the ballot; the extreme political polarization that has gripped the country; and California’s recall law, which makes it possible for a replacement to win with minimal support should the recall pass. But Democrats’ fears that lackluster turnout could create a doomsday scenario have also reflected lukewarm enthusiasm about Mr. Newsom and underlying dissatisfaction with his leadership on severe challenges like lack of affordable housing and devastating wildfires.Some of the dissonance is personal. He has long moved in an elite, moneyed world of Michelin-starred restaurants and Fabergé collectors. He empathized about sharing the parental pain of Zoom school while his kids attended private schools that were already offering in-person instruction. On the day he took office, he moved with fanfare into the state-owned Governor’s Mansion in downtown Sacramento — without disclosing he had already bought a $3.7 million suburban estate that would be the family home.Some of the tepid support is professional. His extensive use of executive orders and powers contributed to friction and distrust with some Democratic legislative leaders. He has a reputation dating back to his tenure as mayor of San Francisco of being enamored of bright, shiny objects, making headline-grabbing announcements that lack follow-through. Progressives are dissatisfied with his action on issues like fracking and single-payer health care; moderates view him as too liberal. In some sense, he lacks a committed base.But the specter of a Trump Republican governor has united Democrats. Mr. Newsom has capitalized on his ability to accept donations of unlimited amounts — another quirk of the recall law — amassing more than $70 million to wage a scare campaign against the talk-show host Larry Elder, the front-runner to become governor if the recall passes. Mr. Elder’s extreme positions on Covid-19 (he wants to repeal vaccine and mask mandates), climate change (he’s “not sure” state wildfires are due to climate change), abortion (he is “pro-life, 100 percent”) and the minimum wage (“the ideal minimum wage is $0.00”) have enabled Mr. Newsom to set the contest in a national frame, warning that California would become Texas and Florida rolled into one. It’s not clear whether the tens of millions of dollars spent on the Vote No campaign has won Mr. Newsom any converts. But that isn’t the goal. The fear is meant to galvanize a large Democratic turnout.Mr. Newsom largely has not campaigned on his record, with the exception of his management of the pandemic, which has earned him strong approval ratings at a time of growing support for mandates on vaccinations and masks.At the same time, fewer than half of those surveyed recently said California was headed in the right direction, and about half thought the state was in a recession. When rated on pressing problems like housing, homelessness and economic issues — which have temporarily taken a back seat to Covid-19 concerns — Mr. Newsom has earned relatively low marks.In recent weeks, Mr. Newsom stayed on message, warning the recall is a matter of life and death. He made little mention of accomplishments beyond boasting in some interviews about ambitious programs that have for the most part not yet gone into effect (like a promise of universal prekindergarten for 4-year-olds and an experiment in providing health care to people living on the street).He would have liked to campaign on his record, Mr. Newsom recently told the Los Angeles Times editorial board. But that would have to wait until his presumed re-election campaign next year.Republicans have probably squandered their best opportunity to regain power. With no obvious strong contenders on the horizon, it seems likely that 2022 will bring a sequel to what is looking like the anticlimactic recall of 2021.Miriam Pawel (@miriampawel) is the author of “The Browns of California: The Family Dynasty That Transformed a State and Shaped a Nation.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Who Are the Republican Candidates in the California Recall?

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      Clockwise from top left: Kevin Faulconer, John Cox, Kevin Kiley, Caitlyn Jenner and Larry Elder.Dozens of Republicans are running to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom of California. But only a handful of them have registered any meaningful support in the polls or raised the kind of money needed to run a statewide campaign. They include political veterans like Kevin Faulconer, the former mayor of San Diego, and Kevin Kiley, a member of the State Assembly from Rocklin. There are business leaders, including John Cox, who has run for office several times before, and first-time candidates, including Larry Elder, a talk radio personality, and Caitlyn Jenner, the former Olympian. Their vast differences reflect the disjointed nature of California’s Republican Party — an institution that has been hollowed out over the years and is now so small that it is practically a third party.Here is the complete list of challengers from the California secretary of state’s office. More

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      Voting in the California Recall: Ballots, Deadlines and Registration

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      More than 35 percent of California’s active, registered voters have already cast their ballots, and early voting is underway in several counties. If you missed the deadline to register to vote in the recall election, don’t worry. You can still register on Tuesday.Our Voter Guide has everything you need to know about where to vote, how to turn in your ballot and when we can expect to know the results.Where is my ballot?All registered and active California voters should have received a ballot by mail in the past few weeks. You can mail that ballot back or return it to a secure drop box by 8 p.m. You can track when your vote-by-mail ballot was mailed, received and counted at https://california.ballottrax.net/voter/.Where can I vote in person?Voters can cast ballots in person (you can find early voting locations here.) until 8 p.m. Pacific when polls close.You can check whether you’re registered to vote here. Visit the Secretary of State’s website to learn more about same-day voter registration.When will we know the results?So when will we know the results? After Election Day, county election officials have to complete their work receiving and counting ballots, although we may have some idea of the vote by then, since nearly eight million ballots have already been returned and many more are expected to come in as we get closer. Counties can process early ballots and get them ready to count, but they cannot start tallying until the polls close. More