Polls show Proposition 50 leading ahead of Tuesday’s election

Proposition 50 is headed for approval on Tuesday, according to new polls from California’s two most trusted independent pollsters.

Both the Public Policy Institute of California and UC Berkeley’s Institute for Governmental Studies found a majority of voters ready to support the ballot initiative, which would temporarily change California’s congressional maps in an attempt to give Democrats more seats in Congress.

IGS found support for the measure at 60% for likely voters, while the PPIC poll found 56% of the electorate backing it. The surveys found just 1% to 2% of voters undecided.

Democrats in California, led by Gov. Gavin Newsom, placed the measure on the ballot in August after President Donald Trump urged GOP-led states to redraw their maps to give Republicans more safe seats in the House of Representatives.

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The unusual mid-decade redistricting push comes as both parties look toward the 2026 midterm elections: Texas, Missouri and North Carolina have already heeded Trump’s call and approved new maps that are more favorable to Republicans; other states are considering changes as well.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks about California redistricting plans at a press conference.

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Mario Tama

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Both polls found voters’ positions on Proposition 50 directly related to their political party affiliations. The IGS survey shows more than 90% of Democrats planning to vote yes and more than 90% of Republicans saying they will vote no. Likely voters not affiliated with either party were split 57%–39%, according to the IGS poll.

“If you want to know how people are likely to vote, you really just need to ask their party registration on this one,” IGS poll director Mark DiCamillo said.

PPIC also found a stark partisan split, PPIC poll director Mark Baldassare said. It’s unusual, he said, for a ballot measure to be viewed through such a partisan lens, but Baldassare said the polls show California voters are connecting the measure to national politics and view it as a choice between Trump and Newsom.

“If you look at the people who would vote yes on Proposition 50, that is the people that support this change in the redistricting process, 95% of them disapprove of President Trump, 86% of them approve of Gov. Newsom,” Baldassare said.

IGS similarly found Proposition 50 preferences directly related to the views voters have of Newsom and Trump, DiCamillo said.

The IGS poll also identified differences in how voters plan to cast their ballots: Democrats were motivated to vote early, said DiCamillo, and are outpacing Republicans two-to-one in returning their ballots early. Meanwhile, a whopping 70% of Republicans — who have been encouraged to vote early by the No campaign, but urged by Trump not to use vote-by-mail — say they will vote in person on Tuesday.

Despite this being an unexpected, off-year special election with just one question on the ballot, DiCamillo said a staggering 71% of voters reported being aware of Proposition 50 and its implications.

“That’s extraordinarily high,” he said. “I think there’s just been a lot of attention given to redistricting, all around the country, on social media, in the media, not just here in California. So voters who are likely voters are just certainly aware of what this is all about, and in most cases, they’ve made up their minds.”

PPIC surveyed about 1,700 Californians between Oct. 7 and 14, with a margin of error of plus-or-minus 3 percentage points. IGS’s poll was conducted between Oct. 20 and 27 among 8,141 registered voters in California, and has a sampling error of plus-or-minus 2 points.