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LETTER FROM SAN FRANCISCO
With their usual haste, the California Election Service on October 20 released the final results of the « recall », the election for the impeachment of the governor, Democrat Gavin Newsom, which was held on September 14. The ballot, it will be remembered, had occupied throughout the summer the media, the political class and the polling institutes, who had believed to discern a growing suspense, although the State is fundamentally democratic and that the Republicans do not represent than a quarter of registered voters. In the end, publicized as it was, the Republican “remorada” did not take place.
Unsurprisingly, the official results confirm the magnitude of Gavin Newsom’s victory: the no received 61.88% of the vote, against 38.1% in favor of his dismissal. Above all, they show that the electorate has not changed, despite the housing crisis, the response to Covid-19 and the fires, or barely one iota: the Democrat had won with 61.9% of vote on Republican John Cox in 2018.
A more detailed analysis, at the county level, even shows that not only the voters did not change their minds, but they became anchored even more deeply in their opinions. The camp of supporters of the former mayor of San Francisco is even more favorable to him than in 2018, while Republicans are more hostile to him. All of this bodes ill for the state of polarization in American society, one year before the midterm elections.
Housing: the “biggest turning point in half a century”
Gavin Newsom, for his part, did not wait for the final result to return to the campaign: a comfortable re-election, in 2022, could serve as a springboard for the candidacy for the White House of which he seems to be dreaming. Two weeks after « recall », he enacted a series of reforms, most to the satisfaction of the different factions – feminists, anti-racists, environmentalists – who make up the progressive coalition.
It will now be prohibited to remove the condom during sex without the partner’s consent; banned from using gasoline lawn mowers (from 2024); but compulsory (from 2025) to give ethnic studies courses in high schools to make students aware of the diversity of the population (whites only represent 36% of the inhabitants). Among the measures adopted is also the universal postal vote, a device that gives urticaria to Republicans at the national level.
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