Sacramento – A new poll shows that California voters are sharply divided on two statewide ballot measures that are stoking the nation’s partisan and economic divide: a one-time tax on billionaires to pay mostly for health care and a voter ID mandate that includes citizenship verification.
The survey was conducted by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Government Studies and co-sponsored by The Times It revealed that 52% of registered voters supported the billionaire’s tax, while 33% said they opposed it. Fifteen percent were undecided.
Support for the voter ID measure was more evenly divided, with 44% of voters in support, 45% opposed and the remainder undecided.
The pair of statewide proposals, which have not yet qualified for California’s November ballot, come from opposite sides of California’s political spectrum. Organized labor and progressives are pushing hard for a new wealth tax in response to Republican cuts to federal health care programs, and the GOP-led call for additional voter restrictions comes in the wake of President Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
Poll director Mark DiCamillo said he was “a little surprised” by the results, given how much attention each measure has already received.
He said, “From reading press accounts of these initiatives, I thought they would both be well ahead. There has been a lot of discussion about them and advocates are very confident about their chances of passing, but the polls suggest otherwise.”
The divide on each measure was largely along partisan and ideological lines.
On the billionaires’ tax initiative, 72% of Democratic voters said they would support the measure if the election were held today — and the same percentage of Republicans oppose it. A small majority of voters – 51% – who are unaffiliated or registered with another party support the wealth tax, while 30% said they oppose it, with the remainder undecided.
Republican voters overwhelmingly support the voter ID initiative, with 91% saying they would vote for it. More than two-thirds of Democratic voters, 68%, said they would oppose the measure. Voters’ preference for any party did not appear evenly divided.
No ballots have yet officially qualified for the November ballot, although supporters of the voter ID measure said this month they Signatures of 13 lakh voters were handed over to election officialsWell above the $875,000 needed to qualify. Supporters of the new tax on billionaires have until June 24 to submit signatures to election officials.
The billionaire tax has generated national news coverage and widespread debate over whether it would benefit low-income Californians or hurt the state’s tax base as billionaires move out of the state to avoid paying it.
The proposal is supported by the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, which represents 120,000 workers in California. Union leaders say the tax would raise $100 billion to offset deep cuts to federal health care programs under the sweeping tax and spending bill approved by the Republican-controlled Congress and signed by Trump over the summer.
The measure would impose a one-time 5% tax on the wealth of California residents valued at $1 billion or more, with the option to pay it over several years.
According to SEIU-UHW, the new tax would apply to about 200 people in the state, although many wealthy tech leaders have taken steps to change their residence and avoid paying the tax upon its passage. In recent months, Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and others Bought gorgeous beachside properties and new commercial office space in South Florida.
Some billionaires among them are also trying to defeat this measure. Brin, according to Forbes third richest person in the worldhas contributed $45 million to a new ballot measure committee called Building a Better California, which is pushing Alternative Statewide Ballot Measures This could eliminate the billionaire’s tax.
Brandon Castillo, a veteran ballot measure campaign strategist who is not working on either measure, said that even though turnout is currently above 50%, the billionaire’s tax is starting “to be in a really untenable position.”
“It’s not a very strong place to start,” he said. “That doesn’t mean they can’t keep this thing above 50%, but when you’re barely starting above 50% and you have a tsunami of money and a huge campaign against you, it’s really hard to maintain yourself at that level.”
However, previous opinion polls at the state and national level have shown that Widespread support for requiring proof of citizenship As for turnout at the polls, even among Democrats, a new Berkeley poll finds that liberal voters are skeptical of the measure.
Proponents of voter ID argue that such laws prevent election fraud and require proof of citizenship as well as prevent non-citizens from voting. Opponents say ID requirements threaten Americans’ fundamental constitutional rights Document is not easily available, And that restrictions are unnecessary because voting by non-citizens is rare and already illegal in the US.
Under current law, Californians are not required to show or provide identification when voting in person or by mail. They are required to provide identification when registering to vote, and swear under penalty of perjury, which is a felony, that they are eligible to vote and are a US citizen.
The poll showed that predominantly Spanish-speaking voters, voters born in another country, and first-generation immigrant voters support the ID measure. A plurality of Latino voters are also in favor, with 44% in support and 41% opposed.
But DiCamillo cautioned against reading too much into those numbers, noting that awareness of the measure is still relatively low.
He said, “In my history of gauging the support of Latino voters I have always noticed that they make decisions relatively late on most ballots.” “How they break down will be important. I would say we will have to see how they feel when we do our final pre-poll survey.”
Voter ID legislation is also a top priority for Trump, who has put pressure on the Senate Adoption of the SAVE ActThat would impose nationwide requirements for proof of citizenship to vote and has already passed the House of Representatives.
Castillo said Trump’s support could push Democratic and liberal-leaning independents to vote against the measure.
Both DiCamillo and Castillo said with the November election still seven months away, voters aren’t paying much attention and both sides of each ballot haven’t launched major campaigns yet.
“I suspect that by the time Election Day comes, the awareness numbers on the billionaire’s tax will certainly be much higher,” Castillo said. “You’ll see 80-90% of voters are familiar with it, simply because they will be inundated with advertising and earned media between now and November.”
The Berkeley IGS/Times poll conducted an online survey of 5,019 registered California voters in English and Spanish from March 9 to 14. The results are estimated to have a margin of error of 2.5 percentage points in either direction for the overall sample and larger numbers for subgroups.
