Is the TDS over in California? Can we get back to the business of government, solving the homeless, drug, education and taxation crisis’?
“The results suggest a disconnect between the policymaking class and voters in an overwhelmingly blue state where Trump made broad inroads in 2024 amid widespread frustrations over crime and a prohibitively high cost of living. Registered Democrats, however — who comprise nearly half the electorate — are more enthusiastic about progressive policies and more eager to challenge Trump’s Washington.
California’s approach to the president has become a core point of debate among the state’s elected Democrats as the national party seeks a path out of the political wilderness. Newsom has invited conservative luminaries like Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon on his podcast, appealed to the president for Los Angeles wildfire aid and approved millions to battle the Trump administration in court.”
Newsom and the Sacramento Democrats are using tens of millions of dollars to sue Trump—though we have massive deficits failed schools and illegal aliens running our streets and communities. We have a chance to roll this back in November, 2026—but will we?
California voters have Trump-resistance fatigue, poll finds
From taking on Trump to hot-button issues, voters writ large embraced a different approach — although Democrats are more ready to fight.
Gov. Gavin Newsom and fellow California Democrats are seeking a path out the wilderness — but there’s a disconnect between political elites and the electorate. | Rich Pedroncelli/AP
By Jeremy B. White, Politico, 4/16/25 https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/16/california-poll-trump-fighting-enthusiasm-00292326
California voters are less keen on fighting Donald Trump than their state’s political elite.
In a dual survey of California voters and political professionals who are driving the state’s agenda, the electorate is strikingly more likely to want a detente with the White House. Voters are also more divided on issues like immigration and climate change, where Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democratic state lawmakers have asserted progressive ambitions that rebuff the president’s agenda.
A plurality of voters is skeptical of legal immigration, and less than half think the state should be able to set its own strict standards on vehicle emissions, an authority California has used for more than half a century.
The results suggest a disconnect between the policymaking class and voters in an overwhelmingly blue state where Trump made broad inroads in 2024 amid widespread frustrations over crime and a prohibitively high cost of living. Registered Democrats, however — who comprise nearly half the electorate — are more enthusiastic about progressive policies and more eager to challenge Trump’s Washington.
California’s approach to the president has become a core point of debate among the state’s elected Democrats as the national party seeks a path out of the political wilderness. Newsom has invited conservative luminaries like Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon on his podcast, appealed to the president for Los Angeles wildfire aid and approved millions to battle the Trump administration in court as legislative Democrats wrestle with the balance between combating Trump and addressing quality-of-life concerns.
On Wednesday, the governor and attorney general announced California would sue Trump over tariffs, the first state to do so.
After proudly hoisting the resistance banner following Trump’s 2016 victory, however, elected California Democrats have largely chosen a more muted response since his recent election amid a broader soul-searching in Sacramento. But Jack Citrin, a University of California, Berkeley political science professor who directed the first-of-its-kind poll with POLITICO, said the results underscore the extent to which California’s political class is dominated by self-identified progressives.
“The influentials are a much more homogenous group than the registered voter public,” Citrin said. “The major difference is the electorate has polarized.”
The poll shows that while Democratic voters favor taking on Trump, the electorate broadly wants their representatives to lower the temperature. Forty-three percent of registered voters said leaders were “too confrontational” — a sentiment largely driven by Republicans and independents — compared to a third who found them “too passive.” A plurality of Democrats surveyed, 47 percent, wanted a more aggressive approach.
Nearly half of influencers called their leaders too passive.
California’s Democratic elected officials have for years sought to combat Trumpism by fortifying the state’s liberal policies and casting California as a counterweight. They have passed laws extending health insurance to undocumented immigrants and limiting federal authorities’ ability to pursue deportations. They have enshrined ambitious climate goals and clean car rules in direct defiance of the Trump administration.
Voters are not renouncing those policies — and on the question of vehicle emissions waivers, they backed California’s approach more if it would antagonize Trump. But, as with their leaders’ overall approach to the president, they are less eager than policy professionals to embrace California’s progressive agenda.
Surveys consistently show Californians support an ethnically diverse state, said Matt Barreto, a professor of political science at UCLA. Barreto said the stronger support for pro-immigrant policies among influencers suggested a more nuanced understanding of them.
“I have not seen anything that suggests Californians are moving towards being anti-immigrant,” Barreto said. “The policy folks are more plugged in, and they’re more aware of the factual landscape.”
While a clear 60 percent of voters support the state’s “sanctuary” laws, which partition local law enforcement from federal immigration authorities, policy influencers were 20 points more likely to support that policy.
Voters were more likely to support reducing legal immigration and encouraging assimilation, while policy professionals favored more legal immigration and maintaining distinct cultures.
The survey was conducted on the TrueDot.ai platform from April 1-14 among 1,025 California registered voters and 718 influencers. To generate the influencer sample, the poll was emailed to a list of people including subscribers to California Playbook, California Climate, and POLITICO Pro in California who work in the state. Respondents in that sample included lawmakers and staffers in the state Legislature and the federal government.
Verasight provided the registered voter sample, which included randomly sampled voters from the California voter file. The modeled error estimate for the voter survey is plus or minus 5 percentage points.
One of California’s most important environmental policies — the state’s longstanding authority to set stringent auto emission standards — fell short of majority support, with voters backing it by a 45 percent to 40 percent margin. Once again, that was a sharp contrast with policy professionals who backed California’s authority by a resounding 82 percent to 14 percent margin.
Voters became more likely to back the state’s stricter emissions authority when it was framed as California forging its own path away from Trump. A 53 point majority said they’d support it even if Trump vowed to withhold wildfire aid, and more than three-quarters said they would even if it meant other states stopped following California’s example. Influencers were less likely to support the rule if Trump cuts off aid dollars.
Craig Segall, an environmental policy consultant who formerly worked for the California Air Resources Board, said in an interview that the ambivalence toward one of California’s core environmental policies suggested that most voters do not see concrete effects in their lives from the state’s climate regime.
“I doubt there’s a lot of hometown California pride in [its] waiver authority,” Segall said. “What could the state do to make this more beneficial and deeply visible?”
