California governor to stay in office, agencies draft after state pulls vote

International news agencies predict that Democrat Gavin Newsom will continue as California Governor after that Remember to vote held this Tuesday (14).

With 62% of the vote counted, Newsom led by 32 percentage points: 66% of voters said he should remain in office, and 34% said he should be impeached. The Associated Press, Reuters and CNN International predicted a victory for the Democrat, who will remain in office until the end of his term in January 2023.

It will take a few days for the official result to be released and will only be approved in October.

Newsom is already celebrating a victory. “The voters said yes to science, to vaccination, to the right to vote without fear, to diversity, to inclusion, and to women’s rights,” she said.

Understand why there are no-confidence elections

California electoral rules allow this type of impeachment – recently, there have been changes in legislation that made it easier to hold this mechanism: it is necessary to collect the equivalent of 12% of the voters who participated in the last ballot.

For Newsom’s public call, it was necessary to collect the signatures of 1.5 million voters (California has a population of 40 million).

Newsom’s de-delegation campaign has gained traction with conservatives who disagree with policies on LGBT rights, crime and immigration. They were even more alarmed by the management of the epidemic (schools closed, masks and vaccinations mandatory).

Newsom was elected in 2018. He won nearly 62 percent of the vote over John Cox who got 38 percent. The result was not surprising, since California has a left-sided bias in American politics. The Democratic Party outnumbers the Republican Party by two to one.

The vote was the first ballot box match between Republicans and Democrats since the turbulent 2020 presidential election. The Democrats’ victory was already expected because the party had more registered voters in the state.