It doesn’t take a political genius to see that Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) wants to run for president and has been waging a shadow campaign in the event Joe Biden drops out. He’s been doing everything possible to increase his national profile, be it campaigning for other Democrats or taking international trips to boost his foreign policy chops, and he even has a debate with Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) later this month.
Of course, as a loyal Democrat, he would never challenge the sitting president from his own party, but that hasn’t stopped him from laying the groundwork for a presidential campaign under the guise of creating a national organization to oppose Republicans in other states. Heck, a couple of months ago, it even looked like Biden was possibly grooming Newsom to replace him on the ballot. But that plan appears to have hit a snag.
If Biden does eventually decide to bow out of the 2024 presidential race (which is increasingly unlikely as time passes) the obvious heir apparent is Kamala Harris, who might just be the only Democrat with worse approval ratings than Joe Biden. No one in the Democratic Party would want to be saddled with Kamala Harris as the party’s nominee, and there has been plenty of reason to believe that Newsom has what it takes to be the Democrats’ best hope of holding onto the White House. He’s young and has been a popular governor of one of the nation’s biggest states.
At least he was. According to a new Berkeley IGS poll of registered voters in California, Newsom’s approval ratings are underwater. Last month, his approval rating hit 44%, down 11 points from February of this year, an all-time low for the governor. His disapproval rating also hit 49%, an all-time high. This is quite a swing considering he was just reelected last year and survived a recall attempted a year prior.
According to the new poll, Newsom’s decline in approval spans most major voter subgroups. The write-up of the poll results explains:
A comparison of voters' latest assessment of Newsom's performance as governor to those obtained the last time the poll made an assessment last February, reveals that the decline is broad-based spanning virtually all major political and demographic subgroups of the voting population. In addition, this includes significant declines among the governor's Democratic voter base and is most prominent among two of the state's swing voter blocs — political moderates and No Party Preference voters. In February more voters in both subgroups approved than disapproved of Newsom's overall performance in office, whereas now they rate the governor's performance negatively by similar five to three margins.
Looking deep into the poll, it’s hard not to see parallels between Newsom’s decline and Biden’s. Biden has lost significant support from non-white and young voters. In February, black voters gave Newsom a 71% approval rating, which has since fallen to 57%. In February, 57% of Latino voters approved of the job Newsom was doing, and now, only 45% do. Newsom’s approval from young voters between 18 and 29 years old declined from 50% in February to 35% in October, whereas his approval from 65 and older voters was much more stable, declining only 5 points.
Newsom insists that he’s not running for president, but even Sen. John Fetterman (D-Penn.) can see what’s really going on. And if Newsom is underwater in his home state, that’s hardly an inspiring position for him to be launching a national campaign.
