BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KERO) — Today, the California Secretary of State certified the results of the September 14th gubernatorial election. It was widely projected that Governor Gavin Newsom would not be recalled, and that became official Friday morning.
According to data from the California Secretary of State’s Office, Governor Gavin Newsom retains his office with 62% of voters s voting ‘no’ on the recall across the state.
In kern county, nearly 40% of voters voted to keep Newsom as governor while 60% voted to recall him.
In 2018 numbers from the gubernatorial election showed Newsom won the state with almost 60% of the vote. but he only got 40% of the vote in Kern County which is nearly the same as the result from the recall election, three years later.
Political analyst Allen Bolar said one reason for Newsom still being favored for governor could be because the race was branded in a partisan way.
“Ultimately, comes down to partisanship it's a matter of parties, and this was something that Gavin Newsom wanted to do, and they did it,” said Bolar. “You know his team successfully turned the recall into. What they described as the Republican recall they wanted to make this a party issue and then people would people would be more likely to vote along party lines and that's what happened.”
The vote-by-mail return statistics show that 91% of ballots returned in Kern County were returned by mail. That’s nearly the same percentage of vote-by-mail ballots across the state too.
With overall turnout numbers across the state, about 60% of registered voters voted in the election, and 52-percent of the eligible voters cast their vote.
In Kern County, nearly half of registered voters voted, and about 40% of eligible voters cast their vote.
So given that this was an election with just two questions on the ballot, Bolar said it’s a pretty good turnout.
“So, I think that is surprising. I think it's a very good thing that there was that there were that many people who were involved. I think, a part of it was that the state of California has transitioned to being all mail-in ballot voting,” said Bolar.
Bolar said that with everyone getting a mail-in ballot it will be a good reminder for people to vote.
“You know automatically you can still vote in person, but you're going to get that mail ballot mail to you, and for some people, that's enough of a hint and a reminder that this is something's going on and it's a little bit easier, I can just fill it out at home drop in the mailbox.
The second question on the ballot was about who should replace Newsom if he is recalled.
GOP candidate Larry Elder got nearly 50% of the votes and second was a Democratic challenger, Kevin Paffrath with about 10% of the vote.
In Kern County, Larry Elder got nearly 70% of the vote and second was John Cox with about 6.5% of the vote.
“You know a little bit I would have expected Kevin Faulkner to do even better, and he really did very poorly and, as you say he wasn't even number two,” said Bolar.
But even with the midterm elections coming in the next few months, Bolar said he doesn’t think the recall will affect that season of elections.
“Well, I think that the recall is going to have almost no impact on next year. The truth is that that these things move very fast and things that we think are very important in the moment become less important almost overnight. People have a very short memory in politics,” said Bolar.