California exit poll

Dan Walters tackles the LA Times exit polls, and discovers the meaning of California’s election results:

As turnout plummeted to a historic low level — far fewer than 50 percent of registered voters and scarcely a third of the 21 million potentially eligible voters — the number of voters willing to back Davis also plunged. Nearly 5 million Californians voted for Davis in 1998, but scarcely 3 million did this year — less than 10 percent of the state’s population.

A Los Angeles Times exit poll of voters found that just 40 percent of them approved of Davis’ gubernatorial performance. His vote percentage, 47 percent, was virtually identical to the proportion of voters who identified themselves as Democrats.

Republican Bill Simon’s 42 percent, by the same token, was just above the 40 percent of voters who were Republicans. In the main, therefore, Davis got the Democratic voters and Simon got the Republican voters, and there were a few more of the former than the latter.

Ten percent of Californians voted for Davis, and that was enough to re-elect. Sad.