Voters in California’s 31st Assembly district head to the polls tomorrow to vote in a special election to fill the seat for the rest of the year. But do voters even know its election day? Who actually turns out to vote could play a significant role in who winds up winning.
On a beautiful clear day in the town of Selma, in the heart of the 31st district, I stood in the town square to ask people this question: Do you know who is running in the special election?
Most reactions I got went something like this.
"I don't know why I don't know. I think I am up to date on most politics but I have no idea," Brooke Rummins
“Ahhh….ok. So that’s Arambula…and…the other fellows. I am trying to remember the other guy’s name. There are three of them,” said Steven Correa, who actually got closer than most of the nearly two dozen people I stopped.
Many, like Brooke Rummins, didn’t even know an election was happening or if they did assumed it was for the June presidential primary.
“I actually don’t know anything about it. I don’t know why I don’t know. I think I am up to date on most politics but I have no idea,” Rummins said.
In case you didn’t know, the candidates are Democrats Joaquin Arambula and Ted Miller and Republican Clint Olivier.
Democrats have held the 31st Assembly seat for decades and desperately want to keep it as part of their quest for a two-thirds majority. It is only open now because Democrat Henry Perea left it to work for the pharmaceutical industry.
Republicans think potential low turnout and favorable makeup of the electorate give them a strong chance to nab the spot.
"There are no ballot measures. There are no higher office races that are going to signal to them that they are going to need to vote," Political Science Professor Jeff Cummins
To be fair, this is a very unusual time to have an election.
Fresno State political Science Professor Jeff Cummins says the odd timing, high-profile presidential primary, and other factors are all playing a role in the election going so under the radar.
“Aside from that special election itself, there is nothing else to vote on. There are no ballot measures. There are no higher office races that are going to signal to them that they are going to need to vote,” Cummins said.
"Right now the biggest swing voter universe are Democrats in the Central Valley," Paul Mitchell
As of Monday morning, about 20,000 absentee ballots have been submitted. That’s roughly 11 percent of all registered voters, but total turnout is likely to be more in the 20%-to-30% range says Paul Mitchell the vice president of Political Data.
He says Republicans and conservative voters are so far over performing their registration numbers, which bodes well for Olivier, even though Democrats have a significant total registration advantage.
“Right now the biggest swing voter universe are Democrats in the Central Valley. Democrats in the Central Valley will often times vote for the Democrat. But there are a good number of Democrats in the Central Valley that will vote for Republicans,” Mitchell said.
Demographically, about a third of votes cast so far are from Latinos, who tend to vote Democratic, even though more than half of all eligible voters are not white.
The low turn-out is significant because, according to new research from the Public Policy Institute of California, it means the people picking who will represent them in Sacramento might look very different from the majority of the district.
"Commonly, I run into people who are confused about this election. They confuse it with the presidential election," Glenn Kinney, campaign volunteer
Mark Baldassare with PPIC says low turnout elections skew toward voters who are more highly educated, older, more conservative, and whiter than the average resident in this district.
“The lower the turnout the greater the likelihood that we are going to have an unrepresentative group of voters making the decision for everyone,” Baldassare said.
Back on the street in Central Fresno Glenn Kinney is going door-to-door campaigning for Joaquin Arambula.
Both he and sources with the Olivier campaign agree that there’s generally low awareness of the election among voters.
“Commonly, I run into people who are confused about this election. They confuse it with the presidential election. And we have a whole bunch of attention that is going to the primaries right now,” Kinney said.
But that confusion might continue. In addition to the regular June primary for this seat, if none of three candidates for the special election get a 50-percent-plus one majority, there will also be a special runoff election on the June ballot.
