Posts

Yaroslavsky Weighs In on Recall Fever Among Voters

/0 Comments/in /by

Director of the Los Angeles Initiative Zev Yaroslavsky spoke to Politico about growing efforts to recall elected leaders in California, starting with Gov. Gavin Newsom. Five previous attempts to recall the governor have failed. Now, voters unhappy with Newsom’s handling of the pandemic are again seeking to remove him from office. While there have been 179 recall attempts in California since 1911, only 10 have qualified for the ballot. Recently, virus fatigue has strengthened interest in recalls among disillusioned voters stuck at home, and many elected officials are becoming the targets of recall efforts. “I think COVID is one of those issues, and criminal justice is one of those issues, where everybody has an opinion,” Yaroslavsky said. He explained that law enforcement issues and pandemic restrictions have created distinct camps of Californians who “have been cooped up in their houses for a year” and are refusing to wait until 2022 to hold their representatives accountable.

Read the article

LPPI Team Finds Mobilization of Latino Vote

/0 Comments/in /by

Sonja Diaz, Rodrigo Dominguez-Villegas and Daisy Vazquez Vera of the Latino Policy and Politics Initiative joined Latino Rebels Radio to discuss the findings of their new report on the role of Latino voters in the 2020 election. In a path-breaking study building on research from 2018, the LPPI team collected and analyzed precinct data, which represents actual election results instead of polls or predictions. The LPPI report estimated that a historic 16.6 million U.S. Latinos voted in the 2020 election, a 30.9% increase from 2016. “Either by themselves or in a multi-racial coalition, Latinos delivered many states for Joe Biden, including Arizona and Georgia,” the report’s authors found. The team explained that Latino voters have historically been “invisible for a variety of structural reasons,” and they aimed to find empirical evidence of the impact of Latino voters across the country with the quantitative report.

Listen to the podcast

Latino Voters Were Decisive in 2020 Presidential Election

/0 Comments/in /by

A new report by the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Initiative shows that Latino voters were decisive in sending President-elect Joe Biden to the White House. Researchers analyzed votes cast in 13 states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, New Mexico, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington and Wisconsin — that collectively are home to about 80% of the Latino electorate. Researchers estimated that nationwide Latino voter turnout increased 30.9% compared with the 2016 presidential election. Among voters of all races, turnout was 15.9% greater. The impact of the growing Latino electorate was evident in battleground states. In Arizona, where Latinos represent 25.2% of all registered voters, the electorate’s size and turnout helped secure Biden’s victory. Even in Wisconsin and Georgia, where Latinos make up less than 5% of registered voters, their strong support of the Democratic candidate helped tip the scales to victory by margins of less than a single percentage point. The report also provides context for a prominent post-election talking point. Many observers said that results in Miami-Dade County, Florida — where Trump got support from a majority of Latino voters — was evidence of a wider Latino swing toward the president. Trump did win the state, but the UCLA report found that in all Florida counties outside of Miami-Dade, Latino voters favored Biden by a margin of 2 to 1. By looking at votes cast and demographic data at the precinct level, the report offers a more accurate analysis of the impact of Latino voters than other studies that have relied on exit polls, which do not capture enough Latino voters.

Yaroslavsky Sees Election as a Wake-Up Call

/0 Comments/in /by

Director of the Los Angeles Initiative Zev Yaroslavsky joined UCLA’s “Then & Now” podcast to discuss the aftermath of the presidential election. On the day Joe Biden was declared winner of the election, “I was not euphoric,” Yaroslavsky said. “I was very happy that Biden won. … I was not happy that 72 million people voted for an incumbent president who spent four years trafficking in racism and bigotry.” He argued that Trump’s refusal to accept defeat is “calcifying the divide and inability of either side to come together and work on behalf of the people in this country.” However, this issue should resolve itself as responsible people move forward in a rational transition process, Yaroslavsky said during the podcast produced by the Luskin Center for History and Policy. “Biden won the presidency, but less than 100,000 votes could have swung the election in another direction,” he said. “This should be a wake-up call that there is still a lot of work to be done.”

Listen to the podcast

Diaz Debunks Myths of the Latino Electorate

/0 Comments/in /by

Sonja Diaz, director of the Latino Policy and Politics Initiative, joined an episode of Latino USA to discuss the role of Latino voters in Arizona. For the first time since 1996, Arizona flipped blue in the 2020 presidential election. Diaz pointed to Arizona as an example for campaigns to follow on “how to recruit Latino voters and why they need to start today.” While the Latino electorate is often misconstrued as a monolith, Diaz explained that “the 2020 election brought to bear the diversity, the complexity and the myriad of interest groups that characterize the Latinx electorate.” She criticized “political pundits [who] continue to act like they know about these voters who they deem Hispanic” when in fact “Latinos are both mystic and incomprehensible to all of them.” Diaz concluded, “The victory on Nov. 3 was because of the work of Latino mass mobilization in response to failure of policy in so many key states.”

Listen to the podcast

As Election Results Roll In, UCLA Luskin Experts Offer Insights

/0 Comments/in , , /by

As the vote count from the 2020 election stretched into days, media outlets called on experts from UCLA Luskin to offer context and expertise. Public Policy Professor Mark Peterson spoke to Elite Daily for a story on President Trump’s swift declaration of victory, which he called “the most serious assault on our democratic institutions of any president, at least in modern times.” Sonja Diaz, executive director of the Latino Policy and Politics Initiative, offered insights on KTLA5 News, Peacock TV and radio programs including KPCC’s Air Talk (beginning at minute 19:30). Diaz spoke about a wide range of topics, including the Latino electorate’s impact in Florida and Arizona as well as on local ballot measures. Los Angeles Initiative Director Zev Yaroslavsky told KCAL9 News (beginning at minute 3:00) that the close presidential race vote signals a deep tribalism in the nation. “However it ends,” he said, “it’s going to be a very difficult road ahead for the country.” Yaroslavsky also told the Los Angeles Times that challenger Nithya Raman’s lead in a Los Angeles City Council race is “a political earthquake.”

 

Election Primer: When Will We Know Who Won?

/0 Comments/in /by

Peterson on Scenarios for a Messy Election Aftermath

/0 Comments/in /by

Public Policy Professor Mark Peterson spoke to Elite Daily about a post-election scenario that has raised concerns: What would happen if President Trump lost reelection but refused to give up power? Trump has made multiple comments suggesting that he would not commit to stepping down if he lost the election. According to Peterson, this scenario is highly unlikely. Election results are verified through the Electoral College and then declared by Congress, he explained. An incumbent president who fails to win a second term yet refuses to leave the White House may be escorted off the premises by the newly elected president’s Secret Service detail once power changes hands on Inauguration Day. Peterson added that Trump’s claims of voter fraud are baseless and “undermine the confidence that people have in our institutions and in our elected officials.” And he expressed concern about potential violence from informal right-wing militias who might be triggered into action by a Trump loss.

Read the article

Diaz on the Increasing Influence of Voters of Color

/0 Comments/in /by

Several media outlets have called on Sonja Diaz, executive director of the Latino Policy and Politics Initiative at UCLA Luskin, for insights on election-related issues including the presidential debates, voter suppression and the important role of voters of color. On ABC7’s Eyewitness Newsmakers, beginning at minute 16:35, Diaz addressed misconceptions about the engagement of the Latino electorate, noting that younger voters do not turn out at the same rate as older Americans. She added, “Our studies show that 30% of Americans that will cast a ballot on Nov. 3 are non-white. This is really important and will only continue to increase for foreseeable generations.” On WHYY’s Radio Times, Diaz said some states are instituting “arduous hoops to overcome the ballot box … at a time when we are still not over the hump with this pandemic.” She concluded, “I think that this election is a lot about whether or not people are going to be able to cast a ballot without risking their lives.” 

Watch the ABC7 interview
Listen to the WHYY interview