California: Newsom Recall Round-up -- Polls are well outside of the margin; Baseless fraud claims; The COVID election and powers of a new governor

Republicans need an "Historic polling miss" to win

Perhaps a bigger problem is that we've probably topped 8 million ballots handed in. 

More on the voter fraud claims -- no one seems to have connected it to the 2012 recalls, but I'll do that soon enough. Elder has a new website to report fraud.

Intimidation claims at the polls -- which should just push more people to mail-in ballots

What types of power would a replacement Governor have with a Democratic supermajority in the legislature? Perhaps a lot -- though I kind of doubt it. Politics is different than in 2003 and Democratic legislators would face significant blowback from working with Larry Elder. 

WSJ on the recall as a referendum on COVID

Here's my op-ed in CalMatters on why the Democrats were right not to run a safety candidate (I have a long blog post on this as well)

Spending a lot more time on interviews, so here's some of them:

The Economist

SacTownTalks

The Guardian