Signaling Voter Unrest, Schwarzenegger Cut Deep Into the Democrats' Base
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE and MARJORIE CONNELLY
OS ANGELES, Oct. 8 — Arnold Schwarzenegger pulled together a vast coalition of dissatisfied voters from across all demographic groups in California's recall election on Tuesday, winning among all age groups and, perhaps most ominously for Democrats, appearing to make inroads into their traditional base, surveys show.
In a major sign of voter unrest in this Democratic bastion, one-quarter of the people who identified themselves as Democrats voted to recall Gov. Gray Davis, a Democrat, and 18 percent voted for Mr. Schwarzenegger, a Republican.
Mr. Schwarzenegger also won 31 percent of Hispanic voters and 17 percent of black voters, doing significantly better with both groups than did Bill Simon Jr., the Republican candidate for governor in 2002.
And despite the last-minute accusations about unwanted sexual advances toward women, Mr. Schwarzenegger narrowed the gender gap that Republicans traditionally face, winning the votes of 49 percent of the men who voted and 43 percent of the women.
The numbers are based on interviews with nearly 4,000 voters as they left the polls conducted by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International for The New York Times and other news organizations.
In fact, Mr. Schwarzenegger did almost as well with women as Mr. Davis, as measured by the 49 percent of women who supported the Democrat by voting against his recall.
More women tend to be Democratic than Republican, and this is particularly true in California, an overwhelmingly Democratic state. Here, only 36 percent of women describe themselves as Republican, and 71 percent of them voted for Mr. Schwarzenegger. So did 20 percent of Democratic women.
Mr. Schwarzenegger won pluralities of women in all age groups. He did the worst with women under 30, but still got 41 percent of their votes. His strongest supporters were men ages 30 to 44.
In addition, Mr. Schwarzenegger demonstrated enough strength to fend off any criticism that he had become governor with only a minority of the vote. Even with 135 candidates on the ballot, Mr. Schwarzenegger won more votes in favor of his candidacy (4,358,000, with 99.8 percent of the votes counted) than Mr. Davis won against the recall effort (3,541,000). And that was more than the 3,533,490 votes Mr. Davis won last November, when he was re-elected to a second term.
Combining Mr. Schwarzenegger's votes with those for another Republican, State Senator Tom McClintock, about 60 percent of those who voted on Tuesday did so for Republicans — possibly good news for the White House, which now has plausible reasons to see California as up for grabs in 2004, although President Bush's approval ratings in California are at 51 percent, no better than the rest of the country (but no worse, either). Mr. Bush is scheduled to meet with Mr. Schwarzenegger next week.
"The Schwarzenegger campaign excited Republicans, Hispanic voters and union-member households," said Ed Gillespie, chairman of the Republican National Committee. "The Democrat Party and the Democrat presidential candidates should take heed."
Democrats looking for any signs of hope might find them in the fact that Mr. Schwarzenegger's weakest support was among people with advanced degrees and people making less than $50,000 a year. And his assertion during the campaign that he would draw new voters into the party did not materialize significantly. Only 3 percent of voters said they had never voted before, and another 3 percent said they rarely voted. Of those two groups of voters, Mr. Schwarzenegger won about half of them.
The surveys also showed that more than two-thirds of the voters had made up their minds more than a month before the election. As a result, the intense publicity in the last week of the campaign about accusations of Mr. Schwarzenegger's unwanted sexual advances appeared to have had little effect on how women — and others — voted.
Surveys indicate that the sputtering economy remains an overriding concern for California voters.
A full 83 percent said the economy was in bad shape. That number shows a serious erosion of confidence in the state's economic health since Governor Davis was re-elected 11 months ago. At that time, 47 percent perceived the economy to be in bad shape, according to a survey by The Los Angeles Times.
Various surveys have shown that a vast majority of voters believe the state is on the wrong track, an important signal of discontent in electoral politics, and that voters have been alarmed about the state's plunging credit rating, the exodus of more than 100,000 manufacturing jobs and a budget deficit of billions of dollars.
The surveys also suggest that Mr. Davis misinterpreted the economic anxiety in his state or did not appreciate it. This was evident in his signing of a bill to allow illegal immigrants to get drivers' licenses, a move that the survey found was opposed by 70 percent of voters. Interviews with voters have shown that many Californians perceive the drivers' license issues as less a social issue than an economic one. By giving licenses to illegal immigrants, many voters say, the state would attract more illegal immigrants who would be a drain on already strained resources like schools. Mr. Davis had vetoed the measure twice before signing it this summer. |
