In summary
These maps illustrate how California counties split over the midterm ballot propositions.
This week, with California’s 2018 midterm behind us, we’ll be offering insights into the results with five charts—one per day. Today, Friday, we published our final installment. About 416,000 ballots await tabulation, so we’ll update these posts as warranted.
Skim how California voted on various ballot propositions—”yes” to more borrowing for affordable housing, “no” to the gas tax repeal, “yay” for bigger chicken cages—and you might think people across the state feel pretty much the same way about these things.
Which, of course, they don’t.
Proposition 6, which sought to nix a gas tax increase and thereby cut transportation funding about $5 billion per year, failed. But not everywhere. A majority of voters in most of the state’s inland counties voted for the measure. They did so despite the fact that many of these large, sparsely-populated counties receive a disproportionate amount of state road funding per person. Chalk it up to a combination of car dependence, tax-aversion and support for the Republican Party backing the measure.
So looks can be deceiving. Prop. 6 won a majority of the state’s landmass, but elections aren’t won by acreage. Overwhelming opposition in the state’s big cities (83 percent of San Franciscans and 61 percent of Angelenos voted “no”) dragged the ballot measure to defeat.
Then again, sometimes looks say it all.
Prop. 10, the unsuccessful attempt to repeal statewide restrictions on rent control and another one of the most controversial propositions on the ballot, went down just about everywhere. The two exceptions were San Francisco and Alameda County. Those two counties were also alone in opposition Prop. 11, a paramedic breaktime initiative.
For the record, those were not the most geographically lopsided outcomes among the 11 ballot measures. Tiny Alpine County was the only county that supported Prop. 8, the profit cap on dialysis clinics. But it was close: 283 people voted yes while 269 opposed.
No county carried Prop. 5, the measure to allow older homeowners to carry their Prop. 13 property tax benefits when they move.
But that’s where the unanimity ended. Looking at which propositions received the most “yes” votes in each locale, counties were split across six measures: Prop. 2 (housing/mental health bond), Prop. 4 (children’s hospital bond), Prop. 6 (gas tax repeal), Prop. 7 (to start the process of ditching the biannual switch from Daylight Saving to Standard time), Prop. 11 (paramedic breaks) and Prop. 12 (requiring larger cages for hens and other farm animals).
Sadly for the seven counties that loved the idea of repealing the gas take hike, that was the only measure on the list above to fail.
As for which propositions received the most “no” votes, counties split their disdain three ways.
The gas repeal measure, as noted, was largely rejected by the coast. Likewise, in nearly every county not touching the Pacific, the measure to allow more rent control was the proposition that received the highest number of “no” votes. That more than canceled out the support that the measure received in the Bay Area.
And Prop. 5? While no county much liked it, ell, Yolo, Sacramento, Humboldt and Mono were especially down on the property tax break.