Redistricting has once again emerged on the national agenda, well before its normal return at the beginning of each decade. Texas Republicans are planning to redraw their congressional districts to add five more seats for their party, and California Democrats want to respond with five more for their side. In Texas’s new plan all decisions lie with the legislature and governor, while California’s proposal will be presented to California voters by the governor and legislature for an up or down majority vote. This vote is still months away—the idea is to schedule a special election for November—but what do we know now about how voters might approach it? California is a reliably blue state, but voters’ unfavorable views of both major parties, their relatively low approval of elected officials, and their generally sour mood may complicate the path to a Democratic victory.

To move California’s new plan forward, voters will be presented with a constitutional amendment that puts the state’s commission-drawn districts on hold and allows the legislature to draw new lines for the remainder of the decade. California’s Citizens Redistricting Commission—which the voters adopted (61% yes) with a citizens’ initiative in 2010—is independent from the legislature. Its membership is a mix of Democrats, Republicans, and independents, and does not consider partisan data or where incumbents live when planning out its lines. By contrast, the new plan will be drawn by one party in the legislature with a particular partisan outcome in mind. Whatever else one might think of the idea, it comes with heavy partisan overtones and the baggage of overturning the voters’ decision.

Partisan overtones may activate partisan thinking. If every Californian who voted for Democrat Kamala Harris for president supports the mid-decade redistricting, it will pass easily. But the ballot measure may activate feelings about parties and politicians as it hands control of redistricting to the legislature—feelings that are far more conflicted. In our June Statewide Survey, six in ten California likely voters had unfavorable impressions of the Democratic Party, and seven in ten of the Republican Party. Likely voter approval of President Trump is relatively low (34%), and he is the one who first promoted the idea of a redraw in Texas. But likely voter approval is under water for Governor Gavin Newsom (46%), who has most actively promoted California’s response, and for the state legislature (45%), which is drawing the new maps. Support for elected officials and parties on either side may not be enough to carry the measure to victory.

California voters are also in a relatively foul mood about the direction of both the state (56% say it’s headed in the wrong direction) and the nation as a whole (70% wrong direction). But their concerns are different in each case. When the focus is the state, almost half of likely voters in our June survey picked some form of cost pressure as their top issue: either the economy and inflation (29%) or housing costs and availability (17%). When asked about the country as a whole, 44% chose either political extremism or threats to democracy—responses especially common among Democrats (63%) but rare among Republicans (15%). Thus, the ballot measure may depend in part on the context in which voters see it. If California is the context, voters may see the measure as a distraction from more important issues; if national politics is the context, many (especially Democrats) may be open to Governor Newsom’s framing as a fight for democracy.

Regardless how they vote, Californians will likely appreciate the chance to weigh in, because voters often express their enthusiasm for direct democracy. A 2024 survey found that 79% of likely voters think it is a good thing that a majority of voters can make laws and change public policies by passing initiatives, though 68% also said they were in favor of having voters renew initiatives after a certain number of years. In fact, voters have recently changed course on their earlier decisions,  passing Proposition 3 on marriage equality (63% yes)  and Proposition 36 on crime sentence increases (68% yes) in November 2024. These results point to an electorate that would be far more suspicious of newly drawn districts without the opportunity to approve them—and underline the advantages of a direct democracy system in these tumultuous times.

The proposed map has been released publicly and the measure to enact it has passed the legislature. The new map now moves to the ballot, where California voters will have an opportunity to vote it up or down. PPIC will continue to monitor this unfolding issue and the public’s views of it as events develop.