Poll

California voters are sharply divided along partisan lines over the Trump administration’s immigration raids this year in Los Angeles and across the nation, according to a new poll.

Just over half of the state’s registered voters oppose federal efforts to reduce undocumented immigration, and 61% are against deporting everyone in the nation who doesn’t have legal status, according to a recent poll by UC Berkeley’s Possibility Lab released to The Times on Wednesday.

But there is an acute difference in opinions based on political leanings.

Nearly 80% of Democrats oppose reducing the number of people entering the United States illegally, and 90% are against deporting everyone in the country who is undocumented, according to the poll. Among Republicans, 5% are against reducing the entries and 10% don’t believe all undocumented immigrants should be forced to leave.

“The big thing that we find, not surprisingly, is that Democrats and Republicans look really different,” said political scientist Amy Lerman, director of UC Berkeley’s Possibility Lab, who studies race, public opinion and political behavior. “On these perspectives, they fall pretty clearly along party lines. While there’s some variation within the parties by things like age and race, really, the big divide is between Democrats and Republicans.”

While there were some differences based on gender, age, income, geography and race, the results largely mirrored the partisan divide in the state, Lerman said.

One remarkable finding was that nearly a quarter of survey respondents personally knew or were acquainted with someone in their family or friend groups directly affected by the deportation efforts, Lerman said.

“That’s a really substantial proportion,” she said. “Similarly, the extent to which we see people reporting that people in their communities are concerned enough about deportation efforts that they’re not sending their kids to school, not shopping in local stores, not going to work,” not seeking medical care or attending church services.

The poll surveyed a sample of the state’s registered voters and did not include the sentiments of the most affected communities — unregistered voters or those who are ineligible to cast ballots because they are not citizens.

A little more than 23 million of California’s 39.5 million residents were registered to vote as of late October, according to the secretary of state’s office.

“So if we think about the California population generally, this is a really significant underestimate of the effects, even though we’re seeing really substantial effects on communities,” she said.

Earlier this year, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement launched a series of raids in Los Angeles and surrounding communities that spiked in June, creating both fear and outrage in Latino communities. Despite opposition from Gov. Gavin Newsom, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and other elected Democrats, the Trump administration also deployed the National Guard to the streets of the nation’s second-largest city to, federal officials said, protect federal immigration officials.

The months since have been chaotic, with masked, armed agents randomly pulling people — most of whom are Latino — off the streets and out of their workplaces and sending many to detention facilities, where some have died. Some deportees were flown to an El Salvador prison. Multiple lawsuits have been filed by state officials and civil rights groups.

In one notable local case, a federal district judge issued a ruling temporarily blocking federal agents from using racial profiling to carry out indiscriminate immigration arrests in the Los Angeles area. The Supreme Court granted an emergency appeal and lifted that order, while the case moves forward.

More than 7,100 undocumented immigrants have been arrested in the Los Angeles area by federal authorities since June 6, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

On Monday, Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach), Bass and other elected officials hosted a congressional hearing on the impact of immigration raids that have taken place across the country. Garcia, the top Democrat on the House’s oversight committee, also announced the creation of a tracker to document misconduct and abuse during ICE raids.

While Republican voters largely aligned with Trump’s actions on deportations, 16% said that they believed that the deportations will worsen the state’s economy.

Lerman said the university planned to study whether these numbers changed as the impacts on the economy are felt more greatly.

“If it continues to affect people, particularly, as we see really high rates of effects on the workforce, so construction, agriculture, all of the places where we’re as an economy really reliant [on immigrant labor], I can imagine some of these starting to shift even among Republicans,” she said.

Among Latinos, whose support of Trump grew in the 2024 election, there are multiple indications of growing dissatisfaction with the president, according to separate national polls.

Nearly eight in 10 Latinos said Trump’s policies have harmed their community, compared to 69% in 2019 during his first term, according to a national poll of adults in the United States released by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center on Monday. About 71% said the administration’s deportation efforts had gone too far, an increase from 56% in March. And it was the first time in the two decades that Pew has conducted its survey of Latino voters that the number of Latinos who said their standing in the United States had worsened increased, with more than two-thirds expressing the sentiment.

Another poll released earlier this month by Somos Votantes, a liberal group that urges Latino voters to support Democratic candidates, found that one-third of Latino voters who previously supported Trump rue their decision, according to a national poll.

Small business owner Brian Gavidia is among the Latino voters who supported Trump in November because of financial struggles.

“I was tired of struggling, I was tired of seeing my friends closing businesses,” the 30-year-old said. “When [President] Biden ran again I’m like, ‘I’m not going to vote for the same four years we just had’ … I was sad and I was heartbroken that our economy was failing and that’s the reason why I went that way.”

The East L.A. native, the son of immigrants from Colombia and El Salvador, said he wasn’t concerned about Trump’s immigration policies because the president promised to deport the “worst of the worst.”

He grew disgusted watching the raids that unfolded in Los Angeles earlier this year.

“They’re taking fruit vendors, day laborers, that’s the worst of the worst to you?” he remembered thinking.

Over a lunch of asada tortas and horchata in East L.A., Gavidia recounted being detained by Border Patrol agents in June while working at a Montebello tow yard. Agents shoved him against a metal gate, demanding to know what hospital he was born at after he said he was an American citizen, according to video of the incident.

After reviewing his ID, the agents eventually let Gavidia go. The Department of Homeland Security later claimed that Gavidia was detained for investigation for interference and released after being confirmed to be a U.S. citizen with no outstanding warrants. He is now a plaintiff in a lawsuit filed by the ACLU and immigrant advocacy groups alleging racial profiling during immigration raids.

“At that moment, I was the criminal, at that moment I was the worst of the worst, which is crazy because I went to go see who they were getting — the worst of the worst like they said they were going to get,” Gavidia said. “But turns out when I got there, I was the worst of the worst.”

Reporting from Sacramento — Three quarters of California voters believe the state should restrain home building in areas at high risk of wildfires, a new survey has found.

The UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies Poll, prepared for the Times, shows bipartisan support for such restrictions after deadly fires wiped out tens of thousands of homes across the state in the last two years.

“The voters think there should be limits,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of the Berkeley IGS Poll.

The survey revealed broad backing across party lines, demographic groups and all regions in California for restricting growth in wildfire zones. Nearly 85% of Democrats support doing so compared with 57% of Republicans and 72% of independent voters.

At least 66% of respondents in every region of the state back the idea, including the non-Bay Area northern section. This includes the area surrounding Paradise, which was almost entirely destroyed in last fall’s Camp fire and where many homeowners have said they hope to rebuild.

Overall, 37% of voters surveyed said they supported strongly limiting new home building in wildfire areas with an additional 38% saying they somewhat supported the idea.

Source: UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll

(Kyle Kim / Los Angeles Times Graphics)

Despite voters’ willingness to restrict growth in wildfire areas, Gov. Gavin Newsom and lawmakers have not openly discussed the idea among other options to prevent destructive infernos. State leaders have instead focused their discussions on utility companies’ financial responsibility for the blazes, how to pay for damages from wildfires and cutting back vegetation and other ways to manage the state’s forests.

Last year Ken Pimlott, the recently retired head of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, said that government should consider stopping home building in threatened communities because of the substantial loss of property and lives.

But in an interview with the Associated Press this spring, Newsom rejected it.

“There’s something that is truly Californian about the wilderness and the wild and pioneering spirit,” Newsom said. “I’m not advocating for no” building.

Natural disaster is inevitable in California. And it can define a governor’s legacy »

Stanford University’s Michael Wara, who serves on a state wildfire commission, said the scale of recent fires is influencing how Californians think about development, even those whose property is safe.

“They wake up and go outside and they can’t breathe and there’s ash on their car,” said Wara, who directs the school’s climate and energy policy program. “It’s not something you read about in the newspaper. It’s something you experience.”

But Wara said any decision to limit growth in fire zones remains politically difficult. People who own land or might want to build in those areas strongly prefer to maintain the status quo.

“This is an issue where there’s concentrated very powerful interests that have a lot to lose by changing the rules,” he said.

It’s also possible that voters might support the idea for limiting growth but not the details of what a plan might look like, said DiCamillo, the pollster. A recent Cal Fire report said 1 in 4 Californians live in areas considered at high risk for wildfires, including in suburban Southern California and the Bay Area.

People who live in parts of Marin County may not realize they reside in one of these zones when answering that question, he said. “They’re probably thinking about all these rural areas.”

The Berkeley poll also examined other housing issues and found less consensus among voters than that of limiting growth in wildfire areas. The survey offered respondents three proposed solutions for making housing more affordable: offering more tax breaks or subsidies for lower and middle-income homebuyers; allowing more apartment or condominium construction along mass transit routes; or increasing the share of apartments with rent control.

Source: UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll

(Kyle Kim / Los Angeles Times Graphics)

None of the three answers achieved close to majority support. Additional tax breaks ranked highest with 34% backing. Nearly a quarter of those surveyed did not agree with any of the options.

Voters were evenly divided over whether the state should take a more aggressive role on housing issues and require cities and counties to build more homes in their communities. The poll found 51% in support of the idea.

The lack of agreement on how to address California’s housing problems, including the state government’s responsibility, could help explain why lawmakers recently turned away major housing legislation, DiCamillo said. Last month, legislators shelved Senate Bill 50, which would have boosted building near transit lines and in single-family home neighborhoods. They also blocked and weakened measures that aimed to add protections for renters.

Addressing the housing problem with a specific solution, DiCamillo said, is “the big dilemma for the Legislature. They might not have the public behind them when they do it.”

The survey did find a split among age and demographic groups on whether the state should take a larger role on expediting more housing. Nearly two-thirds of those ages 18 to 29 wanted more state intervention compared with 45% of those 65 and older. Similarly, more than 60% of Latinos, blacks and Asians backed a more expansive state role, compared with 45% of whites.

The online survey of 4,435 California voters took place June 4 to 10 and has an overall margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.5%.

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@dillonliam

In China, 87 percent of people trust AI, compared with just 32 percent in the US, according to an Edelman poll.

China’s public is far more trusting of artificial intelligence than their peers in the United States and other Western countries, a survey has found.

In China, 87 percent of people said they trusted AI, compared with 67 percent in Brazil, 32 percent in the US, 36 percent in the United Kingdom, and 39 percent in Germany, the Edelman poll released on Tuesday showed.

More than seven in 10 Chinese respondents said they expected AI to play a role in solving a range of societal issues, including climate change, mental illness, poverty and polarisation.

Only one-third of Americans said they expected AI to reduce poverty and polarisation, though half predicted a positive impact on climate-related challenges.

While 54 percent of Chinese said they embraced greater use of AI, just 17 percent of Americans answered the same, according to the survey.

Trust was highest among young people, though still much lower in Western countries.

Eighty-eight percent of Chinese aged 18-34 said they had faith in the technology, compared with 40 percent of Americans in that age group.

“For businesses and policymakers, this divergence presents a double challenge,” Edelman Senior Vice President Gray Grossman said in a report accompanying the survey.

“In high-trust markets, the task is to sustain optimism through responsible deployment and straightforward evidence of benefit. In low-trust markets, the task is to rebuild confidence in the institutions behind the technology.”

The survey results come as the US and China are locked in a battle for tech supremacy, with firms in both countries rolling out increasingly sophisticated AI models.

While the US is widely seen as still having an edge in producing the most powerful AI, Chinese firms such as Alibaba and DeepSeek have made major inroads in recent months with “open” language models that offer customers much lower costs.

Last month, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky made headlines when he revealed that the short-term rental platform preferred Alibaba’s Qwen over OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

“It’s very good. It’s also fast and cheap,” Chesky told Bloomberg in an interview.

DES MOINES, Iowa — Pessimism about the country’s future has risen in cities since last year, but rural America is more optimistic about what’s ahead for the U.S., according to a new survey from the American Communities Project.

And despite President Trump’s insistence that crime is out of control in big cities, residents of the nation’s largest metropolitan centers are less likely to list crime and gun violence among the chief concerns facing their communities than they were a couple years ago.

Optimism about the future is also down from last year in areas with large Hispanic communities.

These are some of the snapshots from the new ACP/Ipsos survey, which offers a nuanced look at local concerns by breaking the nation’s counties into community types, using data points like race, income, age and religious affiliation. The survey evaluated moods and priorities across the 15 different community types, such as heavily Hispanic areas, big cities and different kinds of rural communities.

The common denominator across the communities? A gnawing worry about daily household costs.

“Concerns about inflation are across the board,” said Dante Chinni, founder and director of ACP. “One thing that truly unites the country is economic angst.”

Rising optimism in rural areas, despite economic anxiety

Rural residents are feeling more upbeat about the country’s trajectory — even though most aren’t seeing Trump’s promised economic revival.

The $15 price tag on a variety pack of Halloween candy at the Kroger supermarket last month struck Carl Gruber. Disabled and receiving federal food aid, the 42-year-old from Newark, Ohio, had hardly been oblivious to lingering, high supermarket prices.

But Gruber, whose wife also is unable to work, is hopeful about the nation’s future, primarily in the belief that prices will moderate as Trump suggests.

“Right now, the president is trying to get companies who moved their businesses out of the country to move them back,” said Gruber, a Trump voter whose support has wavered over the federal shutdown that delayed his monthly food benefit. “So, maybe we’ll start to see prices come down.”

About 6 in 10 residents of Rural Middle America — Newark’s classification in the survey — say they are hopeful about the country’s future over the next few years, up from 43% in the 2024 ACP survey. Other communities, like heavily evangelical areas or working-class rural regions, have also seen an uptick in optimism.

Kimmie Pace, a 33-year-old unemployed mother of four from a small town in northwest Georgia, said, “I have anxiety every time I go to the grocery store.”

But she, too, is hopeful in Trump. “Trump’s in charge, and I trust him, even if we’re not seeing the benefits yet,” she said.

Big-city residents are worried about the future

By contrast, the share of big-city residents who say they are hopeful about the nation’s future has shrunk, from 55% last year to 45% in the new survey.

Robert Engel of San Antonio — Texas’ booming, second most-populous city — is worried about what’s next for the U.S., though less for his generation than the next. The 61-year-old federal worker, whose employment was not interrupted by the government shutdown nor Trump’s effort to reduce the federal workforce, is near retirement and feels financially stable.

A stable job market, health care availability and a fair economic environment for his adult children are his main priorities.

Recently, the inflation outlook has worsened under Trump. Consumer prices in September increased at an annual rate of 3%, up from 2.3% in April, when the president first began to roll out substantial tariff increases that burdened the economy with uncertainty.

Engel’s less-hopeful outlook for the country is broader. “It’s not just the economy, but the state of democracy and polarization,” Engel said. “It’s a real worry. I try to be cautiously optimistic, but it’s very, very hard.”

Crime, gun violence are less a concern in urban America

Trump had threatened to deploy the National Guard to Chicago, New York, Seattle, Baltimore, San Francisco and Portland, Ore., to fight what he said was runaway, urban crime.

Yet data shows most violent crime in those places, and around the country, has declined in recent years. That tracks with the poll, which found that residents of America’s Big Cities and Middle Suburbs are less likely to list crime or gun violence among the top issues facing their communities than they were in 2023.

For Angel Gamboa, a retired municipal worker in Austin, Tex., Trump’s claims don’t ring true in the city of roughly 1 million people.

“I don’t want to say it’s overblown, because crime is a serious subject,” Gamboa said. “But I feel like there’s an agenda to scare Americans, and it’s so unnecessary.”

Instead, residents of Big Cities are more likely to say immigration and health care are important issues for their communities.

Big Cities are one of the community types where residents are most likely to say they’ve seen changes in immigration recently, with 65% saying they’ve seen a change in their community related to immigration over the past 12 months, compared with only about 4 in 10 residents of communities labeled in the survey as Evangelical Hubs or Rural Middle America.

Gamboa says he has witnessed changes, notably outside an Austin Home Depot, where day laborers regularly would gather in the mornings to find work.

Not anymore, he said.

“Immigrants were not showing up there to commit crimes,” Gamboa said. “They were showing up to help their families. But when ICE was in the parking lot, that’s all it took to scatter people who were just trying to find a job.”

Hispanic communities are less hopeful about the future

After Hispanic voters moved sharply toward Trump in the 2024 election, the poll shows that residents of heavily Hispanic areas are feeling worse about the future of their communities than they were before Trump was elected.

Carmen Maldonado describes her community of Kissimmee, Fla., a fast-growing, majority-Hispanic city of about 80,000 residents about 22 miles south of Orlando, as “seriously troubled.”

The 61-year-old retired, active-duty National Guard member isn’t alone. The survey found that 58% of residents of such communities are hopeful about the future of their community, down from 78% last year.

“It’s not just hopelessness, but fear,” said Maldonado, who says people in her community — even her fellow native Puerto Ricans, who are American citizens — are anxious about the Trump administration’s aggressive pursuit of Latino immigrants.

Just over a year ago, Trump made substantial inroads with Hispanic voters in the 2024 presidential election.

Beyond just the future of their communities, Hispanic respondents are also substantially less likely to say they’re hopeful about the future of their children or the next generation: 55% this year, down from 69% in July 2024.

Maldonado worries that the Trump administration’s policies have stoked anti-Hispanic attitudes and that they will last for her adult child’s lifetime and beyond.

“My hopelessness comes from the fact that we are a large part of what makes up the United States,” she said, “and sometimes I cry thinking about these families.”

Beaumont, Parwani and Thomson-Deveaux write for the Associated Press. Parwani and Thomson-DeVeaux reported from Washington. The American Communities Project/Ipsos Fragmentation Study of 5,489 American adults aged 18 or older was conducted from Aug. 18 – Sept. 4, 2025, using the Ipsos probability-based online panel and RDD telephone interviews. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 1.8 percentage points.

Republicans in California have diverging opinions on President Trump’s immigration enforcement policies, according to a study published by the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute on Monday.

The Trump administration has deployed a sweeping crackdown on immigration, launching ICE raids across the country and removing legal barriers in order to make deportations faster. The study found that while Democrats were largely consistent in their opposition to these immigration policies, Republican sentiment varied more, especially by age, gender and ethnicity.

“At least some subset of Republicans are seeing that these immigration strategies are a step too far,” said G. Cristina Mora, a sociology professor and co-director of the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, which administered the poll. The polling data were collected from nearly 5,000 registered voters in mid-August. Just over 1,000 of those surveyed were registered Republicans.

Latino Republicans, with whom Trump made historic gains during the 2024 elections, showed the highest levels of disagreement with the party’s aggressive stance on immigration. Young people from 18 to 29 and moderate women in the Republican Party also more significantly diverged from Trump’s policies.

The majority of Republican respondents expressed approval of Trump’s immigration strategy overall. However, the study found respondents diverged more from Trump’s policies that ignore established legal processes, including due process, birthright citizenship and identification of federal agents.

“On these legalistic issues, this is where you see some of the bigger breaks,” Mora said.

Of those surveyed, 28% disapproved of the end of birthright citizenship, which Trump is pushing for, and 45% agreed that ICE agents should show clear identification. Four in 10 Republican respondents also support due process for detained immigrants.

Young people, who make up about 15% of the party in California, were on average also more likely to break from Trump’s policies than older Republicans.

The analysis also found that education level and region had almost no impact on respondents’ beliefs on immigration.

Latinos and women were more likely to disagree with Trump on humanitarian issues than their demographic counterparts.

Nearly 60% of moderate Republican women disagree with deporting longtime undocumented immigrants, compared with 47% of moderate men. 45% of women believe ICE raids unfairly target Latino communities.

The political party was most split across racial lines when it came to immigration enforcement being expanded into hospitals and schools. Forty-four percent of Latinos disagreed with the practice, compared with 26% of white respondents, while 46% of Latino respondents disagreed with deporting immigrants who have resided in the country for a long time, compared with just 30% of their white counterparts.

Trump had gained a significant Latino vote that helped him win reelection last year. Democratic candidates, however, made gains with Latino voters in elections earlier this month, indicating a possible shift away from the GOP.

The data could indicate Latino Republicans “are somewhat disillusioned” by the Trump administration’s handling of immigration, Mora said. “Latinos aren’t just disagreeing on the issues that we think are about process and American legal fairness. They’re also disagreeing on just the idea that this is cruel.”

Mora said the deluge of tense and sometimes violent encounters posted online could have an impact on Republican opinion surrounding immigration. A plainclothes agent pointed his gun at a female driver in Santa Ana last week, and two shootings involving ICE agents took place in Southern California late last month.

“You now have several months of Latinos being able to log on to their social media and see every kind of video of Latinos being targeted with or without papers,” Mora said. “I have to believe that that is doing something to everybody, not just Latino Republicans or Latino Democrats.”

Nov. 14 (UPI) — Girls who are high school seniors for the first time are less likely to marry than boys of the same age, according to the Pew Research Center.

The Pew Research Center partnered with the University of Michigan to poll high school seniors in 2023 and on Friday announced that two-thirds said they likely will get married.

Boys, though, were more likely to get married than girls, with 74% of boys saying so versus 61% of girls.

The change represents the first time that more boys than girls looked favorably upon marriage in the future, according to Pew.

In 1993, 81% of girls polled said they wanted to marry in the future, versus 76% of boys affirming so.

A majority of high school seniors polled said they likely will marry and raise children at some time, but the percentages of those saying so declined significantly over three decades.

That percentage is down from 80% in 1993, but the percentages of those who have no idea or do not intend to ever marry have risen.

Among respondents, 24% said they don’t know if they will get married, which is up from 16% 30 years earlier.

Another 9% said they won’t get married, which nearly doubled from 5% three decades ago.

Among those who say they likely will get married, most said they either are very likely, 48%, or fairly likely, 25%, to want to have children when married.

That’s a total of 73% versus 82% in 1993, when 64% said they very likely would want to have children and 18% said they were fairly likely to do so when married.

Of those intending to marry, more than half, 51%, said they very likely would stay married to the same person, and another 30% said they are fairly likely to do so, for a total of 80%.

Those numbers are down from 64% and 18%, respectively, and a cumulative total of 82% in 1993.

The poll also shows 44 percent of Democrats were ‘very enthusiastic’ about voting in the 2026 midterm elections.

The approval rating for United States President Donald Trump remains at its lowest level since he began his second term in January, according to a new poll.

But Thursday’s survey, conducted by the news agency Reuters and the research firm Ipsos, found a jump in the share of respondents who said they disapproved of his performance.

His disapproval rating increased from 52 percent in mid-May to 58 percent in November. His approval rating, meanwhile, stayed at approximately 40 percent, roughly the same as it was in May.

The online poll, conducted over six days this month, surveyed 1,200 US adults nationwide about their opinions on top political figures and who they planned to vote for in the upcoming 2026 midterm elections.

It found that Democrats appeared to be more enthusiastic about next year’s midterms than their Republican counterparts, a result perhaps influenced by key Democratic victories this month.

Approximately 44 percent of registered voters who called themselves Democrats said they were “very enthusiastic” about voting in the 2026 elections, compared with 26 percent of Republicans.

Some 79 percent of Democrats said they would regret it if they did not vote in the midterm races, compared with 68 percent of Republicans.

All 435 seats in the House of Representatives will be up for grabs next year, as will 35 seats in the 100-member Senate. Republicans currently control both chambers of Congress.

But Democrats have recently been buoyed by wins on November 4, during the off-year elections.

The party won resounding victories in governor’s races for Virginia and New Jersey, and in New York City, a closely watched race mayoral race saw Zohran Mamdani sweep to victory over his centrist and right-wing competitors.

Voters in California also passed a ballot measure that will redraw its congressional districts to favour the Democrats, in response to Trump-inspired gerrymandering in Republican states.

The Reuters-Ipsos poll closed on Wednesday, just before Congress voted to end the longest government shutdown in US history.

The new spending bill, which extends federal funding until January 30, passed in the House of Representatives by a margin of 222 to 209, with six Democrats joining the Republican majority to reopen the government.

Trump signed a federal government spending bill late on Wednesday, ending the 43-day shutdown, which caused tumult for federal workers, families in need and air travel.

The bill had previously passed the Senate on Monday, after seven Democrats and one independent agreed to support it.

While Democrats appeared more “enthusiastic” than Republicans in the Reuters-Ipsos poll, the survey noted that the two parties appeared to be evenly matched in voter intention moving forward.

When poll respondents were asked whom they would vote for if congressional elections were held today, 41 percent of registered voters said they’d pick the Democratic candidate, while 40 percent chose the Republican candidate.

The narrow difference in those results fell well within the poll’s 3-percentage-point margin of error.

Ninety-seven percent of Muslim respondents in a CAIR survey say they voted for New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani.

Muslim voters in the United States overwhelmingly favoured Democratic candidates in last week’s elections, amid mounting anger at President Donald Trump’s policies, a new exit poll suggests.

The survey, released by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) on Monday, shows 97 percent of Muslim voters in New York backed democratic socialist Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani.

Virginia’s Democratic Muslim American Senator Ghazala Hashmi also received 95 percent of the Muslim vote in the state in her successful bid for lieutenant governor, according to the poll.

Non-Muslim, more centrist Democratic candidates received strong backing from Muslim voters as well, the CAIR study showed.

Virginia’s Abigail Spanberger and New Jersey’s Mikie Sherrill – Democratic congresswomen who won the gubernatorial races – both received about 85 percent support from Muslim voters, according to the survey.

California’s Proposition 50, which approved a congressional map that favours Democrats, won 90 percent support from Muslim voters, the poll suggested.

CAIR said it interviewed 1,626 self-identified Muslim respondents for the survey.

The group said the results showed high turnout from Muslim voters.

“These exit poll results highlight an encouraging truth: American Muslims are showing up, speaking out, and shaping the future of our democracy,” the group said in a statement.

“Across four states, Muslim voters demonstrated remarkable engagement and commitment to the civic process, casting ballots that reflect their growing role as active participants in American life.”

The November 4 election, one year ahead of the 2026 midterm elections that will determine control of Congress, offered a boost for Democrats.

But the race for New York, which saw Trump endorse former Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo, saw a spike of Islamophobic rhetoric, particularly from Republican lawmakers and commentators.

CAIR said Muslim voters showed that they are rising up in “the face of anti-Muslim bigotry” to “build a better future for themselves and their neighbors, proving that participation, not prejudice, defines our nation’s strength”.

The survey’s results show that the Democrats are recovering the support of some Muslim voters who deserted the party in last year’s presidential election due to former President Joe Biden’s uncompromising support for Israel amid the brutal assault on Gaza.

CAIR said it recorded 76 Muslim candidates in last week’s election, 38 of whom won.

In Michigan, the Detroit suburbs of Hamtramck, Dearborn and Dearborn Heights elected Muslim mayors in the polls.

Several Muslim candidates are vying for seats in Congress in next year’s election, including Abdul el-Sayed, who is seeking a US Senate seat in Michigan.

SACRAMENTO — A new poll shows that former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter’s support in the 2026 governor’s race dropped after she tangled with a television reporter during a heated interview in October, an incident that rival candidates used to question her temperament.

Porter was the clear front-runner over the summer, but by late October she dropped behind Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a Republican, according to a poll released Friday by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by The Times.

Still, nearly half of the registered voters surveyed remain undecided, evidence that few Californians are paying attention to a race that remains wide open and was eclipsed in recent months by the costly and successful congressional redistricting battle that became a referendum on President Trump. Porter remains the most favored Democratic candidate, which is significant in a state that has not elected a Republican governor since 2006.

“She’s the leading Democrat among the various ones that are in there right now,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of the poll. “But it’s because nobody really on the Democratic side has really jumped out of the pack. It’s kind of a political vacuum at the moment.”

The governor’s race was frozen in stasis for most of the year, first as Californians waited for former Vice President Kamala Harris to decide whether she was going to jump into the race. It wasn’t until late July that Harris announced, no, she was not running. Then, weeks later, Californians became captivated by a special election to reconfigure the state’s congressional districts — which set off a furious, expensive and high-stakes political battle that could help decide which party controls the U.S. House of Representatives.

Now that the special election is over, gubernatorial candidates can “rev up the public to pay attention,” DiCamillo said.

“It’s the time for someone to break through,” he said.

But it won’t be U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla. The senator would have been the top Democrat in the race, but not a heavy favorite, if he decided to jump in, the poll found. Voters gave him the highest favorability rating among all current and potential contenders in the governor’s race. After months of speculation, however, Padilla on Tuesday announced he would forgo a run for governor.

The new poll found that Bianco was supported by 13% of voters in the state, followed by Porter at 11%. The Berkeley poll in August showed that Porter led all candidates with 17% support, with Bianco in second place at 10%.

A Bianco representative said his lead in the polls was evidence that his campaign was resonating with voters.

“It is abundantly clear that Californians are demanding a new path forward,” campaign manager Erica Melendrez said. “Sheriff Bianco represents a safe California, an affordable California, an educated California and a leader with integrity and character that ALL Californians can be proud of.”

DiCamillo said Porter’s 6% drop over those three months was significant, given that the California governor’s race is so tight, but cautioned that it’s still early in the 2026 campaign season and a lot of shifting will happen before the June gubernatorial primary.

Porter’s campaign declined to comment on the drop in support and noted instead that she still led the Democratic field.

“Poll after poll continues to show Katie as the strongest Democrat in the race, driven by a growing coalition of grassroots supporters — not powerful special interests,” spokesperson Peter Opitz said. “Californians know her record of taking on Donald Trump and trust her to tackle our cost crisis, from skyrocketing rent and housing costs to rising healthcare premiums and unaffordable child care.”

Porter came under fire in October after an outburst during an interview with CBS reporter Julie Watts. When the Sacramento-based journalist asked Porter what she would say to Californians who voted for Trump, the UC Irvine law professor responded that she didn’t need their support.

After Watts asked follow-up questions, Porter accused the reporter of being “unnecessarily argumentative,” held up her hands and later said, “I don’t want this all on camera.”

The next day, a 2021 video emerged of Porter berating a staff member during a videoconference with a member of the Biden administration. “Get out of my f— shot!” Porter said to the young woman after she came into view in the background. Porter’s comments in the video were first reported by Politico.

Porter later acknowledged that she mishandled the television news interview, but explained that she felt the reporter’s questioning implied she should cater to Trump’s supporters. Porter also said she apologized to her staff member, saying her remarks were “inappropriate,” that she values her staff and could have handled that situation better.

Her Democratic gubernatorial rivals seized on the videos. Former state Controller Betty Yee called on Porter to drop out of the race, and businessman Stephen Cloobeck and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa attacked her in ads about the uproar.

While difficult to assess, the negative news coverage and publicity surrounding those incidents appear to have taken a toll on Porter’s reputation. No other candidate experienced a similar shift in support.

According to the new poll, 26% of California voters had a favorable opinion of Porter, compared with 33% who saw her unfavorably — with the remainder having no opinion. That’s a major drop from when she was running for the U.S. Senate last year, when 45% of voters had a favorable opinion in February 2024 and 27% were sour on her.

Political scientist Eric Schickler, co-director of the Berkeley institute that conducted the poll, said Porter looks vulnerable, and that makes the governor’s race a more attractive contest for current candidates and those who may be considering joining it.

Aside from Porter and Bianco, the poll found that 8% of voters favored former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, a Democrat; the same percentage backed conservative commentator Steve Hilton. Villaraigosa had support from 5% of voters, Yee 3%, and California Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond 1%. Cloobeck and former Democratic legislator Ian Calderon registered less than 1%.

Another potential candidate — billionaire developer Rick Caruso — was backed by 3% of voters, the poll found. Caruso said Monday night that he still was considering running for either governor or Los Angeles mayor and will decide in a few weeks.

Schickler said the results of Tuesday’s election may be a sign that moderate or business-friendly Democrats — including Caruso — may not fare so well in a state as Democratic as California. Voters across the nation delivered a sharp rebuke to Trump, electing Democrats in major races in New York City, New Jersey and Virginia and passing Proposition 50, the California ballot measure designed to help Democrats take control of the U.S. House of Representatives after the 2026 election.

“Somebody like Caruso, his narrative would probably look a lot stronger if Democrats still seemed on the defensive and in disarray,” Schickler said. “But after Prop. 50 passing, big Democratic wins in New Jersey and Virginia, I think the argument for a need to change what we’re doing dramatically, at least in a state like California, is less likely to resonate.”

The Berkeley IGS/Times poll surveyed 8,141 California registered voters online in English and Spanish from Oct. 20 to 27. The results are estimated to have a margin of error of 2 percentage points in either direction in the overall sample, and larger numbers for subgroups.

New York City’s mayoral candidates are making a final push Monday to get voters to the polls, as the race to lead America’s biggest city nears its finale.

Ahead of Election Day on Tuesday, Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa have all spent the race’s final stretch campaigning at a frenetic pace across the city’s five boroughs as they make their case to succeed outgoing Mayor Eric Adams.

In recent days, Mamdani went dancing with seniors on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Cuomo dined in the Eastern European enclave of Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, and Sliwa went to a mosque in the Bronx.

Mamdani, a 34-year-old democratic socialist who would be the city’s first Muslim mayor, jolted the political world when he defeated Cuomo in the primary with an energetic campaign focused on making the city a more affordable place to live.

As the race approaches the finish line, he’s continued to post viral social media videos and run a relentless ground game, while warning his progressive fan base not to become complacent and to send as many supporters to the polls as possible.

Cuomo is trying to make his return to political office after resigning as governor four years ago following a barrage of sexual harassment accusations that he denies. Now running as an independent, the 67-year-old has in recent days shifted to wooing Republican voters to bolster his centrist base, pitching himself as the only candidate who can stop Mamdani.

Sliwa, the creator of the Guardian Angels crime patrol group and a longtime fixture on New York’s airwaves, seeks to spoil both Democrats’ chances. He’s been heavily canvassing the streets and subways in his signature red beret to spread his message of public safety.

Early voting in the city ended Sunday, and election officials say more than 735,000 ballots were cast.

In last year’s general election, there were 1,089,328 early, in-person votes cast. But in the 2021 mayoral general election, only 169,879 in-person early voting ballots were cast.

Izaguirre writes for the Associated Press.