polls

Sacramento — New spending on school construction tends to be reliably popular when proposed in California ballot measures.

According to the League of California Cities, voters approve about 80% of bond measures for local school districts — even though state rules require 55% support on a measure for it to pass. The last four statewide school bond measures were approved by voters. And nearly 6 out of 10 likely voters back the idea of a new school bond on the ballot, according to an October poll by the Public Policy Institute of California.

Yet Proposition 51, the $9-billion school bond measure on next week’s ballot, is struggling, according to PPIC polls from the last two months. In both polls, Proposition 51 stood below majority support, and such numbers put the measure at risk of a rare failure, said Mark Baldassare, PPIC’s president and CEO.

“It’s not where we would expect it would be,” Baldassare said.

Beyond the general popularity of schools, Proposition 51 has many of the advantages that come alongside successful campaigns.

The state Democratic and Republican parties, business and labor groups and Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and other major politicians are part of a broad coalition in favor. Those supporters, primarily developers, contractors and others who regularly promote school facility construction, have raised $12 million for the campaign, compared with nothing for opponents.

And schools across the state need more money. Schools should be spending between $4 billion and $8 billion a year on building replacement and upgrades, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office, and the state pot of money to pay for these fixes has run dry.

Still, there are plenty of explanations for Proposition 51’s troubles. Most notably, unlike the past, support isn’t universal among major interests. Lawmakers put the four previous statewide school bonds on the ballot themselves. This time, after negotiations with Gov. Jerry Brown and legislators failed, backers gathered signatures for an initiative. Brown hasn’t spent much time campaigning against Proposition 51, but when asked, he’s criticized it as too large and inefficient.

“This has been a funding area that has had very strong bipartisan support for decades,” said Jeff Vincent, deputy director of UC Berkeley’s Center for Cities + Schools. “We are now at a place in California where that is not the case.”

Brown and others have questioned how state school bond money gets spent. They argue that the program unfairly benefits larger, more affluent districts. The cash is available to local districts that already have funding to match the state dollars and is distributed on a first-come, first-served basis.

Last month, outgoing state Sen. Loni Hancock (D-Berkeley) urged her Facebook followers to vote against Proposition 51, saying that voters should hold out for a better measure sponsored by the Legislature in coming years. Hancock served on the board that hands out the bond money and, in an interview, described the spending process as overly complex and cumbersome. She said she had to fight those rules to get a school in her district funds for earthquake safety.

“I think we can do a better bond with more money going in a simple, direct way for our schools,” Hancock said.

PPIC’s polls show similar drops across voters of all income and education levels and ethnicities when asked about Proposition 51 compared with the generic school bond measure. Proposition 51’s official summary, which appears on voters’ ballots, states that the measure will raise $9 billion and cost $17.6 billion to pay off over 35 years. Those big numbers could be keeping Proposition 51’s polling low, Baldassare said.

“I would have to think it has something to do with the size of the bond and the impact on the budget,” he said.

Erin Shaw, spokeswoman for the Yes on 51 campaign, said aspects of the PPIC polls look good for her side. The October poll has the measure leading — 46% to 41% — and there are plenty of undecided voters.

Shaw said the campaign expects the results could track with previous state school bond measures, the lowest of which passed with just 50.9% of the vote in 2004.

“We have had a strong campaign in which we have been able to garner a significant amount of broad and bipartisan support for the measure,” Shaw said.

She noted that local districts have bond measures of their own on ballots — 184 of them that aim to raise $25 billion statewide — and believed voters ultimately will link their desire to repair their local schools with money from the state.

liam.dillon@latimes.com

Follow me at @dillonliam on Twitter

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Updates on California politics

Colombia’s presidential election is headed to a runoff on June 21. Far-right outsider, Abelardo de la Espriella, will face leftist senator, Ivan Cepeda. Professor Jorge Restrepo describes de la Espriella’s rise in the polls as a punishment vote against Colombia’s long-established political class.

Colombians headed to the polls to choose a new president in a high-stakes election that will determine whether the country continues the left-wing agenda launched by Gustavo Petro or shifts back to the political right.

May 19 (Asia Today) — More than 60% of young South Koreans and college students do not trust elections or political opinion polls, according to a survey released ahead of the June 3 local elections.

The Korean Law Consumers Federation, a legal advocacy group, released the results Monday after surveying 1,201 young people and college students from 119 universities nationwide. The respondents had an average age of 23.4.

The survey found that 60.37% of respondents said they do not trust elections or political opinion polls, while 38.80% said they do.

Despite the distrust, 59.95% said they would definitely vote in the local elections, and 35.89% said they would try to vote.

Asked whether one vote can have an important effect on election results, 75.27% agreed, while 24.56% disagreed.

On early voting, 53.54% said there is a possibility of election fraud, while 40.30% said such claims are completely false.

The survey also asked about possible constitutional revisions. A total of 62.28% supported including language related to the May 18 Gwangju Democratization Movement in the Constitution, while 35.97% opposed the idea.

However, 91.01% opposed removing the word “freedom” from the Constitution.

The survey included 53 questions and was conducted with the help of student volunteers. It had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.83 percentage points at a 95% confidence level.

— Reported by Asia Today; translated by UPI

© Asia Today. Unauthorized reproduction or redistribution prohibited.

Original Korean report: https://www.asiatoday.co.kr/kn/view.php?key=20260519010005434

May 8 (UPI) — Prime Minister Keir Starmer vowed Friday that he would not stand aside following a disastrous Labour performance in “mid-term” local elections in England, Wales and Scotland.

With early results from 46 of the 136 races in England showing Labour losing hundreds of seats in councils to Reform and the Greens, Starmer said while the situation was “really tough,” he had been handed a mandate to change Britain by the electorate in the general election in 2024 and that he intended to fulfil his promise.

He said he believed the message voters had sent in Thursday’s elections was about the “pace of change, how they want their lives improved.”

“Labour was elected to meet those challenges and I’m not going to walk away from those challenges and plunge the country into chaos. I led our party to that victory, that is a five-year mandate to change the country. It was a five-year term I was elected to do, I intend to see that through.”

Acknowledging his government hadn’t done enough to convince people that things could improve, their lives could be better and that there was hope, he said Labour would “in the coming days” set out steps it would take to win over the electorate.

Repeatedly pressed on whether he would lead Labour into the next election, Starmer would only say that he intended to serve the full five years of his term.

Large numbers of Labour MPs believe that the party will lose if Starmer leads it into the next election but do not want him to quit right now, favoring an orderly, consensual process of finding a successor, as opposed to an all-out leadership battle.

Sky News’ chief political correspondent said a member of Starmer’s “top team,” had messaged her saying that he was “the reason Labour risks handing the country to Reform.”

With counting still underway, or yet to begin, in the vast majority of contests for council and mayoral contests, as well parliamentary races in Scotland and Wales, the opposition Conservative Party were also close to 200 seats adrift.

The Green Party and the Liberal Democrats had each added dozens of seats.

Speaking in the London borough of Havering, which Labour lost overnight to Reform UK, leader Nigel Farage hailed what he said was a “truly historic shift in British politics.”

“The pattern that’s emerging across the country is that Labour are being wiped out by Reform in many of their most traditional areas. And what you’re going to see later on today is the Conservative Party being wiped out in their heartlands like Essex,” he said, noting that the county was the heartland of the leadership of the Conservative opposition.

“We’ve been so used to thinking about politics in terms of left and right, and yet what Reform are able to do is to win in areas that have always been Conservative. But equally, we’re proving in a big way we can win in areas that Labour have dominated, frankly, since the end of World War One.

“At the moment, we’re winning one in three of all the seats that are up. But I genuinely think the best is yet to come. I’m very excited about the north-east results, the Yorkshire results, some more to come in the West Midlands. So it’s a big day,” added Farage.

Forecasts put Reform’s eventual gains when the results are complete at as many as 1,000 seats of the 5,000 up for grabs.

In Scotland, where voters are electing all 129 seats in the Scottish Parliament, the ruling Scottish National Party is hanging by a knife edge amid a 17% swing to Reform.

However, the insurgent party’s rise could inadvertently help deliver First Minister John Swinney‘s 65-seat target, thanks to Reform UK candidates taking votes away from challenger parties, particularly those that oppose Scottish independence.

Swinney has said he would treat an SNP majority as a mandate to mount a second bid to secede from the United Kingdom, following a failed independence referendum in 2014.

Swinney told an election debate between the leaders of the five Scottish political parties plus Reform UK last month that holding a second independence referendum by 2028 was “perfectly conceivable.”

In Wales, where voters are electing a Senedd legislature that has been expanded to 96 seats, the ruling Labour administration was on track to lose power for the first time since devolution in 1999 and ending more than a century of Labour dominance in the country.

Plaid Cymru, the Welsh nationalists, and Reform UK, who were neck and neck in the polls, were expected to be the biggest beneficiaries, projected to emerge with 38 and 35 seats, respectively.

Deputy First Minister Huw Irranca-Davies told the BBC that he didn’t think Labour would be in a position to form the next government, saying the party’s campaign had failed to “cut through” to Welsh voters.

May 7 (UPI) — Millions of Britons were headed to the polls on Thursday to vote in local, mayoral and parliamentary elections in England, Scotland and Wales in what is being seen as a ‘mid-term’ referendum on the leadership of Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Voters in Scotland and Wales are electing lawmakers to their parliaments while in England more than 5,000 seats across 136 local councils are up for grabs, including in all 32 of London’s boroughs. Elections for half or a third of the seats are being held in another 73 local voting districts.

Six English municipalities, all but one of them in London, are electing new mayors.

Labour is expected to lose as many as 2,000 seats, mainly to new parties Reform UK and the Green Party, in an historic shift to a multi-party political system from a system dominated for the past century by Labour and the Conservative Party.

Support for both parties is down sharply with Labour polling on about 20%, compared with 35% at the last set of local elections in 2022, and the Conservatives on 18%, down from about 40%.

Labour’s numbers are also sharply down from the time of the 2024 general election that brought the party to power in a landslide; the Conservatives much less so.

The worst case scenario for Labour sees it losing control of many of the 60 councils it is defending in the big cities, the party’s political heartland.

The Conservatives, who are heavily represented in rural areas, are expected to fare a little better but could lose control of a handful of the 32 councils it runs and as many 1,000 seats overall.

That type of result with a general election only two years away would dramatically ramp up pressure on Starmer, potentially triggering an internal challenge to his leadership of the party and premiership.

Starmer is already under fire for his failure to deliver on his main pledges of his “Change” election manifesto to grow the economy, end the churn and chaos of previous Conservative administrations and tackle illegal immigration, along with his botched appointment of Peter Mandelson as British Ambassador to the United States.

Speculation was mounting that he could face a challenge from an Angela Rayner-Andy Burnham ‘ticket’ under which former deputy prime minister Rayner, would step in to deliver the party’s manifesto before standing aside to let Manchester Mayor Burnham fight the next election, which is due to be held by July 2029 at the latest.

An aide to Rayner, who quit as deputy prime minister in September amid a scandal over underpayment of property taxes on a new home purchase, dismissed the rumors as absurd.

Labour veteran Burnham was blocked by the party from running in a by-election for a Manchester parliamentary seat in February to replace a Labour MP who was standing down. Burnham’s request to contest the election was denied by an internal party committee headed by Starmer on grounds he needed to serve out his term as mayor.

Labour went on to lose with the Green Party, beating them into third place with a 4,000-seat majority, and 12 points clear of Reform UK.

In May 2025, a win by Reform UK in an election for the Runcorn and Helsby constituency in northwestern England, another “safe” Labour seat, prompted Reform leader Nigel Farage to declare that Britain’s two-party system was “dead.”

Palestinians in central Gaza and the occupied West Bank have begun voting in municipal elections, the first local vote held since the start of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

Polling stations opened at 7am (04:00 GMT) on Saturday for 70,000 eligible voters in Gaza’s Deir el-Balah area – the first electoral exercise in the besieged enclave in 20 years.

The vote in a single city in Gaza is largely symbolic, with officials calling it a “pilot”. Deir el-Balah was selected because it is one of the few areas in Gaza not destroyed by Israeli forces.

Nearly 1.5 million registered voters in the occupied West Bank are also voting to determine the makeup of the local councils overseeing water, roads and electricity.

The elections come amid a tightly restricted political landscape and deep public disillusionment, as the Palestinian Authority (PA) seeks to project reform and legitimacy amid growing public frustration over corruption, political stagnation and the absence of national elections since 2006.

Most electoral lists are backed by President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement or independent candidates, with no official participation from Hamas, which controls parts of Gaza.

Linking the occupied West Bank and Gaza

With much of Gaza decimated by more than two years of war, the Ramallah-based Central Elections Commission chose to hold its first vote in Deir el-Balah. It had to improvise because it was unable to conduct traditional voter registration.

“The main idea is to link the West Bank and Gaza politically as one system,” its spokesperson, Fareed Taamallah, said.

The commission has not coordinated directly with either Israel or Hamas ahead of the Deir el-Balah vote and has been unable to send materials like ballot papers, ballot boxes or ink into Gaza, he added.

Though Palestinian voter turnout has gradually decreased, it has been relatively high in past local elections by regional standards, according to commission figures, averaging between 50 and 60 percent.

Gaza’s first election in 20 years

Hamas won parliamentary elections in 2006 and seized control of Gaza from the Fatah-led PA a year later.

It did not put forth candidates for Saturday, but polling from the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research indicates it remains the most popular Palestinian faction in both Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

Ramiz Alakbarov, the United Nations deputy special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, called the elections “an important opportunity for Palestinians to exercise their democratic rights during an exceptionally challenging period”.

Hamas controls half of Gaza, which Israeli forces partially withdrew from last year, including Deir el-Balah, but the coastal enclave is preparing to transition to a new governance structure under US President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan.

The plan established a Board of Peace composed of international envoys and a committee of unelected Palestinians, intended to operate under it.

Progress towards further phases, including disarming Hamas, reconstruction and a transfer of power, has stalled.

Electoral reform

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, 90, signed a decree last year to overhaul the electoral system in line with some demands from Western donors.

The reforms allow voting for individuals rather than party lists (slates), lowering the eligibility age to run and raising quotas for female candidates.

In January, another Abbas decree required candidates to accept the programme of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the group that leads the PA. The programme calls for the recognition of Israel and renouncing armed struggle, in effect, sidelining Hamas and other factions.

The slates in major West Bank cities are dominated by Fatah, the faction that leads the PA, and independents, some with ties to other factions. It marks the first time in six local elections that no other faction has officially put forward its own slates.

In the occupied West Bank, the PA exercises limited autonomy, and local councils oversee services from rubbish collection to building permits.

Votes are being held in villages in Area C, which covers about 60 percent of the West Bank and remains under direct Israeli control. Full administrative control would have been handed to the PA according to the 1995 Oslo Accords.

Votes will also be held in municipalities that Israel’s military has occupied since it launched a ground invasion in the northern West Bank last year.

Campaign posters have been plastered across cities, though many – including Ramallah and Nablus – will not hold elections because too few candidates or slates registered.

The PA’s power has withered amid years without peace negotiations with Israel and the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.