Is California as Progressive as the Rest of the Country Thinks We Are?

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The rest of the nation perceives California as a giant blue monolith, a liberal and progressive stronghold. But the reality is many of the statewide measures backed by progressives this year, from rent control to affirmative action, didn’t pass. The California Report Magazine recaps the “mixed bag” of statewide election results.

What Does the Vote Say About Who We Are As a State?
Host Sasha Khokha talks with Scott Shafer, Senior Editor for KQED’s California Politics and Government Desk, about what this election says about who we are, and where we’re headed.

A New Citizen Casts His Ballot with His Daughter
Some California voters are casting a ballot for the first time, during a pandemic and a contentious national election. Raul Alvarez lives on Catalina Island. He and his 23-year-old daughter Diana filled out their ballots together this year. This was her second time voting, but her dad’s first, since he just became a U.S. citizen in 2018. She sat down to talk with him about finally casting a vote.

Mixed Results On Measures Around Enfranchisement, Criminal Justice Reform
Several statewide propositions this time around had to do with expanding the number of Californians who could cast a vote at the ballot box—as well as some measures around criminal justice reform. Host Sasha Khokha talks with Guy Marzorati from the California Politics and Government Desk at KQED to talk about the fates of Propositions 17, 18, 20 and 25.

The Myth of the ‘Latino Vote’
There’s been a lot of talk this week about the “Latino vote,” which is a complicated and vague term because there is no one “Latino vote.” There are Latino or Latinx voters, but they are not a monolithic group. Multi-racial, multilingual—with origins in many different nations in Latin America and the Caribbean—some are immigrants, and some have been in California since it was part of Mexico. But we do know that people who fall under that label, problematic as it is, comprise the largest ethnic group in California. Farida Jhabvala Romero, who covers immigration for The California Report, has been looking into what’s been surprising—or not surprising—about how they voted this election.

What Prop 22 Means for the Future of Work in CA
Companies like Uber, Lyft, Doordash and Postmates spent more than 200 million dollars to bankroll Prop 22, the most expensive proposition in California history. It will allow app-based companies to classify their workers as a new kind of independent contractor under state law. Sam Harnett covers labor and technology for KQED’s Silicon Valley desk, and he explains how Prop 22 will change how some people work in our state.