Voter enthusiasm gap is Newsom’s biggest hurdle to surviving recall

Gov. Gavin Newsom needs to fire up voters to stay in office — but he may be bolstering turnout among the very Californians who want to see him ousted in only the fourth gubernatorial recall in U.S. history.

A poll released Tuesday by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies found that 47 percent of likely voters would recall Newsom on Sept. 14, compared to 50 percent who would keep him in office — a difference just shy of the poll’s margin of error. The near-even split hinges on the category “likely voters”: Although California has nearly twice as many registered Democrats as it does Republicans, the poll found a whopping 87 percent of GOP voters are highly interested in the recall, compared to just 58 percent of Democrats and 53 percent of no-party preference voters.