California Governor Gavin Newsom avoided being recalled on Tuesday night in a commanding victory, with “no” on the recall winning with 63.8% of the vote.
The projection of his victory was made very soon into the night, with the major news outlets calling the race within an hour of polls closing. California has, in the past, been notoriously slow at counting ballots, but this year a majority of the votes were cast as mail-in votes, which could be counted in the weeks prior to the actual election date.
Newsom stated afterwards that the “no” on the recall was a “yes to science” and a “yes to ending this pandemic.”
Had Newsom been recalled, conservative radio host Larry Elder would have been California’s new governor. He won the vote on who should replace Newsom with 47% (none of the other dozens of candidates reached 10%). However, this vote was rendered meaningless as soon as Newsom’s recall was avoided.
Elder caused some controversy prior to the election, claiming that if he lost it was only because of voter fraud. But it seems he has accepted the results, giving a fairly traditional concession speech in which he admitted that he’d “lost the battle.”
Newsom now faces reelection in the 2022 midterm elections.
