Trump Resistance Losing Its Grip in Deep-Blue California

Trump Resistance Losing Its Grip in Deep-Blue California

New polling reveals “Trump-resistance fatigue” is setting in among California voters and influencers. Commissioned by Politico and the University of California, Berkeley, the survey suggests that everyday voters are less eager to battle President Donald Trump than the state’s political elite.

Strikingly, the poll found that voters are far more likely to support a “détente” with the White House. It also uncovered deeper-than-expected divisions on key issues like immigration and climate change.

Given the extraordinary efforts Democrats have made to oppose Trump’s agenda—and the growing challenges facing California—it’s not surprising that some voters are starting to question the judgment of the state’s leadership.

That shift was reflected in the election results. While Trump didn’t come close to winning the Golden State, he did narrow his 2020 margin of defeat from 29.2 points to 19.9 points in November.

According to Politico:

California’s approach to the president has become a core point of debate among the state’s elected Democrats as the national party seeks a path out of the political wilderness. Newsom has invited conservative luminaries like Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon on his podcast, appealed to the president for Los Angeles wildfire aid and approved millions to battle the Trump administration in court as legislative Democrats wrestle with the balance between combating Trump and addressing quality-of-life concerns.

On Wednesday, the governor and attorney general announced California would sue Trump over tariffs, the first state to do so.

The poll, conducted from April 1-14 by TrueDot.ai, surveyed 1,025 registered voters in the state and 718 influencers and had a margin of error of 5%.

The results revealed a sharp divide between voters and influencers. One notable example: California’s authority to set its own auto emission standards, independent of federal guidelines.

[Note: The New York Times reported that under the Clean Air Act of 1970, the EPA has allowed California “to enact tougher clean air standards than those set by the federal government.”]

Overall, 45% of respondents supported this authority, while 40% opposed it.

Among influencers, however, support was overwhelming—82% were in favor, and only 14% were against.

When asked about the state’s resistance to Trump, 43% of voters said California leaders had been “too confrontational,” while 33% felt they were “too passive.” Among Democratic voters, 47% favored a more aggressive stance. In contrast, Politico noted that “nearly half” of influencers viewed their leaders as too passive.

Democrats would have voters believe that most Americans reject Trump’s agenda, but this survey suggests otherwise.

After years of being misled by politicians and the media, many voters have grown skeptical. They no longer accept everything they hear at face value. Among the more significant examples fueling that distrust: the Trump-Russia collusion narrative, Democrats’ dismissal of the Hunter Biden laptop story as Russian disinformation, and repeated assurances that former President Joe Biden was mentally sharp.

But for California voters, the shortcomings of the state’s progressive policies became painfully clear in a moment of crisis. When wildfires swept across large sections of Los Angeles in January, a stark and unsettling reality emerged: the officials tasked with protecting the public had been unprepared, with no cohesive disaster response plan in place.

In Pacific Palisades, where the first blaze ignited, firefighters encountered a critical failure—no access to water. Many hydrants, left untested since the previous January, had little or no water pressure, severely hampering efforts to contain the flames.

Further crippling firefighting efforts, the Los Angeles Times reported that the 117-million-gallon reservoir in the area was empty and offline.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass might have reconsidered her scheduled trip to Ghana after the National Weather Service issued an urgent warning about the extreme fire danger posed by the hurricane-force Santa Ana winds expected in the area over the next week. At the very least, she should have ensured emergency responders were on high alert and prioritized inspecting the city’s fire hydrants.

Additionally, Bass had made the foolish decision to cut the city’s fire department budget by $17.6 million for the current fiscal year.

Instead of allocating resources to mitigate disasters with a high likelihood of occurrence, state and local leaders prioritized matters such as the burgeoning homeless crisis and supporting illegal immigrants while paying mere lip service to the residents’ most fundamental need — water.

The worst-case scenario had come to pass, and the inadequate response from state leaders was a direct result of their failure to anticipate the consequences of their progressive agenda.

Once the fires had been extinguished, it became clear that, due to the state’s strangling regulations on insurance companies, many homeowners had been either underinsured or completely uninsured.

Their elected politicians had failed them. If the fire had taken place before the election, Trump may have even won, or at least come closer to victory, in California.

At the risk of reading too much into a single poll, this is at least a small sign that some sanity may be returning to voters in one of the bluest states in the country.

Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on LinkedIn or X.

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