These California counties have the highest and lowest Gavin Newsom recall voter turnout to date

The Secretary of State provides a county-by-county breakdown of the locations where the ballots were submitted, visualized on the map below. Included are the turnout figures for each county at this point, as well as the 2020 presidential and 2018 governors’ election margins for reference.

Sierra County, which has favored Republican candidates by more than 20 percentage points in the last two statewide elections, has the highest voter turnout to date with 47.9% of the ballots returned votes. The county with the lowest turnout is Imperial County (10.5% of returned ballots), a typically blue county where over 80% of residents are Latinos.

The low Latin American turnout has been one of the main scenarios of the recall election so far, and in the three counties in California where Latinos make up over 56% of the population – San Benito, Tulare and Imperial – voter turnout is lower than the state figure of 28.3%.

Every county in the highly democratic San Francisco Bay Area exceeds the statewide figure by 28.3%, with the exception of Solano County, which so far has a return rate of 27.8%.

In the COVID-19 era, Democrats have been more likely to vote by mail while Republicans are more likely to vote in person on election day, and this trend seems to be confirmed somewhat by the high return rate of the Bay Area unlike the Central Lower Valley Rate. Kern County, which was the most populous California county to vote for Trump in 2020, has a paltry 21.1% return at this point. This suggests a high turnout from pro-recall voters on election day.

The exact size of voter turnout and whether Democrats can engage more voters in the final days of the campaign will determine Newsom’s fate.