Map shows where the most recall Gavin Newsom signatures came from in California

ByLindsey Feingold, Alix Martichoux KGO logo
Wednesday, April 28, 2021
Total Recalled: Story of America's largest, wildest recall election
With a recall election of California Governor Gavin Newsom looming, ABC7 Originals presents, "Total Recalled: The story of America's largest, wildest recall election," a look at the Gray Davis recall and election of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

UPDATE, April 27, 2:30 p.m.: The below story and map have been updated to reflect changes in data reported to the state by April 26.

The petition to recall California's Gov. Gavin Newsom has collected 1.6 million verified signatures, meaning a recall election is all but inevitable.

The Recall Newsom campaign announced 1,626,042 of its signatures have been verified by the Secretary of State's office, surpassing the 1,497,709 threshold necessary. Where are all those signatures coming from? ABC7 News' data journalism team created the map below, showing the California counties with the highest percentage of registered voters who support the recall.

Having trouble viewing the map above? Click here to open it in a new window.

In raw numbers, the most number of verified signatures comes from Los Angeles County -- about 264,000. But Los Angeles County is also the state's largest, so that's not a big surprise. Neighboring Orange and Ventura counties have more voters signing the petition to put Newsom to a recall as a percentage of their population.

But the map shows even darker shades of blue through the Central Valley and in far Northern California. Those counties may be smaller in terms of population, but the verified signatures show a much stronger support for recalling Gov. Newsom.

RELATED: Recall Newsom effort officially meets signature requirement

Amador County has 19% of its registered voters signing the petition. That's a big jump from about 3% when we last reported this data in February.

Amador is right in the middle of a large band of counties on the state's eastern side all showing relatively strong support for the recall.

The Bay Area is notoriously Democratic and this map shows that pattern holding. The region looks practically white on the map, making Newsom look a lot more popular there.

In San Francisco, only 1.8% of registered voters have been verified as signing the recall petition. In Marin it's even lower at 1.5%.

Of all the Bay Area counties, the recall campaign found the most support in Solano County, where 7% of voters signed the petition. That's still much lower than the counties to its east.

For more on where the complicated California recall process goes from here, check out the video below.

VIDEO: How does recalling a California governor actually work?

The state deadline to submit signatures to force a recall election of Governor Gavin Newsom is just one month away -- and organizers believe they will be successful. So how does a recall work? We have an explanation here.