Forty-five percent of California voters now disapprove of Governor Gavin Newsom's job performance, according to a new Emerson College poll, marking his highest disapproval rating since October 2024. His approval dropped three points from December 2025 to 44%, while disapproval surged six points over the same period.
The numbers aren't catastrophic in isolation. But the trajectory tells a story that Newsom's team clearly doesn't want to narrate. His office did not respond to a request for comment on the figures.aq
The poll reported by the New York Post surveyed 1,000 registered voters and found that 37% cited the economy as their top concern, up three points from December. Housing affordability followed at 19%. These aren't abstract policy preferences. They're the daily reality of living in a state that has become synonymous with beautiful weather and brutal price tags.
Here's the number that should haunt Sacramento: 53% of voters said they have considered leaving California over affordability concerns. More than half. Not disgruntled commenters on social media. Not transplants who never put down roots. Registered voters, the people who still care enough to participate in the state's political process, are mentally halfway out the door.
Critics have pointed to strict environmental regulations, limits on new oil drilling permits, and slow housing construction as drivers of the affordability crisis. Business groups have raised concerns about regulatory hurdles and taxation. None of this is new. What's new is the velocity of voter frustration.
As Newsom's term winds down, the race to replace him is already producing interesting signals. Republican Steve Hilton, a former Fox News host and staunch Newsom critic, leads the field with 17% of voters naming him their top choice. Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell and GOP hopeful Sheriff Chad Bianco are tied for second at 14% each.
Two Republicans in the top three of a California gubernatorial poll are worth noting. This is a state where the GOP has spent decades being told it's irrelevant, where Republican candidates for statewide office are treated more like curiosities than contenders. The fact that voters are splitting their early preferences between two Republicans and a Democrat suggests the ground may be shifting beneath the assumptions that have governed California politics for a generation.
It's early. These numbers will move. But direction matters more than magnitude at this stage, and the direction is not friendly to the Sacramento establishment.
While his approval cratered at home, Newsom has been busy on the international stage, attending the World Economic Forum in Davos and the Munich Security Conference. The globetrotting has drawn criticism from Republicans, and it's not hard to see why. When more than half your state's voters are thinking about leaving because they can't afford to stay, jetting off to Switzerland to rub elbows with the global elite is a choice that makes its own argument.
Newsom has reportedly been laying the groundwork for a potential 2028 presidential run as his governorship nears its end. The ambition is hardly a secret. But presidential campaigns are built on records, and the record forming in California right now is one of rising disapproval, economic anxiety, and a population that increasingly views the state as a place to escape rather than aspire to.
California's progressive leadership has long operated under a comfortable assumption: that voters may grumble about costs, but they'll never seriously challenge the policy framework that produces them. Environmental mandates, housing restrictions, and regulatory complexity. These aren't bugs in the California model. They're features. And for years, voters ratified them at the ballot box.
What the Emerson poll suggests is that the ratification may be expiring. You can only tell people that their inability to afford rent is the price of progress for so long before they start asking who's actually progressing. The answer, increasingly, appears to be the political class that jets to Davos while the median voter price-checks a move to Boise.
A six-point disapproval jump in roughly two months is not drift. It's acceleration. And it's happening in a state that Newsom's party controls at every level of government, with no Republican boogeyman to blame and no divided legislature to hide behind. The outcomes belong entirely to the people who built the system.
Fifty-three percent of voters are considering the exit. Newsom is considering the White House. Only one of those plans requires Californians to believe the state is headed in the right direction.
