California Gov. Gavin Newsom's support from Washington ahead of next week's gubernatorial recall election didn’t end with Vice President Kamala Harris' visit to San Leandro on Wednesday.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a second-term Democrat from New York's 14th District, posted a video on her Instagram story on Wednesday imploring Californians to vote "no" on recalling Newsom on Sept. 14.
"If you live in California, there's probably a ballot in your mailbox on a recall election," Ocasio-Cortez said. "Please find that thing, vote no, stick that sucker right back in your mailbox because the (other) options are bad."
The second-term congresswoman, 31, is one of the most popular politicians on Instagram. Ocasio-Cortez has 8.6 million Instagram followers, over 10 times as many as Newsom (747,000). She also has 12.7 million Twitter followers compared to Newsom’s 1.9 million, potentially allowing Newsom's anti-recall message to reach a larger, younger audience.
Courage California, a progressive advocacy group, found in August that 45% of likely voters aged 18-29 planned to vote against recalling Newsom, 36% would vote to recall and 19% were undecided. Among the 2,300 registered voters, 19% said they used Instagram every day, second only to YouTube (21%).
In the last week before the election, Newsom is tapping into support from some of the Democratic Party's most popular figures. Harris visited the state on Wednesday, and President Joe Biden will campaign alongside Newsom in Long Beach on Monday. Former President Barack Obama, meanwhile, cut an advertisement imploring Californians to vote against the recall.
According to FiveThirtyEight’s polling average, 54.7% of Californians don’t want to remove Newsom from office while 41.7% do. More than 50% of voters would need to vote yes in order for Newsom to be recalled, and the replacement candidate with the most votes would be the state’s next governor. Currently, conservative talk radio host Larry Elder leads the replacement candidates with support from 26% of voters in the site’s polling average.
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