President Joe Biden will arrive in California on Monday to campaign with Gov. Gavin Newsom on the eve of the state's gubernatorial recall election.
Biden will first stop in Sacramento, where he'll join Newsom for a briefing on the California wildfires and an aerial tour of the Caldor Fire damage. The president on Sunday approved a disaster declaration for El Dorado County and the areas impacted by the Caldor Fire.
At around 4:30 p.m., Biden is expected to speak about the wildfires in Sacramento before heading to Long Beach to a rally for Newsom. Democratic strategist Steve Maviglio told Sacramento's KOVR that President Biden puts an exclamation point on Newsom's long campaign.
"Votes in the [Los Angeles] area have been a little lower for Democrats than they expected," Maviglio told the outlet. "So this is all part of a strategy to get Democrats who typically don't vote in special elections off their couches [to] take that ballot and put it in the mailbox."
Democrats outnumber Republicans almost 2-to-1 in California, but Newsom's campaign isn't taking any chances. Nearly 4.1 million registered Democrats have returned their ballots already, compared to just over 1.9 million registered Republicans and almost 1.8 million independents, according to Political Data Inc.'s tracker.
Final polling ahead of Tuesday's recall election indicates Newsom will not be replaced by Republican frontrunner Larry Elder, nor any other replacement candidate.
Friday's Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll indicated 60.1 percent of likely voters will vote no on the recall, while polling averages from FiveThirtyEight and RealClearPolitics show about 57 percent of Californians oppose removing Newsom from office.
Those same outlets show Biden's national approval ratings, respectively, at 46 percent and 45 percent.
"It's just as reasonable to look at this as Biden coming to California to associate himself with what is expected, at this point, to be a Newsom victory," said KCBS Radio political analyst Marc Sandalow.
"It's certainly true that Biden coming out here helps to put this back in the headlines, the recall election, and remind Democrats who might not want to go to the polls that [they should]. But at this point, to look at whose political advantage this is for, this is really for Biden just as much as it is for Newsom."
Elder is the frontrunner among the replacement candidates, with support from 28 percent of voters according to FiveThirtyEight's averages.
The conservative talk radio host, who subsequently backtracked after telling the Sacramento Bee's editorial board that Biden fairly won the 2020 presidential election, baselessly claimed last week "there might very well be shenanigans" if he is not elected the state's next governor and Newsom isn't recalled. Elder said his campaign is ready to file lawsuits if necessary.
"This has been the strategy of Republicans since the last general election," Sandalow said, referring to former President Donald Trump's repeated false claims that he beat Biden nationally and in California.
Voter fraud is extremely rare in the U.S, and the Brennan Center for Justice noted last April that Americans are "still more likely ... to be struck by lightning than to commit mail voting fraud."
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