History says Proposition 50 is unlikely to pass
Overview “Ballot measures are tall lifts in California,” wrote Dustin Gardiner, Blake Jones, and Melanie Mason in the Politico California Playbook on September 16, 2025. They’re right: overall California initiatives have a 63.84% failure rate at the ballot since 1912. Given just that history, Proposition 50 has about a two-thirds likelihood of being rejected by the voters. This result is supported by both our own data and the California Secretary of State’s initiative history data, which we explain below. Because the University of California bars us from taking pro/con positions on live initiatives we state no view here on whether...
