EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — A new poll from USC, Cal Poly Pomona, and Cal State Long Beach shows 57% of California likely voters support AI Safety Bill SB-1047 which would have required safety testing of large-scale AI models before being released to the public.

This week Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed that AI safety proposal.

USC Professor and pollster Dr. Christian Grose joined “Inside the Issues” host Amrit Singh to discuss that and other results of their new statewide survey.

As Newsom’s term reaches its final two years, Grose says the state’s voters are evenly split on whether they would support him in the future. The poll shows a significant minority of California voters would vote for Newsom for governor again if he were not term limited. But a slightly larger group says they would not vote for him again even if they could. 

When asked about candidates for governor in 2026, out of the five people who have announced, Grose says former LA mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is in the lead. But when adding candidates rumored to be considering a run, out of thirteen candidates, the top vote getter is Democrat Rep. Katie Porter.

“She’s got about 14% of the vote. She has not announced. I don’t even know if she’s going to run, but name recognition is high from her senate bid.”

In the race for LA County District Attorney, a sub-sample of LA county voters highly favored former U.S. Assistant Attorney General Nathan Hochman over incumbent George Gascón.

“We found that Nathan Hochman is winning pretty easily. He had about 44% of the vote to Gascón's 20%. Gascón is doing a little bit worse in the general election survey than he performed in the primary, and basically Gascón is flat,” said Dr. Grose. “Even if all the undecided voters break toward Gascón, that’s still almost a tie. Chances that everyone breaks in the same direction is pretty low, so this looks very good for Nathan Hochman unless something different happens in the next month.”

For more polling results and to see the full interview with Dr. Christian Grose, click the arrow above.

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