A new statewide poll shows nearly two-thirds of California's likely voters oppose Gov. Gavin Newsom's signature climate mandate banning new gas-powered car sales by 2035, a dramatic reversal from just five years ago.
The Public Policy Institute of California, a nonpartisan research organization, found that 65 percent of likely voters now reject the ban Newsom signed into effect by executive order in 2020. Only 34 percent support it. Opposition runs even higher among infrequent voters, suggesting the policy has become a broad political liability rather than a fringe complaint.
The numbers represent a 17-percentage-point swing since 2021, when Californians were evenly split on the proposal. What was once a coin-flip debate has turned into a lopsided rejection, and the erosion is coming from inside Newsom's own party.
Republican opposition was never in doubt, 91 percent of GOP voters reject the policy outright. But the collapse in Democratic support is the figure that should alarm Sacramento. Democratic backing has slid from 55 percent in 2025 to a near-even split: 50 percent in favor, 49 percent opposed. Among independents, opposition climbed from 56 percent in 2021 to 69 percent now, a separate New York Post report noted.
When a governor loses half his own party on a flagship initiative, the word "mandate" stops meaning what it used to.
PPIC Polling Director Mark Baldassare pointed to a straightforward explanation: cost. Californians still care about the environment, he said, but their wallets are screaming louder.
"Two things are going on in California now. People have their long-standing concerns about the environment. But they also have immediate concerns about affordability."
Baldassare made those remarks to The Press Democrat. He added that the affordability anxiety has deepened in the current year specifically around energy prices.
"When it comes to what people are willing to do, they're worried about living costs and particularly the cost of energy. It's something we've noticed even more this year. It affects the political and economic landscape."
Six in ten Californians now say utility prices in their part of the state are a major problem, Baldassare told reporters. Electricity, he noted, "is not cheap. It often depends on the time of day." For a state asking residents to plug in their cars every night, that is not a minor detail.
The share of Californians seriously considering an electric vehicle purchase has dropped from roughly half five years ago to about one-third today. That trend line runs in the opposite direction from what Newsom's 2035 deadline requires. California still leads the nation in EV ownership, with approximately 1.3 million registered electric vehicles and thousands of new purchases logged in counties like Sonoma and Napa over the past two years. But owning 1.3 million EVs in a state of nearly 40 million people is a long way from eliminating gas-car sales entirely in nine years.
Charging infrastructure remains a sore spot. The California Energy Commission reported in January that the state has more than 200,000 public and shared private charging stations and about 800,000 home chargers, with additional highway stations planned. Respondents in the PPIC poll were twice as likely to say they lack confidence California will build enough charging stations as they were to express confidence. Recharging at a public station can take around 40 minutes, if a charger is available.
The governor is already facing scrutiny on multiple fronts, and the EV mandate's cratering support adds a policy headache to his growing list of political ones.
Newsom and California state lawmakers recently approved a $135 million EV incentive program designed to soften the sticker shock. First-time buyers can claim a $3,500 rebate on qualifying new EVs priced at $50,000 or less. Used EVs qualify for $1,750. Automakers are expected to cover half the cost of the program.
The state incentives arrived after President Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress allowed the previous $7,500 federal tax credit for new electric vehicles to lapse. Sacramento is now trying to fill that gap with state dollars, a gap that amounts to thousands of dollars per vehicle for buyers who were already hesitant.
Wayne Winegarden of the Pacific Research Institute framed the backlash in blunt economic terms. "Families in California are feeling the costs from the state's environmental policies," Winegarden said. "It's why energy costs so much, contributes to the high cost of housing, and drives up the prices of most other products people buy."
That assessment squares with the poll data. Californians are not rejecting environmental goals wholesale, nearly two-thirds still support the state's target of reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2045, and strong majorities favor taxing corporations based on carbon emissions and requiring renewable electricity by 2045. Wildfires and global warming remain leading environmental concerns.
The distinction voters are drawing is between aspirational targets and a hard mandate that forces them to buy a specific product at a price many cannot afford, powered by electricity that keeps getting more expensive. Newsom's executive order does not ask Californians to consider EVs. It tells them they will have no other new-car option by 2035.
The EV mandate's unpopularity lands at a difficult moment for the governor. A federal corruption probe has cast a shadow over his administration, and Republican lawmakers in Sacramento have pressed for further investigations into his use of state resources.
Newsom has responded to the federal scrutiny in part by launching a fundraising blitz, pulling in $250,000 from donors within days. But donor enthusiasm is one thing. Voter enthusiasm is another, and the PPIC numbers suggest the public is moving away from the governor on the very policy he once held up as proof of California's national leadership on climate.
The 17-point swing since 2021 did not happen because Californians stopped caring about clean air. It happened because they started getting the bill. A $135 million state rebate program cannot paper over the gap between a governor's ambition and the daily reality of electricity prices, 40-minute charging waits, and a shrinking federal safety net for EV buyers.
Newsom's 2020 executive order was sold as a bold stroke for the climate. Five years later, his own voters are telling pollsters, by a two-to-one margin, that bold is not the same as affordable. A governor already under pressure from multiple directions now faces the most basic kind of political problem: a flagship policy that the people it governs do not want.
When two-thirds of your own state rejects your signature initiative, the mandate is not on the car, it is on the governor to explain why he keeps pushing it anyway.
