Two-thirds of Santa Clara Voters Support Persky Recall

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

June 22, 2016

Contact: Jonathan Brown (909) 973-5567; jb@sextant-research.com

RECALL OF AARON PERSKY, STANFORD SEXUAL ASSAULT CASE JUDGE, SUPPORTED BY TWO-THIRDS OF SANTA CLARA VOTERS

There is currently very strong support among registered voters to recall Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky due to the six-month sentence he gave Stanford University student-athlete Brock Turner following the latter’s conviction for sexual assault earlier this month.   Beyond the 66% of voters who say they would support a recall, 81% believe Persky’s sentence of Turner was too lenient and 77% agree that if Turner had been Latino or African-American, the sentence would have been tougher.

Sextant Strategies & Research conducted this internet survey of 776 registered voters, using data and tools from Political Data, Inc. (www.politicaldata.com) as part of the CA120 data journalism coverage of Capitol Weekly (www.capitolweekly.net).  The survey was conducted from June 20 to June 22.

While support for the recall is strong across all demographic groups, women and younger voters are higher than average in their desire to recall Persky – well in excess of 70%.  Voters age 65 and older are more split, though still with a heathy majority in favor of the recall.  This difference by age is important because no recall election can take place until 2017.  Off-year elections generally have very low turnout that is dominated by older voters.  These results show that Persky could possibly survive a recall election despite the overwhelming support among all voters today.

Our survey presented voters with both a pro-recall and anti-recall message.  The pro-recall message only increased total support by two points (68%) – not surprising given the high level of knowledge about these issues.  However, the anti-recall message dropped support for the recall to 59%, overall; with older voters evenly split.

Ultimately, Persky’s greatest challenge in a recall election would be restoring trust with voters.  By a two-to-one margin, more voters see Persky’s sentence of Turner as a sign of his inability to be a fair judge in all cases (67%), rather than a one-time error in judgment (33%).

This broken trust over sentencing has not persuaded voters that judges should have less leeway in their courtrooms.  By a wide margin, more voters (63%) believe that voter-approved mandatory minimums are “more of a bad thing because they create a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to justice, than those who think such laws are “more of a good thing because they ensure the community’s values are enforced in our courts. (37%)”

Awareness of the Turner case is extremely high – four-in-five say they’ve heard a lot about this case, compared to the 17% of voters who say they follow issues related to County government very closely.  Given the awareness and depth of feeling about these issues, even a delayed recall election would have a strong opportunity for success.

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