Mark Baldassare is a nonresident scholar at Carnegie California. He is also a senior fellow at the Bedrosian Center on Governance in the Sol Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California. He is the statewide survey director and the Arjay and Frances Miller chair in public policy at the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC).
For the previous fifteen years, he also served as president and CEO of PPIC. Prior to that, he served as PPIC’s director of research and senior fellow. He is a leading expert on public opinion and survey methodology and has directed the PPIC Statewide Survey since its founding in 1998. He is an authority on elections, voter behavior, and political and fiscal reform, authoring ten books, including, The Coming Age of Direct Democracy: California’s Recall and Beyond, A California State of Mind: The Conflicted Voter in a Changing World, and When Government Fails: The Orange County Bankruptcy and numerous articles and reports on these topics. He often provides testimony before legislative committees and state commissions. Before joining PPIC, he was a professor of urban and regional planning in the School of Social Ecology at the University of California, Irvine, where he held the Johnson chair in civic governance. He has conducted surveys for the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the California Business Roundtable. He holds a PhD in sociology from the University of California at Berkeley.
The nature of global engagement by Californians is incredibly diverse. But local leaders would do well to note the significant concerns Californians have around the framework that supports such ties, including a functioning border, reliable infrastructure, and a healthy democracy.
The state’s voters defied the narrative of a tectonic political shift.
2024 is a critical year for democracy around the world, and Californians understand democracy to be an international, national, and local issue. Carnegie California’s new survey shows that Californians are widely supportive of a U.S. foreign policy that advances democracy and human rights.
The 2024 Carnegie California Global Affairs Survey reflects Californians’ heightened concerns about ongoing conflicts and critical elections, including in the United States. It arrives at a tense moment in American democracy and during a critical election year for many of the world’s leading democracies.
The mix of legislative measures and citizens’ initiatives offer a window into the health of direct democracy in the most populous U.S. state.
Turnout, the top-two primary system, and Proposition 1 all offer insights into voters’ mindsets.
The state’s democracy innovations will be front and center, and some races will be closely watched as early indicators of possible November outcomes.
Westward-looking, often aligned with their fellow Americans, and confident in U.S. global engagement, Californians would prefer that the role of their state and local leaders on the world stage be decided close to home.
The state’s residents have been eager to be a world leader on a subnational level.
Without federal reform, state and local leaders will need to find innovative ways to cope with migration trends within the bounds of existing inadequate policy.