A new statewide survey from the Public Policy Institute of California shows roughly 66% of California adults and likely voters oppose Gov. Gavin Newsom's executive order banning the sale of new gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035, a dramatic reversal from just five years ago, when a slim majority backed the plan.
The numbers cut across party lines. Half of the governor's own Democrats now oppose the mandate. Among independents, opposition stands at 69%. And 91% of Republicans reject it outright, Just the News reported.
For a governor who has staked much of his national profile on leading the country's green-energy transition, the PPIC poll amounts to a rebuke delivered by the very voters he claims to represent. The mandate was supposed to be California's signature climate achievement. Instead, it has become one of Newsom's heaviest political liabilities, at home and in Washington.
The trend line tells the story more sharply than any single snapshot. In July 2021, 51% of Californians supported the gas-car sales ban. Today, two-thirds oppose it. That is not a marginal shift. It is a wholesale reversal of public sentiment in a state that reliably votes blue.
The erosion among Democrats is especially striking. Opposition within the party has grown from 31% in 2021 to 50% now, the New York Post reported, citing the same PPIC data. Independent opposition climbed from 56% to 69% over the same period.
Meanwhile, Californians' interest in actually buying electric vehicles has cooled. Only 33% say they have seriously considered purchasing an EV for their next car, down from 41% in 2023 and roughly half five years ago. Just 12% of Californians say they currently own one.
The mandate's 2035 deadline is less than nine years away. The public is moving in the opposite direction.
Wayne Winegarden of the Pacific Research Institute pointed to the financial squeeze California families face under the state's environmental regime. The New York Post quoted him directly:
"Families in California are feeling the costs from the state's environmental policies. 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 pressure is not abstract. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, in a Washington Free Beacon interview, noted that two more California refiners are shutting down, with a USC study projecting gas prices could hit $8 per gallon in the state by the end of next year. Burgum described California as the most energy-dependent state in the nation, importing massive amounts of foreign oil, a condition he called a national security risk.
"High gas prices are a horrible tax on low-income individuals."
That line from Burgum captures the core tension in Newsom's climate agenda. The governor frames his policies as forward-looking and necessary. The people paying the bills increasingly disagree.
Expiring federal EV tax credits have compounded the problem. With the Trump administration and congressional Republicans pulling back those subsidies, the economics of switching to electric have gotten worse for ordinary buyers, not better. Newsom responded by signing a $270 million state rebate program to fill the gap, but the poll numbers suggest that money has not changed many minds.
Newsom himself framed the rebate program as a matter of national competition, not consumer choice. The New York Post quoted him saying:
"California is filling the void left by Trump and the GOP repealing the federal electric vehicle tax credit. We won't forfeit the future to China."
That may play well in a presidential primary. It does not appear to be persuading Californians who are watching their electricity bills climb while being told they can no longer buy the cars they want.
The political ground is shifting in Washington, too. President Trump is expected to sign a joint congressional resolution revoking California's EPA waiver, the federal permission slip that allowed the state to impose its own tailpipe emission rules and, by extension, mandate the end of gas-car sales by 2035.
The vote was not a narrow partisan exercise. Fox News reported that 35 House Democrats joined Republicans in voting to block the Biden-era rule that enabled Newsom's ban, a bipartisan rejection that undercuts any claim the opposition is purely ideological.
Rep. Kevin Kiley, a California Republican, did not hold back:
"This is a bipartisan national repudiation of the utter insanity Newsom has inflicted on our state."
State Sen. Tony Strickland, a Republican from Huntington Beach, offered a blunter assessment:
"I'm thankful that the folks in Washington, D.C., had common sense with something the governor doesn't have here in California."
Newsom and California Attorney General Rob Bonta have announced plans to sue the Trump administration over the resolution, adding yet another case to a pile of more than 20 lawsuits the state has filed against the current administration. Whether the courts will side with California on this particular fight remains an open question, but the political optics of suing to preserve a policy that two-thirds of your own state opposes are, at minimum, awkward.
The gas-car ban is far from Newsom's only problem. A DOJ investigation has raised questions about his political future, with some Democrats openly worrying it could derail any 2028 presidential bid.
Separately, federal investigators have been looking at the governor's inner circle. Reports have emerged that the FBI wired a Newsom associate months before the current administration even took office, a detail that suggests the scrutiny predates any partisan motive.
And on the policy front, the governor's record has not gotten easier to defend. California continues to lead the nation in outmigration. Interior Secretary Burgum put it plainly in his Free Beacon interview:
"In the 1800s, California was growing, and today, under Gavin Newsom, California is shrinking."
Census data has backed that assessment. The state lost roughly 50,000 residents even as the governor publicly insisted the population was growing, a claim contradicted by his own state's numbers.
Add a persistent budget gap, a high-speed rail project that remains years behind schedule and billions over budget, and a growing list of colliding political liabilities, and the picture that emerges is of a governor whose signature policies are losing support faster than his administration can prop them up.
The PPIC poll did not disclose its full methodology in the reporting, sample size, margin of error, and exact question wording were not specified. But the trend is consistent with broader national sentiment on EV mandates, and the institute is a well-established, nonpartisan California research organization. Its findings track with the bipartisan congressional vote and with the declining share of Californians who say they are even considering an EV purchase.
What the numbers reveal is a governor who issued an executive order, not a law passed by the legislature, not a ballot measure approved by voters, that now commands the opposition of two out of every three residents in his own state. Half of his own party's voters reject it. The share of people interested in buying the product he wants to mandate is shrinking, not growing.
Newsom can sue. He can sign rebate checks. He can invoke China and climate destiny. But he cannot change the fact that the people of California have looked at his flagship policy and said no.
When your own voters reject your mandate by a two-to-one margin, it is no longer a mandate. It is an imposition.