Those views were consistent with a concurrent survey of POLITICO’s audience of key political and policy influencers in the state, including political staffers, lobbyists, policy advisers and others deeply versed in California’s political landscape. Among the roughly 400 influencers surveyed, 57% said they were more pessimistic than optimistic about AI, and 78% supported tougher AI safety rules at the risk of putting U.S. firms at a global disadvantage. That’s despite influencers indicating they use AI at work more often than the general voting public.
“Californians see AI is making them more productive, but that’s why they’re becoming more pessimistic about its broader effects,” said Jon Cohen, founder and CEO of TrueDot, whose firm fielded the poll. “There’s a clear tension.”
Still, according to the poll, AI is nowhere near a top voting issue. Just 3% of voters named data centers and AI as the “most important” issue facing California, compared to the plurality of 34% who chose “cost of living” as their greatest concern.
The voters surveyed also saw some benefits for AI in the health care industry, in accelerating their own productivity at work and in spurring economic growth. About half said they support creating a national fund that owns shares in AI giants so the public can benefit from future profits — an idea Newsom and other politicians have suggested.
These data come from parallel surveys of California voters and policy influencers, fielded by TrueDot, the AI-accelerated research platform, in collaboration with the Citrin Center at UC Berkeley and POLITICO. Interviews for the voter survey were conducted online in English and Spanish from Sept. 8-14, among a sample of 2,418 registered voters, including 1,983 likely voters, selected at random through Political Data Inc. and Verasight, with supplemental online panel recruitment. Voter results were weighted to California registered-voter benchmarks for age, educational attainment, race and ethnicity, gender, and geography, with additional calibration to 2024 presidential vote by region.
From Sept. 11-16, a parallel study was conducted in partnership with POLITICO among its audience of key political and policy influencers in California. The audience was defined based on job title and organizational affiliation and included state and local government employees, political staffers, lobbyists, policy advisers, consultants, business decision-makers and subject matter experts.
The margin of error is plus or minus 2.7% for the registered voter survey, plus or minus 3% for likely voters and plus or minus 4.5% for the influencers.