Wealth Tax Leads In California Poll — But Faces Major Headwinds

California voters are likelier than not to support a proposed wealth tax that’s already being blamed for driving well-known billionaires out of the state, according to a new poll by POLITICO and its partners. But it’s on a knife’s edge — and voters are still wary enough to be talked out of it.

Half of voters said they would vote for a ballot initiative that would impose a one-time, 5 percent tax on the ultrawealthy, versus just 28 percent opposed, according to the UC Berkeley Citrin Center for Public Opinion Research-POLITICO poll. But the survey also suggested voters are highly susceptible to counterarguments, and the initiative’s wealthy opponents have ample resources to broadcast those critiques.

The findings preview a fiercely contested and highly expensive campaign if the measure qualifies for the November ballot. The proposal has already been extraordinarily contentious, galvanizing Silicon Valley foes and splitting Democrats: Gov. Gavin Newsom has vociferously opposed the measure while Sen. Bernie Sanders campaigned for it. That conflict has opened a volatile front in a broader tax battle in the nation’s most populous state, with unions pushing to extend a tax on top earners as business groups work to impose limits — all as California faces deep deficits exacerbated by President Donald Trump’s spending cuts.

The poll’s early advantage is built on support from 70 percent of Democrats. And undecided voters were far likelier to lean yes (14 percent) than to lean no (2 percent).

“The yes side has the current lead and you have some strong supporters, so that’s the good news,” said Jack Citrin, a University of California Berkeley political science professor and co-director of the poll.

The bad news for proponents: While supporters currently outnumber detractors two-to-one, 50 percent is a fairly tenuous starting point for a ballot initiative. Ballot campaigns generally hope to launch with a stronger margin, knowing their numbers could decline once the counter-campaign begins.

“Most experts on the initiative process say that the yes side has an advantage to start with because no one’s been talking about it and it sounds like a good idea,” Citrin said, “but then once the campaign begins you whittle away at that.”

Majorities of voters in the poll said they did not believe the tax would be temporary as advertised (56 percent); that they were concerned about it pushing affluent individuals (54 percent) or businesses (63 percent) out of state, and a consequent loss of tax revenue (59 percent). More than two-thirds — 67 percent — said they feared middle class Californians would face tax hikes to make up the difference.

Voters also have little confidence in California’s tax regime, the survey found. A vast majority (85 percent) said the state wastes tax dollars, and a smaller majority (57 percent) believed they pay more taxes than they should.

California’s political class of lobbyists, campaign workers, policy professionals and others, meanwhile, is even warier. While the connected group in the Citrin Center-POLITICO poll was less pessimistic about the state’s current tax burden, they were more opposed to the wealth tax and more fearful about its negative fallout — a demonstration that those closest to the policy debate see it as a flawed response to the problem.

Voters’ pervasive concerns about the wealth tax and taxation more broadly create an opening for adversaries to rally them against the proposal. Newsom has warned the measure will eviscerate California’s budget by pushing wealthy taxpayers out of state, and opposition polls find voters are deeply skeptical the tax would work as advertised.

“Widespread concern about the tax's consequences is a political opportunity,” TrueDot CEO and poll co-director Jon Cohen said. “The ‘no’ side doesn't need to create these anxieties — they already exist. They just need to amplify them.”

Supporters have dismissed those critiques as overblown. They say the measure will resonate with voters incensed at income inequality and Trump’s slashing healthcare funding, which the initiative seeks to offset. But the poll suggests they’ll also need to play defense against the strongest counterarguments.

“If you’re the yes side you have to hammer away at: this isn’t true, they’re not going to leave, it’s just scare tactics,” Citrin said.

There is already evidence that wealthy Californians like Google co-founder Sergey Brin have sought to move their assets out of the state, although the proposal is designed to limit peoples’ opportunities to evade a tax hit by moving. Brin has also seeded a committee fighting the measure with $20 million.

These data come from parallel surveys of California voters and policy influencers, fielded byTrueDot, 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 between Feb. 25 and Mar. 3, 2026, among a sample of 1,220 registered voters selected at random by Verasight. Voter data were weighted using the Current Population Survey and data from the California Report of Registration.

From February 24 to March 3, 2026, 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 advisors, consultants, business decision-makers and subject matter experts.

The margin of error is plus or minus 2.8 percent for the voter survey and plus or minus 3.7 percent for the influencers.