Susan Pinkus, director of the Times Poll, said there is evidence that the initiative stirred union members to vote. The Times exit poll found that 35% of all voters in Tuesday's election said they came from a union household, compared to 29% in the June 1994 election. And it was those additional union members who provided the margin for the proposition's defeat.
"I think these union members were energized by their leaders," Pinkus said. The leaders "spent millions and millions of dollars to get out the vote and to get the public to vote no. It worked."
Among voters who said they came from "union households," 64% said they voted no on the proposition.
Democrats, women and minorities were more likely to vote against Proposition 226, according to results from the Times exit poll. According to the poll, 72% of Democrats said they voted no on the measure. Among Republicans, the numbers were reversed: 72% supported it.
Whites were the only ethnic group likely to support the initiative, with more than half of such voters casting ballots for it. The proposition was especially unpopular among Latinos at the polls, a full 75% of whom voted against it.
(Los Angeles Times, Thursday, June 4, 1998)