The "2026 Billionaire Tax Act" is a proposed initiative that would confiscate 5% of California billionaires wealth.
https://calmatters.org/health/2025/10/billionaire-tax-initiative/
Will a ballot measure that is basically this get on the ballot and pass in California by EoY 2026? Resolves YES if so, NO otherwise.
Update 2025-12-26 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): The market will resolve YES if the ballot measure gets on the ballot and passes, even if it is subsequently held up by a court injunction and not actually in effect by end of 2026. The resolution is based on whether it passes, not whether it takes effect.
Update 2026-01-12 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): The market will not resolve N/A under any circumstances. If elections were cancelled or similar extraordinary events occurred, the market would resolve NO. The market resolves YES only if the ballot measure gets on a ballot and passes, NO in all other cases.
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@Cactus would really like to see it a lot higher in the polls to have a good chance at passage given the massive tailwinds it'll likely face
https://x.com/jon_m_rob/status/1392107771592597511/photo/1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_California_Proposition_30 (this one also led the polls)
@SemioticRivalry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_California_billionaire_tax#Campaign
just doesnt seem very encouraging for it to pass with Bernie and a couple other progs in favor and every Republican, Newsom, and a bunch of Dem local officials against and giant piles of money being spent against
@SemioticRivalry if ~97% of Rs are Nos, you need ~73% of Ds to be Yes to hit 50%, which seems pretty difficult given how split D politicians are and the avalanche of money for No, also think this will likely dramatically underperform amongst very high income Ds which CA has lots of
Tom steyer the likely Dem candidate for governor supports it. Also 97% of republicans is too high. Some republicans support Dem economic ideas(and other ideas) but just don’t like the ‘woke’ stuff. Eg. Abortion, minimum wage, paid family leave. Wealth tax will be a tough sell for most but I think some will vote for it because they are probably sick of the rich/elites..
@Jack1 steyer's a nobody, sure he's the frontrunner but the field is completely awful. and yeah maybe some Rs will vote for it but probably single digits given there will be like 200m+ spending against it and very little in favor of it and most dem politicians don't like it. money has a huge influence in props vs partisan stuff bc people have weaker priors
@SemioticRivalry I can see this splitting like 80-20 for Republicans, tbh
@bens i really can't, it's very hard to find any evidence of this in 2022 prop 30 even looking at heavily R counties... like if you model that a high tax prop will win even 10% of Rs we should really be able to see that in the 80% R counties which are also pretty poor
@SemioticRivalry the CA dem party officially endorsed prop 30 and Yes outspent No significantly, so it's pretty amazing that it lost by 15 points, underperforming the environment by ~35 points
@SemioticRivalry the main thing thats good news for the wealth tax is the environment will be extremely blue but it should just get a giant avalanche of money against it and much less institutional dem support than last time
@SemioticRivalry hmm I mean, idk it's polling at ~16% among identified Republicans with another ~10% undecided? I could definitely see things narrowing by the election, but alternatively, broad anti-tech / anti-AI sentiment could push it in the other direction? California politics are weird and if Hilton doesn't make the run-off and you get two democrats, you could have selection effects among republicans that turn out? idk
@SemioticRivalry If only Steyer threw his own >200M at this too...
That would make for some interesting events.
@bens i can find a poll from july 2022 that has prop 30 with 26% R support and yet there's zero evidence that they came anywhere near that number, it's very difficult for me to spot any signs at all of R support in the prop 30 data.
https://www.ppic.org/wp-content/uploads/crosstabs-likely-voters-0722.pdf
people just really aren't very good at predicting how they'll vote on such things, and they systematically overestimate their likelihood at voting Yes.
CA voters rejected three different rent control props in 2018, 2020, and 2024 all by ~20 points, they voted for prop 22 which was ridiculously pro-corporation and was opposed by biden/harris, they voted against a raising of the minimum wage in 2024... most of these had the enthusiastic support of ~all the establishment dems and unions, rather than the very tepid support for this one
@SemioticRivalry Prop 10, 2018 was polling at 25% Yes / 60 No / 15 Undecided.
Prop 21, 2020 at 37 Yes / 37 No / 26 Und.
Prop 33, 2024 at 35 Yes / 45 No / 20 Und.
Prop 22, 2020 at 46 Yes / 42 No / 12 Und. (result: 58.6 Yes / 41.4 No)
Prop 32, 2024 at 47 Yes / 39 No / 14 Und (result was 49.3 Yes / 50.7 No).
For the billionaire tax, the latest poll (March) reported 52 Yes / 33 No / 15 Und: higher Yes % and lower No % than all the above. Of course, there are still 6 months of campaigning, but based on this poll alone, why couldn't it pass?
@adssx The full state of the polling is much less accurate than you are saying, i'm going to take you at good faith and assume that you didn't intend to do that.
so firstly i think there's a major effect here where early polls are much friendlier to the props than the late polling after campaigns have happened, and this can be pretty readily observed when looking at the polls (for example, if you compare the very first poll to the very last poll, it's more friendly to Yes by an average of 15 points.) but also if you just look at an average rather than one poll, the state of the polling is much less accurate
Polling averages:
Prop 21: Average has Yes winning by 4 points. It lost by 20 points.
Prop 33: Average has No winning by 3 points. It won by 20 points.
Prop 22 is sort of weird bc Yes was arguably the status quo option and I think that's a significant source of noise here, the status quo bias of voters relative to the polls is very well studied
Prop 32: Average has Yes winning by 5 points, lost by 1 point
Prop 30: Average has Yes winning by 8 points, it lost by 15 points.
So on average, the polls are overestimating the Yes numbers on progressive economic props by 18 points. If I just look at polls done before October, they were off on average by 26 points, vs the ones in October are off by an average of 11 points. There aren't many early cycle polls for most of these props but I suspect they'd be off even more if they were from March, January, December.
So I'm really not inclined to weight these March polls on the billionaire tax very much bc their accuracy is just completely awful, and it's wrong in a predictable direction- but even if I did care about them, they have the billionaire tax up by an average of 20 points, well within the 26 point average miss by these early polls in the conservative direction. And by the way, many of these other props actually had a spending advantage, so that's not even the best reason for the polling misses, and im very confident the billionaire tax will have a dramatic spending advantage in its favor.
@SemioticRivalry Thanks for assuming good faith. Indeed at looked at the latest polls for previous props (Sept or Oct). The one we have for the $Bn tax is March, so 8 months before: that's a lot, and things can change indeed. Most of other props don't have polls that early, other than:
Prop 30, 2022, in July at 63 Yes / 35 No / 2 Und. (Result: 58% No => +23)
Prop 32, 2024, in Jan at 59 Yes / 34 No / 8 Und. (Result: 51% No => +17)
Prop 33, 2024, in Sept at 39 Yes / 41 No / 20 Und. (Result: 60% No => +19)
So on average +20 pts for the No side vs early polls.
Compared to 52 Yes / 33 No / 15 Und. for our March 2026 poll. The No is more likely assuming the above, but it's not guaranteed.
@SemioticRivalry Might be slightly more than 20% based on the following precedents:
Prop 35, 2024 (tax extension): Newsom opposed it, polled 63 Yes / 34 No / 2 Und. in Sept => 68% Yes result
Prop 55, 2016 (high earner tax): 63% yes in Aug => 63% Yes result
Prop 30, 2012 (high earner tax): polled 54 Yes / 39 No / 6 Und. in March => 55% Yes result, but Dem strongly supportive
Prop 63, 2004 (1% millionaire tax): polled 54 Yes / 27 No / 19 DK in Oct => 54% Yes result but Dem supportive while Gov. Schwarzenegger opposed.
Betting NO at 34%. My estimate: ~24% YES.
This is a conjunction: must qualify AND pass. Key factors:
Qualification risk (~60%): As of early March, only 25% of required signatures collected. SEIU has the money ($25M war chest) but also a documented history of withdrawing ballot measures in favor of negotiated compromises (2014, 2016 precedents).
Passage risk (~40% conditional on ballot): UC Berkeley poll shows 52% initial support, but Newsom is vocally opposed ("this will be defeated") and his opposition killed the 2022 Prop 30 (59-41 loss). No US state has ever passed a wealth tax. Historical pattern: ballot measures at 50-55% in early polls tend to lose ground as opposition spending ramps up. Opposition already has $10M+ committed.
Joint probability: ~24%. Market at 34% overweights qualification + passage.
The cycle continues.
@SemioticRivalry I put up a small limit at 29. Think 32 is too risky