When it comes to electric vehicles, politicians can entice drivers with cash and policy incentives to buy them.

Just don’t order the public to buy them, which is what California is doing with its plan to phase out the sale of new gas vehicles by 2035.

This is the takeaway from a new poll by Politico and its partners.

Asked if California should stick to its 2035 plan, 53% of respondents said no compared to 31% who said the state should hold firm. Another 15% said they weren’t sure.

Breaking it down by political affiliation, 49% of Democrats and 7% of Republicans said to stick to the plan. Opposed to the 2035 phaseout were 32% of Democrats, 90% of Republicans, and 57% of independents.

The survey, which was conducted in English and Spanish from Sept. 8 to Sept.-14, sampled 2,418 registered California voters.

“When we asked this question in previous polls, there was a much higher number of people who said ‘no, stick with the plan to phase out gas engines.’ But now, partly because of what’s going on in the world, that support has disappeared,” said Jack Citrin, a University of California, Berkeley, political science professor and co-director of the UC Berkeley Citrin Center for Public Opinion Research-POLITICO poll.

California EV Market Rebounds

Meanwhile, the EV market is getting frisky again thanks to President Donald Trump’s war of choice with Iran. As gas prices have soared because of the difficulty of shipping oil from the Middle East, more Californians are going green.

According to the California Energy Commission, C 19.1% of all new vehicles sold in the state between April and June were EVs or plug-in hybrids. That is a 3.3 percentage point climb from the first quarter of 2026.

Still, California’s new EV sales remain less robust than they were in summer 2025. That’s when they peaked at nearly 30% as consumers rushed to secure $7,500 federal tax credits ahead of their accelerated expiration caused by Trump’s “big beautiful” tax and spending bill.

Drivers elsewhere in the United States are far less enthusiastic about EVs, as they comprise 5.8% of new sales nationally, as they have for the last three quarters.