Democrats rarely do a good job of getting their voters out in non-presidential elections. Many of their supporters tend to be too busy juggling jobs and family, and less attuned to the news, especially compared to conservatives’ consumption of the red meat of partisan media. Newsom and his party have scrambled to overcome that since early summer, when polls showed a near dead-heat between voters who wanted to remove him from office and those who did not.

That kind of dismal polling was humiliating for Democrats in a state where registered Republicans are less than a quarter of the electorate. And scary. It prompted Democrats to raise many millions more than Republicans for TV, social media and mail advertising to raise awareness of the vote and its stakes.

Paul Mitchell, the vice president at Political Data Inc., this week compared the rate of returned ballots to similar points in other election cycles and — to his shock — found turnout running “in the ballpark” of a presidential election year.

Vulnerable Democrats everywhere shouldn’t wait for scary polling data. They should already know that turnout is a problem to be overcome.