In the race for California governor, Democrat Jerry Brown, the state’s attorney general and former governor, has led billionaire former eBay executive Meg Whitman slightly in three out of four recent polls and the fourth was a tie. In the Senate race, Democrat Barbara Boxer has seen her lead over the Republican candidate, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, grow incrementally in three recent polls.
Results from the new Los Angeles Times/USC poll out today show that, in the race for governor, Brown is ahead by 5 points, 49 percent to 44 percent. Whitman has spent $120 million of her money on her campaign, so far, while Brown has only spent what amounts to a fraction of that.
The same poll found that Boxer’s lead over Fiorina appears to be expanding when compared with other recent polls. In the Times poll, Boxer is ahead by 8 points, 51 percent to 43 percent. (Boxer’s 51 percent represents the first time any of the four candidates for the two big offices has been over 50 percent in the past few weeks.)
A SurveyUSA poll [PDF] conducted on Sept. 19 for a consortium of local TV news channels statewide, including KABC in Los Angeles, found Brown with 46 percent and Whitman with 43 percent.
The same poll put Boxer at 49 percent and Fiorina at 43 percent — the same result Fiorina received in the new Times poll. (This was a reversal from the previous SurveyUSA poll, which had Fiorina in the lead 48-46.)
A Field poll [PDF] conducted Sept. 14 to 21, found that Brown and Whitman were tied, 41-41. The same poll [PDF] on the Senate race gave Boxer a 6-point lead, 47 percent to 41 percent.
One metric in the Field poll that shows a foundational weakness in Fiorina’s support is the response to a question about voters’ motivations. Among Boxer voters, 67 percent say they are voting for her, while just 29 percent of her voters say they are voting against Fiorina. But among Fiorina voters, the results are switched. Just 31 percent of people voting for Fiorina say they are voting for her, while 65 percent say they will be voting against Boxer. The risk for Fiorina is that, if the polls solidify in Boxer’s favor, the people voting for Fiorina merely to register their disapproval of Boxer might not waste their time going to the polls.
A Public Policy Polling survey released on Sept. 21 showed Brown leading Whitman 47 percent to 42 percent.
One interesting metric from the recent polls also came up in a PPP survey from last week, which found that the much discussed “enthusiasm gap” between Democrats and Republicans nationwide is apparently not a factor in the races for the 53 U.S. House seats in California. While generic polls on House races nationwide show the parties even or Republicans a few points ahead, in California Dems lead in the generic by 13 points, with 51 percent for Democrats and 38 percent for Republicans.
