Carly Fiorina takes another lead

Yes, it’s the tiniest of all possible leads, but Republican Carly Fiorina has taken another polling lead over Democrat Barbara Boxer. Up until now we’ve had a discrepancy in the polling, in which SurveyUSA had Fiorina ahead but everyone else had Boxer ahead. I wondered how long that gap would last.

Apparently the answer was “one week.”

Of course nobody’s going to be able to claim that 48-47 (MoE 4) is a result marking a runaway freight train with unstoppable momentum creating a sure win. I show a 46% chance that Boxer still leads, according to this poll. It could be random noise, but it is something Fiorina had not yet accomplished: a lead in Rasmussen Reports to go with her leads in SurveyUSA.

If Boxer wasn’t worried before, she won’t be worried after this poll. She was well ahead in Public Policy Polling and very close in the other two. But at the same time, if Fiorina was concerned that SurveyUSA had a partisan slant and nobody else was capable of showing her ahead, that fear is now proven unfounded.

This is the most competitive I have ever seen a California Senate race, given that I started watching politics at all back in 1992 when Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer first won office to begin with. Boxer’s not in the spot that Blanche Lincoln is in, but she’s no longer safe like Barbara Mikulski, either.