Unlikely Voter

The directions of the two Republican candidates here in California had been pretty much moving as expected for most of the campaign season. The abortion-friendly Republican Meg Whitman was leading Democrat Jerry Brown, while the abortion opponent Republican Carly Fiorina was falling further behind Democrat Barbara Boxer.

New polling though, such as the latest from Ipsos for Reuters, seems to contradict that.

This new poll of the California races by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner and American Viewpoint for USC and the LA Times has been discussed from one side of the Internet to the other, and back again.

But I wouldn’t be doing my job if I let it go without chiming in, now would I? Of course not. So let’s dig in.

So it’s looking like PPP is the only pollster so bullish for Democrats in California, because we’re back to polling that has the race close with the new result from Fox News.

Opinion Research polled California, Florida, and Kentucky for CNN and Time. The results seem off from those of other recent polls. Let’s find out why.

We’re seeing a real discrepancy in the California Senate polling. SurveyUSA’s last two results were Republican Carly Fiorina ahead 5 and and now 2, while Rasmussen Reports has had Democrat Barbara Boxer up 5.

Rasmussen Reports has two new polls out: one on the race for Governor between Democrat Jerry Brown and Republican Meg Whitman, and the other on the Senate race between Democrat Barbara Boxer and Republican Carly Fiorina.

I don’t think the results they show are compatible. If one is right, I think the other is wrong.

SurveyUSA polled the California statewide races for San Francisco’s KPIX, a television station for one of the most safe cities in the state for Democrats. This is Nancy Pelosi’s own district here. Any bias introduced into this poll won’t be from the right.

So it’s notable when this poll shows Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman ahead of Barbara Boxer and Jerry Brown.

Before the primary, for a while when Meg Whitman was campaigning and Jerry Brown did not have to, Whitman took a lead in the race for Governor in California. It didn’t last, but the latest Field Poll is good news for her, and not just because it shows her with only a one point deficit.

Today we have high profile races in South Carolina, Nevada, California, and Arkansas to look back on and see how well the pollsters’ numbers matched the actual results.

As I’m just one person who lacks the luxury of doing this site full time, I’m not ashamed to work off of Real Clear Politics to make these assessments.

Here are a couple of quick hits of races we’ve covered recently: The Republican primary for the New Hampshire Senate race, and California general election for Governor.

USC and the LA Times polled some of the major California statewide races. The results, provided by pollsters Greenberg Quinlan Rosner and American Viewpoint, seem generally in line with what we’ve seen so far: Campbell and Fiorina are in a close primary race, lagged by DeVore. Boxer can’t reach 50. Whitman cruises in the primary.

The big news to my eye is that Jerry Brown has fallen behind.

I know my model doesn’t handle multi-way races, but I thought this poll was fascinating. 21st Century Trending polled likely primary voters and caucus goers in 30 states, and found some novel results for the 2012 election.