Public Policy Polling (PDF). July 23-25. Registered voters. MoE 3.95%
The candidates for U.S. Senate are Republican Carly Fiorina and Democrat Barbara Boxer. If the election was today, who would you vote for?
Barbara Boxer (D) 49
Carly Fiorina (R) 40
Undecided 11
This may well prove to be another in an ever-expanding series of races where voters are not sold on the Democratic incumbent, but grudgingly stick with them because the Republican nominee fails to be seen as a legitimate alternative. While Senator Boxer's job approval numbers are middling at best (44-46), they are light years ahead of GOP nominee Carly Fiorina. The Republican millionaire businesswoman heads into the heat of the general election campaign with voters already holding a generally unfavorable opinion of the candidate: Fiorina has just 28 percent favorability, with 40 percent already holding an unfavorable view of her.
President Obama also maintains decent approval ratings in the Golden State (54 percent), which means that Fiorina might not be able to connect with the anti-Obama appeals being used by so many Republican candidates from coast to coast.
Boxer can also take solace in the fact that the ideological breakdowns of this poll seem to favor her continued command of this race. Boxer's huge lead among liberals (81-10) is pretty predictable, but the punditocracy should also note that Boxer is cleaning Fiorina's clock among moderate voters (57-30). Sure, Fiorina is destroying Boxer among conservatives (75-15), but this is California--there aren't enough conservatives for her to make up the gap.
There are also signs in this poll that, at least in California, the "enthusiasm gap" might well be narrowing. The sample polled by PPP was not far off of the 2008 electorate, both in terms of the presidential vote and the partisan ID breakdown. Obama carried the state by 25 points in 2008, and this polling sample favored the President over McCain by a 22-point margin. This implies a more Republican electorate, but only incrementally so.
Eyes will now turn, later in the week, to PPP's numbers in the gubernatorial race. While Fiorina has filled her own coffers in order to forge a viable campaign, she has paled in comparison to the record-setting avalanche of self-funding from GOP gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman. It will be intriguing to see where PPP puts the battle between Whitman and Democratic nominee Jerry Brown.