Field Poll. 6/22-7/5. Likely Voters. MoE 3.2% (March results in parentheses).
California Governor
Jerry Brown (D) 44 (43)
Meg Whitman (R) 43 (46)
Undecided/Other 13
This poll gives both candidates the opportunity to crow a little bit. The Brown campaign can point out (correctly) that Whitman still cannot pull into the lead despite spending a sum which, by this point, has to be north of $100 million. The Whitman campaign, for their part, told the Sacramento Bee that the poll was a show of strength for Whitman, because "it is positive for Whitman to be in a dead heat in a state controlled by Democrats."
The primary campaign clearly took a pound of flesh, and then some, from the Republican upstart. Since the primary season started in earnest in March, Whitman has seen her favorabilities flatline at 40%, but she has seen her unfavorabilities rise from the high 20s into the low 40s (42%, in this survey). A net negative favorability, this far out from November, is something that Team Whitman needs to be very, very concerned about.
Meanwhile, Brown has not emerged unscathed from the early barrage of campaign ads from Whitman and her allies. What once was a favorability spread of in the +20 to +25 range before the campaign began has been whittled down to a +2 (42/40).
The assumption that the natural terrain of the state would bring the race home for Brown appears to be errant, at least thus far. Whitman is doing much better among Democrats (16% support) than Brown is doing among Republicans (9% support). Furthermore, Whitman actually leads 42-39 among Independents. While we have seen GOP leads among Independent voters in many states, California Independents tend to be a fairly left-of-center lot: Barack Obama carried the group 64-31 just two years ago.
Brown's campaign has taken some heat from within party circles as of late, as folks are growing concerned about the apparent strategy of Team Brown to conserve resources until later in the campaign. It underscores a critical problem in this race--Brown can never outspend Whitman. Therefore, he has to worry about resource consumption, while Whitman can turn the spigot on full perpetually.
A variable that is tough to calculate is whether Californians will grow to resent the fairly transparent effort of Whitman to buy the seat. Brown seems to be gently working at building that meme, as evidenced last week by his very public acceptance of close to a dozen debate and panel appearances. Whitman had only committed to one, and Brown's blanket "anytime, anywhere" message is clearly meant to underline the extent to which Whitman would prefer to hide behind her money bags and limit the campaign to an air war.
One final takeaway from the poll that's a bit of a stunner: Meg Whitman actually trails among Latino voters in California by just eleven points (50-39). Not only is this a huge reversal from 2008 (Barack Obama carried Latinos in California by a not-ambiguous 74-23 margin), but it comes after a primary in which Whitman lurched rightward on the issue of immigration (despite trying to deny it after the fact, and sprinting away from her primary position before the confetti was even swept off the floor). Latino voters in California have gravitated to the Democrats for the sixteen years since Pete Wilson and Proposition 187. Meg Whitman would seem to be a very curious Republican candidate upon which to reconsider their allegiances.