Public Policy Polling

California favors gay marriage, legal marijuana

Raleigh, N.C. – Though they passed Prop 8 by five points, Californians now favor legal same-sex marriage by the same margin, a ten-point reversal in three years.  Further, the consensus for legal equality, which is already largely a reality with domestic partnership rights, reaches more than three-quarters supermajority support.  Given the option of civil unions as well as full marriage rights, 43% of the state’s voters still prefer marriage, with another 35% liking the civil-union status quo.  Only 21% do not want any legal recognition for gay couples, less than half the 43% who want same-sex marriage itself to remain illegal.  85% of Democrats, 79% of independents, and even 65% of Republicans favor at least civil unions.

Similarly, voters rejected Prop 19, which would have legalized, regulated, and taxed the sale of marijuana, by seven points last fall.  But by a 48-42 margin, they now favor legalizing marijuana usage, a 13-point turnaround in one year.

California Odds and Ends

-Jerry Brown is getting decent approval numbers for his work as Governor of California, but they aren't nearly as good as they were earlier in the year. 46% of voters think he's doing a good job to 38% who disapprove.  That's down from a 50/25 spread when PPP polled the state earlier in the year but those numbers sure are good compared to what his predecessors Arnold Schwarzenegger and Gray Davis tended to post.

-California's other two new major statewide office holders are generating more ambivalence than anything else.  33% of voters approve of Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom's job performance, 33% disapprove, and 34% have no opinion. For Attorney General Kamala Harris it's 33% approval, 26% disapproval, and 41% with no opinion. It's hard to grab voters' attention in a down ballot office anywhere, but especially in the Golden State.

-46% of voters approve of the job Barbara Boxer's doing to 43% who disapprove.  Generally those numbers would be pretty unremarkable, but this represents the first time PPP has ever found more Californians giving Boxer good marks than unhappy with her.  Even as she won reelection by a healthy margin last year she faced under water approval numbers.

-There's more evidence in our polling that the tide is turning on gay marriage.  48% of voters in the state think it should be legal to only 43% who believe it should be illegal. Those numbers should be encouraging for pro-equality voters given that California banned gay marriage by a 4 point margin only three years ago. When you broaden the discussion to include civil unions 78% of voters, including even 65% of Republicans, support some form of legal recognition for gay couples.

Governor Candidate Favorabilities

Below is a chart looking at the favorabilities (or approvals for current office holders) of the 31 Gubernatorial candidates included on our final 18 polls. Some observations:

-The most popular candidates are Brian Sandoval, Tom Corbett, Sean Parnell, John Hickenlooper, and Eliot Cutler.

-The least popular candidates are Dan Maes, Libby Mitchell, Pat Quinn, Rick Scott, and Tom Emmer.

-The most popular candidates who are probably going to lose anyway are Cutler, Ethan Berkowitz, and Bill White.

-The least popular candidates who are probably going to win anyway or at least have a 50/50 chance are Paul LePage, Jerry Brown, and Bill Brady. Rick Scott and Tom Emmer have pretty good chances at winning despite low favorability numbers as well.

Here's the full rundown:

Candidate	Favorability/Approval	Spread
Brian Sandoval	56/33	+23
Tom Corbett	51/32	+19
Sean Parnell	51/35	+16
John Hickenlooper	51/38	+13
Eliot Cutler	46/33	+13
John Lynch	51/39	+12
Scott Walker	47/39	+8
Ethan Berkowitz	46/39	+7
Bill White	46/39	+7
Tom Foley	41/38	+3
Alex Sink	44/42	+2
Tom Tancredo	44/43	+1
John Kasich	43/42	+1
Rick Perry	45/45	Even
Dan Malloy	39/40	-1
Tom Horner	35/36	-1
Mark Dayton	43/45	-2
Tom Barrett	41/43	-2
John Stephen	37/40	-3
Bill Brady	39/45	-6
Jerry Brown	42/49	-7
Dan Onorato	37/45	-8
Ted Strickland	41/50	-9
Paul LePage	42/51	-9
Rory Reid	39/51	-12
Meg Whitman	38/50	-12
Tom Emmer	37/51	-14
Rick Scott	34/54	-20
Pat Quinn	32/54	-22
Libby Mitchell	31/56	-25
Dan Maes	11/66	-55

Dems remain ahead in California

Raleigh, N.C. – The contests for Senate and Governor in California have tightened over the final week of the campaign, although the Democratic candidates still retain the lead in both races.  Barbara Boxer is up 50-46 on Carly Fiorina for the Senate, while Jerry Brown is ahead of Meg Whitman by a 51-46 margin for Governor.

Boxer leads despite posting atrocious approval numbers in this final poll at 40% of voters happy with her job performance and 50% displeased.  Fortunately for her Californians aren't real enamored with Fiorina either- only 42% rate her favorably to 44% with a negative opinion.  Boxer's position right now might be a lot more perilous if she had drawn a stronger opponent.

California tightens

The contests for Senate and Governor in California have tightened over the final week of the campaign, although the Democratic candidates still retain the lead in both races. Barbara Boxer is up 50-46 on Carly Fiorina for the Senate, while Jerry Brown is ahead of Meg Whitman by a 51-46 margin for Governor.

Boxer leads despite posting atrocious approval numbers in this final poll at 40% of voters happy with her job performance and 50% displeased. Fortunately for her Californians aren't real enamored with Fiorina either- only 42% rate her favorably to 44% with a negative opinion. Boxer's position right now might be a lot more perilous if she had drawn a stronger opponent.

The formula for winning as a Republican in a deep blue state is to get about 20% of the Democratic vote to cross over and to rack up a large advantage with independents. Fiorina is winning only 12% of Democrats and actually trails Boxer by a 50-46 margin with independents. She'll have to outperform her poll numbers on both of those measures Tuesday to have a chance at winning.

The story is pretty similar in the race for Governor. Meg Whitman is winning only 13% of the Democratic vote and trails Jerry Brown by the same 50-46 margin with independents that Fiorina has against Boxer. Despite her profligate spending California voters never warmed up to Whitman- 50% of them express an unfavorable opinion about her to just 38% who say that they like her.

Proposition 19, which would legalize marijuana in California, appears to be headed for defeat. 51% of voters say they will oppose it to only 44% who plan to cast a yes vote. Polls showed support for the measure over the summer but its popularity has faded as the election has moved closer.

Full results here

Boxer and Brown Pulling Away, Pot Losing Ground in CA

Raleigh, N.C. – Counter to a PPP-fueled storyline last month suggesting California’s marijuana-legalizing Proposition 19 might help Democrats Barbara Boxer and Jerry Brown by pulling more young voters to the polls, both candidates have even larger leads than before despite the prop heading for a narrow loss.  Voters under 30 are turning out at larger rates in California than in other states, they make up a third of those who are most excited about voting for Prop 19 of all the races on the ballot, and they favor the two Democrats by huge margins, but the prop will not likely be the ultimate reason for Boxer’s and Brown’s wins next Tuesday night.

Boxer is leading her Senate challenger, Carly Fiorina, 52-43, just slightly up from her 50-42 edge in September.  Brown is beating Meg Whitman for Governor, 53-42, a considerably larger advantage than the 47-42 found five weeks ago.  Prop 19, meanwhile, is now opposed by 48% and only supported by 45%; last time, it was winning, 47-38. 

Brown pulling away

Jerry Brown's pulling away in his quest to return to the California Governor's office and now leads Meg Whitman 53-42.

Given how many tens of millions of dollars Whitman spent on defining herself to the voters, it's somewhat remarkable how few of them she could get to like her. 55% see her unfavorably to only 36% with a positive opinion. Brown, on the other hand, has had voters warm up to him somewhat over the course of the campaign. His favorability ratio is 48/44, compared to 37/39 when PPP first took a look at the race back in May. His positives have increased by 11 points while his negatives have only gone up by 5.

Whitman has a 14 point lead with independents. But Brown has 86% of the Democratic vote locked up while Whitman is getting only 80% of Republicans. She would have needed more crossover support than that to win this race. Democrats are looking very solid at the top of the ticket in California.

Full results here

Brown leads in California

Meg Whitman has spent millions and millions of dollars on her campaign for Governor of California but most voters still don't like her. In large part due to her continuing personal unpopularity she trails Jerry Brown 47-42.

Brown's lead isn't much a function of his own popularity- a plurality of voters in the state view him in a negative light with 42% seeing him favorably and 45% unfavorably. Republicans (86%) are much more strong in their dislike of Brown than Democrats (69%) are in their favor and independents split against him by a 30/55 margin as well.

Whitman, however, is even more unpopular. Only 35% of voters view her in a positive light with 49% seeing her negatively. That's a slight improvement from a 30/50 spread when PPP last polled the race in July but shows Californians still haven't grown particularly found of her.

Whitman is winning independents 45-37 and has her party base pretty much locked up at 84-8. But she's showing very little appeal to Democrats, winning just 12% of their voters and you simply can't win as a Republican in California without showing the ability to get more support across party lines than that.

PPP is finding in Gubernatorial races pretty much everywhere this year that if there's an unpopular outgoing incumbent that person's party is likely to lose the Governor's office. California is just another example of that rule- Arnold Schwarzenegger continues to be the least popular Governor in the country at a 20/69 approval rating and that can't be helping Whitman's prospects for keeping the office in GOP hands.

A lot of Democrats have complained that Brown is not running a particularly active campaign and voters in the state as a whole hold that view as well. Just 35% think Brown is running hard, compared to 74% who say the same for Whitman. But whatever Whitman's doing isn't working well enough and at this point it looks like Brown is in a solid position.

Full results here

California Preview

We're going to have new California numbers out starting Monday and they're a lot more positive for Democrats than most of what we've seen from that state in the last couple of months.

There's a very simple reason for that: we're simply not seeing that either Meg Whitman or Carly Fiorina has much support across party lines. Whitman gets 12% of Democrats and Fiorina gets 11%.

Republicans showed in Massachusetts that they could win a state that went as strongly for Obama as California. But there Scott Brown won 19% of the Democratic vote. Unless Fiorina and Whitman push closer to that level they're going to come up short.

We'll start on Monday with the Senate numbers.

Jerry Brown is Ahead of Meg Whitman

Raleigh, N.C.--Attorney General Jerry Brown leads Meg Whitman 46:40 in the California Governor’s race.

Whitman doesn’t receive high marks from Californians. 50% of Californians have an unfavorable opinion of Whitman, including 22% of Republicans. Since winning the primary, Whitman hasn’t won over many Californians, during the primary 44% of voters had an unfavorable opinion of the former EBay executive.