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Wednesday, January 25, 2006

CA-Gov: Arnold's Opponents Lose a Little Ground

Posted by DavidNYC

A new poll from Rasmussen (likely voters, mid-Dec. in parens):

Angelides: 39 (44)
Schwarzenegger: 41 (40)

Westly: 40 (46)
Schwarzenegger: 39 (39)
(MoE: ±4.5%)

Arnold's favorability margin improved somewhat, though his head-to-head numbers didn't. What's strange about this poll is that both Westly's & Angelides' overall name reco seems to have dropped. Thirty-nine percent of respondents said they were unsure about Angelides, while only 26% said so in December. Westly, meanwhile, went from 30% all the way to 49%. This probably explains why their top-line numbers also declined.

I don't have access to the crosstabs because I'm not a Rasmussen subscriber, but double-digit shifts to "unsure" (almost 20% in Westly's case) seem really wacky. This may just mean there was a skewed sample in either this poll or the previous one. Since Rasmussen has pledged to poll every major race every month, we should be able to tell which one was accurate come February.

Posted at 09:20 PM in 2006 Elections - State, California | Technorati

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Comments

There a PPIC poll out today on the state budget that throws some light on this. Schwarzenneger touts a monster bond issue to deal with infrastructure needs and people seem to like the general idea -- but remain suspicious that state is really broke (it is, if we continue to refuse to tax ourselves.)

Arnold is up to 40 percent approval from 32 percent in October. The gains seem to be among independents.

It is a long way until November but one of the two Dems is going to have to spend a lot of money to get enough recognition to compete with star power. Waiting for Arnold to destruct won't do it. He's already done that.

Posted by: janinsanfran at January 26, 2006 06:53 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment