CA-Gov, CA-Sen: Brown Benefiting from Whitman/Poizner Fray

PPP (pdf) (5/21-23, registered voters, no trendlines, likely voters in primary):

Jerry Brown (D): 48

Meg Whitman (R): 36

Undecided: 16

Jerry Brown (D): 48

Steve Poizner (R): 32

Undecided: 19

(MoE: ±3.2%)

Meg Whitman (R): 51

Steve Poizner (R): 26

Someone else: 11

Undecided: 12

(MoE: ±4.8%)

It’s starting to look like, after spending close to a combined $100 million of their own money against each other, than Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner have just gone all Angelides/Westly against each other. (Those were the two Democratic primary contenders in the 2006 gubernatorial election, who went so negative for so long against each other that eventual winner Phil Angelides was left radioactive and an easy mark for Arnold Schwarzenegger in the general.) Favorables for Whitman (24/44) and Poizner (19/43) are both truly awful, allowing the not-so-popular-himself Jerry Brown (37/39) to romp over each one in head-to-heads. The main difference in their performance, in PPP’s first poll of the race, is that the more moderate Whitman fares better with indies against Brown than does Poizner. (UPDATE: Sitting still and watching the fight is paying great dividends for Brown: he’s sitting on $20.6 million CoH, and has spent a whopping total of $400K this year.)

PPP (pdf) (5/21-23, registered voters, no trendlines, likely voters in primary):

Barbara Boxer (D): 45

Carly Fiorina (R): 42

Undecided: 13

Barbara Boxer (D): 47

Tom Campbell (R): 40

Undecided: 12

Barbara Boxer (D): 46

Chuck DeVore (R): 40

Undecided: 13

(MoE: ±3.2%)

Carly Fiorina (R): 41

Tom Campbell (R): 21

Chuck DeVore (R): 16

Someone else: 4

Undecided: 18

(MoE: ±4.8%)

The most interesting news here may be the PPP gives further confirmation to the sudden surge in the GOP primary by Carly Fiorina, which didn’t really start showing up until this week. (Check out the Pollster.com regression lines.) Campbell still leads 32-30 among moderates, but there are more conservatives in the sample and Fiorina is up 47-15 among them (with DeVore at 19). In the general, we’re seeing another symptom of Fiorina gaining and Campbell deflating as Fiorina doubled down on ads while Campbell went mostly dark: few polls prior to this one have seen the more conservative Fiorina overperforming Campbell against Barbara Boxer.

A couple other primary polls from Republican sources are in the same general range as PPP. Magellan (pdf) is a GOP pollster but doesn’t have a candidate in the race (they’ve been offering polls in a number of primaries where they aren’t involved, like Kentucky). They find a very similar 44 Fiorina, 21 Campbell, 14 DeVore in the Senate primary, while Meg Whitman is leading Steve Poizner 54-19 in the gubernatorial primary. That’s an even better showing than the internal poll (pdf) from McLaughlin & Assocs that Meg Whitman put out yesterday, that had her leading 53-27. That brief Steve Poizner surge seems to have dissipated, if it ever actually existed and wasn’t just a couple outliers appearing at once.