Poll Shows Boxer Out Front in California; Governor’s Race Is Tight (By Jihwan Kim)

September 25, 2010, 7:58 pm

Poll Shows Boxer Out Front in California; Governor's Race Is Tight

By ADAM NAGOURNEY

LOS ANGELES — Senator Barbara Boxer, a Democrat, has built a comfortable lead over her Republican opponent, Carly Fiorina, in a Senate race that could prove central to Republican hopes of capturing the Senate this November, according to a poll published by the Los Angeles Times on Saturday. The poll showed that Ms. Boxer was supported by 51 percent of likely voters, compared with 43 percent support for Ms. Fiorina.

 

The poll, conducted for the Los Angeles Times and the University of Southern California, found the race for governor essentially deadlocked. Jerry Brown, the attorney general and a Democrat, has 49 percent support among likely voters, compared with 44 percent for Meg Whitman, his Republican challenger. That difference is within the poll's margin of sampling error, plus or minus 3.3 percentage points.

 

The poll is the latest that suggests that Ms. Whitman is having trouble winning the support of Californians, despite the fact that she has invested $119 million of her own money into the race, shattering a record set by Michael R. Bloomberg when he ran for mayor of New York. Meanwhile, Mr. Brown has run a campaign that has been criticized even by some Democrats as being low-energy and underfinanced.

 

The poll was conducted as Ms. Boxer was airing a hard-hitting advertisement showing Ms. Fiorina talking about laying off 30,000 workers when she was head of Hewlett-Packard. There has also been increased attention on some of Ms. Fiorina's more conservative positions, including her opposition to abortion rights and her support of a state proposition here that would suspend indefinitely the landmark greenhouse gas bill passed here in 2006.