Sunday, October 25, 1998
Davis Has Comfortable Lead Over Lungren
By SUSAN PINKUS, Times Poll Director
With just nine days remaining until the November 3rd election, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gray Davis holds a commanding lead over his Republican counterpart, Dan Lungren, according to a new Los Angeles Times Poll. Among those voters deemed most likely to vote, Davis leads Lungren by an impressive 11 points--53% to 42%. Swing voters of independents/decline-to-state and self-described moderates are solidly behind Davis. These groups, along with men and white voters are crucial for a candidate to win in California and Lungren is having a hard time getting these likely voters to support him. Also, in a marked turn Lungren is seeing a big defection among his own core constituencies--moderate Republicans and to a lesser extent Republican women.Another example of his slippage among voters is on the issue of crime. He has tried to capitalize on this issue as the attorney general of California, but he barely wins this against Davis.
Davis is capturing more of the Democratic likely voters (85%) than Lungren is Republican voters (75%). Davis wins the votes of independent likely voters, 55% to 43%, as well as self-described moderate likely voters (71% to 22%). (Many Lines Deleted...)As with the Barbara Boxer and Matt Fong race for U.S. Senate, there is also a wide gender gap in the governor's race. Although in the Senate race, Republican candidate Fong receives more votes from men than Democratic Boxer does, Lungren splits the likely male vote with Davis (47% for Lungren, 49% for Davis). And as the poll shows that women are solidly behind the Democratic incumbent in the U.S. senate race, they are just as committed to voting for Davis in the governor's race (58% to 37%).
Likely voters living in Los Angeles county, the Bay area and the rest of Northern California are voting heavily for Davis, while Southern California voters outside of Los Angeles are strongly supporting Lungren. Voters in the Central Valley are somewhat divided (51% for Lungren, 46% for Davis). Lungren is getting support from affluent voters (those earning more than $60,000 a year in household income), 53%, to Davis' 44%. Conversely, likely voters earning less than $60,000 are behind Davis. Likely voters on all education levels are voting for the lieutenant governor.(Many more lines deleted)
How the Poll Was Conducted
The Times Poll contacted 1,449 California registered voters, including 883 voters deemed most likely to vote, by telephone October 17-21. Telephone numbers were chosen from a list of all exchanges in the state. Random-digit dialing techniques were used so that listed and non-listed numbers could be contacted. The entire sample was weighted slightly to conform with census figures for sex, race, age, education, region and registration. The margin of sampling error for registered voters is plus or minus three percentage points and for likely voters, it is four points. For certain subgroups the error margin may be somewhat higher. Poll results can also be affected by other factors such as question wording and the order in which questions are presented.Interviews were conducted in English and Spanish. Although Asians were interviewed and included in the sample, there were not enough of this group to break out separately.