GOP voter support for Ted Cruz has surged in California over the past three months and the Texas Senator has now moved into a statistical tie with businessman Donald Trump for the lead in this state’s Republican presidential primary. Cruz is the first choice of 25% of likely GOP voters in the latest statewide Field Poll, while Trump is backed by 23%.
Field Poll: Three Democrats –- former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti –- receive the largest proportions of early voter support. Greater than four in ten voters say they would be inclined to vote for Villaraigosa and Newsom, and nearly as many say this about Garcetti (36%) if they were to be candidates for Governor in 2018.
The latest statewide Field Poll finds that fewer than half of likely voters in California’s June 2016 Democratic presidential primary (47%) are now intending to support former Secretary of State, U.S. Senator and First Lady Hillary Clinton for President, a decline of nineteen points since May. Over this same period Democratic voter support for Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has increased nearly four-fold from 9% to 35%.
On the eve of a dramatic Capitol hearing, the backers of legislation to allow dying people to end their lives with physician-supplied drugs abruptly sidetracked the bill Tuesday at least until next year so they could try and to round up more votes. Just hours before the committee hearing, which was to include public testimony from dying people in support of the bill, the decision was made to not bring the measure up. The last-ditch maneuver means SB 128 by Sen. Lois Wolk, D-Davis, could be pushed back until 2016.
Gov. Jerry Brown in the state Capitol last year. (Photo by Max Whittaker/Getty Images)The latest Field Poll finds nearly six in ten California voters (58%) approving of the job Jerry Brown is doing as Governor, while just 26% disapprove. This nearly equals his record approval rating of 59% that he achieved a little more than a year ago in April 2014. At present, 37% of rank-and-file Republicans currently approve of the job Brown is doing, up from 27% who said this three months ago.
The dry bed of Ivanpah Lake in San Barnardino County, which had been filled by the 2004-05 rains. (Photo: Ed Berlen)Field Poll: By a nearly three-to-one margin (65% to 23%) Californians support Governor Jerry Brown’s call to require urban water districts to reduce their water use by an average of 25% statewide. Support for the Governor’s plan is broad-based and bipartisan, and spans all major subgroups of the state’s adult population.
State Capitol, Sacramento. (Photo: David Monniaux)Is the California Legislature making a comeback? The poll numbers would certainly indicate it is, but lawmakers shouldn’t start popping the champagne corks. In fact, the legislature hasn’t had this much love since October of 2004, when 40 percent of likely voters approved and 46 percent disapproved of the legislature’s performance, according to the PPIC.
Gov. Jerry Brown at ceremonies in Fresno launching construction of California's bullet train. (Photo: Associated Press)Governor Jerry Brown continues to receive strong approval from voters in California. The results of the latest Field Poll find nearly 56% of the state’s voters approving of Brown’s performance in office, while 32% disapprove. When asked to consider three negative statements that have been made about the Governor, a 57% majority agrees with one of them – “favors too many big government projects that the state cannot afford right now.”
Field Poll: Two individuals in this test receive the highest levels of potential voter support. They are Republican Condoleezza Rice, former U. S. Secretary of State (49%) and Democratic State Attorney General Kamala Harris (46%). Harris is the only person to date to have formally announced her candidacy in the Senate race.
A Californian casts a ballot. (Photo: Vepar5 via Shutterstock)The Field Poll estimates that only 8.2 million Californians will participate in today’s statewide general election. This would represent a turnout of just 46.1% of the state’s 17.8 million registered voters and just 33.8% of the state’s 24.3 million adult citizens who are eligible to register and vote. Both would represent record lows for a statewide general election in California in the modern era.