In California, Jerry Brown Now Leads Meg "I'm Bleeding Money" Whitman For Governor; Barbara Boxer Leads Carly Fiorina In Senate Race.

Brown leads Whitman 49%-44% in poll
Boxer leads Fiorina 51%-43% in Senate race, survey finds. Both Republicans are hampered by voters' negative impressions of them, poll says.
By Cathleen Decker

Democrat Jerry Brown has moved into a narrow lead over Republican Meg Whitman in their fractious contest for governor, while his party colleague Barbara Boxer has opened a wider margin over GOP nominee Carly Fiorina in the race for U.S. Senate, a new Los Angeles Times/USC poll has found.

The Democratic candidates were benefiting from their party's dominance in California and the continued popularity here of President Obama, who has retained most of his strength in the state even as he has weakened in other parts of the country. Support for Obama may play a key role in the Senate contest, one of a handful nationally that could determine which party wins control of the chamber.

At the same time, the survey showed, Republicans Whitman and Fiorina have yet to convince crucial groups of voters that their businesswoman backgrounds will translate into government success.

Brown, the former governor and current attorney general, held a 49%-44% advantage among likely voters over Whitman, the billionaire former chief executive at EBay.

Boxer, a three-term incumbent, led Fiorina, the former head of Hewlett-Packard, by 51%-43% among likely voters in the survey, a joint effort by The Times and the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

Both Republicans were hamstrung by voters' negative impressions of them — particularly Whitman, who has poured a national record $119 million of her own money into an advertising-heavy campaign yet has seen her unpopularity rise, the survey showed.

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About the Times/USC poll: Forecasting who will vote is a key part of any poll; however, not all registered voters show up for any given election. For the Los Angeles Times/USC poll, the likely voter model is based on two factors -- previous vote history and expressed enthusiasm for voting this year. That model yields a likely electorate that is considerably more Republican than the full pool of California voters because Republicans are far more likely this year to say they are enthusiastic about voting. The pool of likely voters is 44% registered Democrats, 36% registered Republicans and 16% registered as Decline to State. That eight-point spread between registered Democrats and Republicans compares to a 13-percentage point spread in the electorate as a whole. Additional details are at http://gqrr.com/index.php?ID=2520.