Assembly District 80 will be one of the most competitive in the California this November. This is the seat where incumbent Republican Bonnie Garcia barely won reelection in 2006, but is now retiring due to term limits. The GOP nominee for the seat is former Palm Springs Police Chief Gary Jeandron, a strong conservative. The Democrats have put forward as their nominee Manuel Perez, a liberal (so much for theory that competitive districts producing moderate nominees). Voters will have two candidates with contrasting political philosophies and visions for the future of the Golden State.
So how are things looking in this race? Longtime FR friend Jamie Fisfis is the principal of Chariot Research, and is well respected for his acumen in the public opinion (polling) field. He is just out of the field with a survey of voters in AD 80, and has shared the results with FR.
Here is what Fisfis presented to us…
Chariot LLC occasionally funds its own public surveys on various issues of interest and I recently dropped a very brief tracking survey into AD80 to see what was going on in one of the most competitive races in the state.
My topline results (margin of error +/-5.4%) show Republican Jeandron just ahead of Democrat Manuel Perez 45.8%-39.5%, in a seat that is split 41%-41% on whether it wants to elect a Democrat or Republican. However, Jeandron’s small lead is built on soft support that must be maintained, and the crosstabs show that those soft supporters identify more as conservative than Republican. The ballot scores still primarily correlate with ideology and party, so this is the branding battle that is likely to drive the race’s fundamentals through election day. For now, Jeandron leads because DTS voters support him 28 points above their generic GOP ballot support. It’s an overwhelming “change/wrong track” district (71%-17%), so each candidate will be trying to grab credibility as the “change” candidate.
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on Friday, October 3rd, 2008 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.
