Chris Norby has a strong lead on Linda Ackerman in a new scientific poll of Republicans in the 72nd Assembly District special election.  Norby beats Ackerman among Republicans
27.7% to 17%.  Most Republican voters,  51.3%, remain undecided. However, Norby has very good positive/negatives at 38.4/13% (a ratio of 3 to 1 positive); while Ackerman has bad positive/negatives at 19.3/15.7% (a statistical ratio of 1 to 1) with 65% no opinion, never heard of her.  In contrast, Norby is known by over a majority of the voters in the district, according to the poll.
 
The poll, which surveyed 300 representative Republican voters in the district this last weekend from October 22 to 25th, was conducted for my company, Landslide Communications, by Salt Lake City-based NSON Opinion Research.   NSON is a well-respected consumer, political and marketing research company that has been in business since 1992 and was founded by its President, Ronald T. Nielson.  The poll focused only on a representative sampling of Republican voters in the district.  Republican party registration is dominant in the 72nd Assembly District, at over 43% of voters, as compared to 34% for the Democrat party and just under 19% who "decline-to-state" a party affiliation.  The California Target Book, a respected guide to California elections, rates the 72nd as a "safe Republican seat."  Since 2002, Republican candidates have won the seat in the General election from Democrat candidates within a range of percentages of 54.8% at the lowest and almost 68% at the highest.
 
Landslide conducted the poll at its own expense independent of any campaign as a public service, and copies of the poll results were made available today simultaneously to the campaign managers of both the Norby and Ackerman campaigns.   A copy of the questions and full survey results have been uploaded with this post and are available to the public to download (see the links below this post).

Other interesting results of the poll include that 30% of Republican voters in the district think favorably of President Barack Obama; while 64.6% think unfavorably of him.   Congressman Ed Royce, who represents the district in Washington, D.C., is favored by 66.7% of the voters; Congressman Tom McClintock, a conservative Congressional leader based in a northern California district who has run for statewide office, is favored by 52.6% of voters but his "unfavorables" are lower than Congressman Royce, at 5.7% compared to 7% (which is within the statistical margin of the survey at 4.9%).

This entry was posted on Monday, October 26th, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.