The Los Angeles Times poll of the California gubernatorial race released this weekend shows Democrat Jerry Brown pulling away from Republican Meg Whitman.
The numbers: Brown 52%, Whitman 39%. The survey of likely voters has a ±3.2% margin of error. In the previous poll from a month ago, Brown was ahead by a narrower 49%-44%.
The polling shows some anecdotal evidence that Whitman’s massive personal spending on the race — she has put in more than $141 million of her own money on the race — may have over-saturated the market and only alienated some voters:
Paula Bennett, a schoolteacher in the Sacramento-area town of Acampo, said she was drawn to Brown in part by the blizzard of cash Whitman has thrown at the race.
“I like the little guy; he didn’t have the money behind him like she did,” she said in a follow-up interview, adding that she sided with Brown for the same reason that she favors a mom-and-pop establishment over a retail behemoth.
The TPM Poll Average shows Brown ahead by 48.2%-41.4%. As you can see from the graph below, Whitman clearly gained steam during the summer and then pulled ahead in August, only to collapse over the past two months:
Eric Kleefeld
Eric Kleefeld joined TPM as an intern for the final months of the 2006 midterm elections, and then kept showing up for work. His other interests include guitars, old comic books and the politics of various English-speaking countries.
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