Poll: Schwarzenegger leads Angelides by 17 points (AP)

[Newsjock]

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2006/09/26/politics/p180011D81.DTL

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's lead over Democratic gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides has swelled to 17 points in recent weeks as he's struck popular deals to cut greenhouse gas emissions and increase the minimum wage, according to a new poll released Tuesday.

The nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California found 48 percent of likely voters surveyed support Schwarzenegger; 31 percent back Angelides.

The results, if accurate, represent a 4-point gain for Schwarzenegger from last month's PPIC poll.

... Less than less than 60 percent of registered Democrats responding said they would vote for Angelides if the election were held now.

[Mz Pip]

1. Yeah, Ah-nold

sure is looking like the RINO these days. Though what he will look like the day after the election is another story.

Mz Pip
:dem:

[Paranoid Pessimist]

46. It's Infuriating

Since the day after the primary the Republicans have saturated the tube with very skillfully produced commercials that have Angelides walking backwards in black and white slo-mo with all sorts of insinuations that he will raise every tax in the world, then color bursts through, everyone moves forward, and Schwarzenegger will "save the California dream with no new taxes."

The response has been ... nothing. One commercial showing Arnold at the 2004 convention yelling out "George W. Bush." If Angelides has done a press conference to counter the tax and spend allegations of these ads, I haven't seen any sign of it.

Of course he's down 17% in the polls. I'm surprised the margin isn't larger. Admittedly, the Republicans have a larger media buying warchest -- and they're going to have that everywhere.

Like the DNC Democrats, Angelides is looking more and more like the opponent in a fixed fight. If Democrats can't learn to get mad and fight back (e.g., Bill Clinton against Chris Wallace) they will continue to lose without the help of Dibold.

[OrangeCountyDemocrat]

2. Yeah....And We Don't Even Have diebold On OUR Side

So Angelides is more like 20 points behind when you take diebold into account.

[goclark]

3. I just don't understand it!

Every Democrat that I know of hates Arrnold with a passion.

How can that many people all of a sudden love it enough to vote for him.

He is the same old GROPER! :puke:

[Moochy]

6. At this point these are simply name recognition polls

Phil better start pouring on the ads, the Democrats are running a great arnold commercial with arnold chanting
"LETS RE-ELECT GEORGE DUBBALYA BOOSH" over and over.

with the tagline, Arnold Schwarzenegger is for GWB, are you?

[Cleita]

48. Actually, I know a lot of Republicans on my street who hate

Arnold. What polls are these?

[tabasco]

4. Kansas I can understand.

WTF happened to California??

[Bluestar]

5. Angelides is the weakest candidate ever

He seems to have conceded everything to Arnold. Arnold's ads run ad nauseum every morning on local LA stations. No rebuttal from Angelides. The only Dem ad running is one paid for by the state DNC. It's so sad that we couldn't field a better candidate in California. The word is he has no money. How is this possible?

[tabasco]

7. Well, my state has a republican governor, a one-termer.

But we're giving his dumb ass the boot this year. (Erlich)

[JI7]

10. why does that matter, there are still weeks before the election

he did the same thing in the Primary where Westly ran a bunch of ads for a long time without response and went up in the polls. but Angelides later came out with a bunch of kick ass ads as we got closer to the election and he beat Steve in the debates, and went on to win.

how is calling the Dem candidate weak going to help us win.

[arewenotdemo]

27. I know. It's painful to admit that there are that many neo-Nazis

in the state.

It's beyond disgusting.

[LibDemAlways]

8. Angelides is invisible. There are no Angelides

commercials, and in California, campaigns are waged in the media. Also, Ahnold is loved by the corporate whores, and he is basically running as a moderate to conservative Democrat. Minimum wage? The environment? He's co-opted Angelides' issues. Ahnold is so far ahead, mostly though, because it doesn't appear as though he's got an opponent.

[RevolutionStartsNow]

28. Good call, I agree

I saw one Dem ad (CA Dem party, not even a direct Angelides ad I believe) that showed Arnold campaigning for Bush and made it clear that he is no friend of even moderate Dems, but other than that Angelides and the Dems are invisible here.

And Arnold's strategy, since being humiliated in that special election last year, has been crafty. He's gotten press for signing some bills that make him seem pro-environment and pretty moderate, and hasn't pissed anyone off too much.

Plus he's a freakin' movie star and I doubt I would recognize Angelides on the street. What a joke.

[bluestateguy]

9. It's over

Angeledis is a complete boob, from the Bob Shrum school of campaigning. He reminds me of Kathleen Brown in 1994.

[Shakespeare]

11. Fuck my fellow CA dems who said they won't vote for Angelides!

What the FUCK is wrong with them?

[Xithras]

37. We're not the ones doing this.

My stand on Angelides is clear: I won't vote for someone who made his fortune by turning pastures and endangered wetlands into suburbia. It's nothing against Angelides personally, I just don't support developers for any public offices, whether local, state, or national. There's simply too much chance that they'll be sympathetic to current developers...a class of people who I believe should be in prison.

Our lack of support is largely irrelevant to this campaign though. You might be able to blame us for shaving a point or two, but 17 points? Even if everyone who rags on him for his developer history or his career politician history were to have a change of heart tomorrow, he'd still lose by a landslide with these numbers. If you could convince the greens to vote for him (a stretch given his history), you might pick up two or three more points. Still not enough to make any real difference to that gap.

I might hold my nose and cast a vote for him if the election actually looked close, but as of right now my vote isn't going to make a damned bit of difference so I'll stick to my principles.

No developers in power. Ever. In any capacity. Not even as dogcatchers. Some people use abortion for their litmus test. Others use gay rights. I use the environment. To me, it's more important than all of the other issues combined. Look into the principles of deep ecology if you're having a hard time getting it...the destruction of thousands of acres of wildlife habitat is just as horrific to me as the destruction of New Orleans was to you.

[w4rma]

12. Angelides is toast. It was a tough fight from the start for anybody.

Arnold even has many of the biggest Democratic fundraisers campaigning for him.

Arnold is term limited so this is his last term as governor and he won't be running for President since the Constitution prohibits him.

[rinsd]

32. "this is his last term as governor"

I believe that he can serve two full terms (he has served for a partial one) before he is term limited.

[leesa]

36. No it wasn't. Arnold was at 30% approval this time last year.

Dems ran a loser again.

[Downtown Hound]

13. The minute Angelides won the primary I was worried

There was something off about him, he just reeked of something foul and incompetent. All of my fears have proven to be true. We would have had a much better shot with Westley.

[Sam Odom]

14. He is just soooooo wrong on so many issues

His tax stand alone is enought to beat him

[w4rma]

15. It wouldn't have mattered who won. Californians want their make believe

action hero.

And he has had the support of too many ultra-wealthy Democratic backers from the very start.

[Megahurtz]

24. I liked Westley much better.

I have no idea why Angelides won over him.:wtf:

[Xithras]

38. Angelides ran a nasty smear campaign against him.

He intimated that Westley was just a rich guy who wanted to buy his way into the governorship. There may have been a ring of truth to that, but Westley was also a liberal Democrat with tremendous pull in the business and technology communities in the state. What is REALLY interesting is that most of the things that Arnold has done to up his numbers were actually straight out of Westleys campaign promises. Had Westley been running, Arnold would have been forced to go right to differentiate himself and would have been thrown out as a right-winger. Since Angelides never pushed a platform publically, Arnold slid left into Westley's "moderate liberal" position on the issues and has been cleaning up ever since.

[xchrom]

16. you all should have seen the love-fest between ahnuld

and dems in the legislature last week.

angelides doesn't have enough support from his own party.

dems will rue the day for this.

[Guaranteed]

17. Dem leadership in CA is WORTHLESS.

We need someone that isn't just a cog- someone with real personality.

[SoCalDem]

18. I hate to say it, but I think Ahhnold will be with us for 4 more years

:puke:

Angelides is a milquetoast, and has no pizazz, and here in CA, Pizzazz trumps smarts..every time..

We got scammed bigtime..and I don't see Ahhhnold losing:(

[bemildred]

19. Non-partisan my ass.

http://www.ppic.org/main/home.asp

[confludemocrat]

20. What does the Field poll say? I'd go with their reading on this.

Although the weakness of the Dem leadership in a state they should dominate perpetually is totally obvious here.

[samsingh]

21. he just vetoed universal health care

what are Californians thinking

[UTUSN]

22. What gets CLUELESS,charisma-CHALLENGED dweebs to RUN???

I will vote for any Dem, but I wonder why, with all of the BRIGHT, IDEALISTIC people we have in our party, and particularly in CA, we can't find COMPELLING CANDIDATES????

[KamaAina]

31. It's not just Cali, sadly

We have a bad case of it out here, where a Disney animatronic device labeled "Mazie Hirono" lost us the governorship after 40 years and is now the Dem nominee for the open 2nd CD seat. :scared: Then there's NYC, where a 6-1 Dem registration edge means squat when faced with "candidates" such as Mark Green and Ruth Messinger. !Caramba!

See, the whole problem is, the repukes know they can't run on issues anyway, so they're free to pick style over substance (see under Coleman, Norm) -- and way too many swing voters go along with them. :puke:

[UTUSN]

33. You've been SO cool SO long!!!!!!1 Cheers!!!!!!!!!!!!1 n/t

[Retrograde]

45. the good ones lose in the primaries?

As other posters have pointed out, Wesley would have been a much stronger candidate. But for who knows what reasons, the majority of the people who voted in the Democratic primary last picked Gray-Davis-lite.

Interestingly, Wesley carried the high-tech, highly diverse Bay Area, while the south went for the old-line party apparachik.

I won't vote for Ahnold - whose main message seems to be "I didn't screw up as badly as I could have", but I'm having a hard time bringing myself to vote for Angelides.

[anotherdrew]

23. do we have a state party organization in that state anymore?

what the fuck is wrong with the moron dem "leadership" in Cali?

[slackmaster]

25. Decades of one-party rule has made the leadership complacent

They think they can get away with slacking off and doing whatever the hell they feel like.

[Xithras]

40. Lot of truth there. Union losses are also a factor

The Democratic party in this state has a numeric advantage which has held us in power for so long that many in the leadership seem to have forgotten how to campaign. The Thug challengers in past elections, after all, were really more there for show than anything.

Part of the problem, IMO, is that California has lost much of its manufacturing base to offshoring and relocation to other lower cost states. Since the manufacturing base was once the focus of union activity, they provided an effective conduit to push the Democratic message to working blue collar workers. With the loss of manufacturing, we also lost those unions. Without those unions, we no longer have shop stewards reminding co-workers to vote, and union reps sending out voter guides to workers. The most powerful unions in the state today are ALL government employee unions, and while they're powerful they aren't numerically large enough to drive elections the way the old manufacturing unions did.

We're still the numeric majority, but I know for a fact that many Democrats simply don't vote. It's not that they're apathetic, it's just that they tend to get so wrapped up in their own lives that politics becomes a secondary issue. I've run into genuine flaming liberals who, come election day, completely forget that they need to go vote. The worker diaspora that followed the loss of manufacturing has made people like that almost unreachable.

[RevolutionStartsNow]

26. SJ Merc News headline yesterday said this:

"Anglides struggles to save faltering campaign" or something equally negative.

I will vote for Angelides because I hate Arnold but damn if the Dems didn't screw this one up royally.

And thanks media for helping Arnold so blatantly. Gawd.

[Jack Rabbit]

29. Sorry, but it's time to cue Don Meredith

Me, me, me, me, me . . . (ahem!)
Turn out the lights, the party's over . . .

The Democrats will do very well in November, but this looks like one we're not going to win.

[Raine]

30. Frankly I'm surprised

it isn't more than 17%, I see no commericials that actually promote Angelides. :-( All I see is commericials that compare Arnie to chimp and that aint getting Angelides anywhere.

[leesa]

34. How stupid are Californians to be conned by Arnie the environmentalist

when he inflicted us with Hummers.

[Cleita]

49. More Republican lies about what they stand for when it's

exactly the opposite.

[Fire Walk With Me]

35. I hope that this is a joke. Please let it be a joke.

Do people have such short memories and are they bought so easily?

Um...

[Clovis Sangrail]

39. yes

.

[Divine Discontent]

41. I am shocked by this!!

for real??? 17 points? wtf? do people actually believe (dems I mean) that he'll be a supporter of dem beliefs after the election? how can this boob win reelection in CA of all places. weird.

[Irreverend IX]

42. Why oh why...

Did the Dems not run a charismatic, media-savvy candidate in California, of all the goddamned places? Is there not a single liberal celebrity in Hollywood with an eye on the big seat in Sacramento?

[Joe Bacon]

43. The press blows Arnold 24/7

It's amazing how the Whore Press goes WAY out of line to blow Arnold 24/7. I guess that we're stuck with Adolf and Eva for another 4 years :-(

[oc2002]

44. Arnold is NOT the typical republican. He does work hard, and actualy cares

And he is not bought. I hate repukes more than anyone on this board, but if you look at Arnolds record, he DID change tracks and is a very moderate republican.

Case in point, he is following the Kyoto agreement with several other states and accepts the danger of global climate changes due to CO2 in the atmosphere at record levels and melting of ice caps.

[Cleita]

47. He vetoed the health care bill because he is bought and

paid for by the evil for profit health care industry that has our health care in shambles in this country because of their bloated profits. Those other "liberal" things he did just before the election were so people like you would think he's a good guy.

We can't have a Republican governor and his unelected appointed SOS in place in 2008 for the presidential election unless you want Newt Gingrich for president.

If Arnold is reelected I for one will lead the charge for his recall.

[Overseas]

50. And what's a little Naziism and sexual harassment among friends, anyhow?

After all, it was his dad who was a Nazi-- not him ! And heck, women fantasize about uninvited sexual advances, so what's a little groping now and then? And hey, doesn't everyone make snide remarks about women and nurses and ethnic groups? Geez, it's just a little chatting. And wow, around election time he does a whole buncha moderate stuff so golly, he aint so bad... I mean, gee, thank goodness he isn't boring, eh? Imagine if he had glasses and was kind of earnest-- wouldn't that be awful ?

[olddad56]

51. I thought Angelides had passed away, is he still alive?

I thought he was running posthumously.