California: No Clear GOP Favorites for Senate, Governor

[ccharles000]

A plurality of Republican voters in California are up in the air about the 2010 Senate, but those who have an opinion are split evenly between GOP candidates Carly Fiorina and Chuck DeVore, according to a USC/Los Angeles Times Poll conducted Oct. 27 through Nov. 3 by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research.

Forty percent of registered Republicans said they were undecided about whom they want to take on Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer next November. Twenty-seven percent each said they would back former Hewlett-Packard CEO Fiorina, who officially entered the race last week, and Devore, a state assemblyman from Irvine, Calif. who has been campaigning for several months.

Fiorina has a far higher profile in political circles and the media than DeVore given her past leadership of tech titan H-P and a stint as advisor for 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain, but that doesn't appear to have trickled down to the average California voter. The pair had some of the lowest name recognition rates among a long list of California politicians and candidates -- 29 percent could identify Fiorina and just 19 percent could identify DeVore.

Voters have a better sense of the GOP field for governor, the USC/Los Angeles Times poll found. In a hypothetical primary match-up, former E-Bay CEO Meg Whitman leads with 35 percent of the vote, former Rep. Tom Campbell comes in second at 27 percent and state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner received 10 percent of the vote. Nearly a quarter -- 23 percent -- of registered Republican voters remained undecided.

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/polltracker/2009/11/republican-fields-for-californ.html