| Politico is reporting that Joan Buchanan has dropped a poll in CA-10. In a real shocker (not), her poll shows her with the lead among all candidates.
State Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan commissioned a poll showing her narrowly leading DeSaulnier in a crowded election field that includes two unannounced Republican candidates.
The poll shows Buchanan leading DeSaulnier 21 to 18 percent, with Republican San Ramon mayor Abram Wilson at 14 percent and former GOP Assemblyman Guy Houston at 13 percent. [...]
The poll, commissioned by the Democratic firm Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin and Associates, was conducted between March 22-23. It surveyed 400 likely district-wide voters, and has a 4.9 percent margin of error.
Some rambling thoughts on the flip... |
| I hope I'm wrong, but it's seeming more and more likely to me that we're going to have a Buchanan/DeSaulnier horserace to fill Ellen Tauscher's vacant seat. In that vein, it may be helpful to look at the results from Tuesday's special election in SD-26.
First, this is a state senate district that has Democratic registration at 65.62% and Republicans at 10.88%.
So in Tuesday's election, in a district with 390,000 voters, approximately 23,000 turned out to vote. Here are the results:
| Candidate | Party | Votes | Percent |
|---|
| Mike Davis | Dem | 5,158 | 21.78% | | Saundra Davis | Dem | 1,803 | 7.61% | | Cindy Varela Henderson | P&F | 414 | 1.75% | | Curren D. Price, Jr. | Dem | 8,442 | 35.65% | | Nachum Shifren | Rep | 2,731 | 11.53% | | Robert Cole | Dem | 3,133 | 13.23% | | Mervin Leon Evans | Dem | 136 | 0.57% | | Jonathan Friedman | Dem | 1,864 | 7.87% |
Now I'll freely admit that I'm not that familiar with the candidates or the issues in SD-26. But just from my very limited knowledge, I would have expected the numbers for the two Assembly members in contention, Price and Davis, to be a little closer. Granted, SEIU endorsed Price, and maybe that was good for an extra 13% in the district.
But when I look at those numbers, along with the numbers from other recent special primary elections, I'm struck by the fact that the difference between the two frontrunners is always smaller than the number of votes cast for the also-rans. In SD-26, 3,000 votes separated Davis from Price; the four other candidates in the Democratic field accounted for 6,500 votes.
I'm not going to go off on an IRV discussion, but it's certainly an issue that I believe is going to loom large in CA-10. I was interested to see this comment at Calitics from a voter in SD-26:
I turned out
...and voted for Saundra Davis. My local polling place was a ghost town. So...NOW can anyone tell me why we like Curren Price? Because he was my #3 or 4, issues-wise, compared to the other Democratic candidates.
My very real concern as this election starts to take shape is that we'll end up with a lot of progressive voters in CA-10 asking that same question. |
