CA-PPIC: McCain and Clinton ahead by double digits

[Tender Branson]

THE RACE: The Democratic and Republican presidential primaries in California

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THE NUMBERS — DEMOCRATS

Hillary Rodham Clinton, 43 percent

Barack Obama, 28 percent

John Edwards, 11 percent

Dennis Kucinich, 5 percent

Undecided, 11 percent

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THE NUMBERS — REPUBLICANS

John McCain, 29 percent

Mitt Romney, 17 percent

Rudy Giuliani, 10 percent

Mike Huckabee, 10 percent

Ron Paul, 5 percent

Undecided, 14 percent

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OF INTEREST:

Clinton's 24-point lead shrunk in the past month to 15 points as Obama picked up support. Clinton still leads among women and men, liberals and non-liberals. She holds a 3-to-1 edge over Obama with Hispanics. The Democratic candidates are tied among independents.

Republicans have a new front-runner in California since last month's poll. Support for McCain has spiked by 18 points, while support for former front-runner Giuliani has dropped by 14 points. McCain is the favored candidate of women, men and voters who classify themselves as non-conservative. Meanwhile, conservative Republicans are divided between McCain, 22 percent, and Romney, 19 percent.

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The Public Policy Institute of California survey was conducted from Jan. 13-20. The margin of sampling error for the 543 likely voters in the Democratic presidential primary was plus or minus 4 percentage points. The margin of sampling error for the 348 likely voters in the Republican presidential primary was plus or minus 5 percentage points.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iGTd8QsK36hUqnsbhB2hLQf3CEbQD8UCNQ000

[Aizen]

bad california. bad. on both sides

[CultureKing]

I hope that this is not right...

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

Survey USA reported that McCain's advantage in the San Francisco area is 41–17.  That may not matter much to the statewide vote totals, but if this thing is going down district-by-district, McCain may carry a slew of deep blue districts throughout Northern California.

He'll come out of California with the most delegates even if Romney beats him there by five points.

[Eraserhead]

California, don't fail America.

[CultureKing]

Survey USA reported that McCain's advantage in the San Francisco area is 41–17.  That may not matter much to the statewide vote totals, but if this thing is going down district-by-district, McCain may carry a slew of deep blue districts throughout Northern California.

He'll come out of California with the most delegates even if Romney beats him there by five points.

wait, I thought it went if one candidate wins say 5 districts by a very large margin (say 41-17) and another candidate wins 10 districts by a slimmer margin (say 26-18) then candidate #2 would get more delegates (this is assuming overall they get the same % between the 15 districts). Or am I just completely wrong??

[NHPolitico]

Survey USA reported that McCain's advantage in the San Francisco area is 41–17.  That may not matter much to the statewide vote totals, but if this thing is going down district-by-district, McCain may carry a slew of deep blue districts throughout Northern California.

He'll come out of California with the most delegates even if Romney beats him there by five points.

wait, I thought it went if one candidate wins say 5 districts by a very large margin (say 41-17) and another candidate wins 10 districts by a slimmer margin (say 26-18) then candidate #2 would get more delegates (this is assuming overall they get the same % between the 15 districts). Or am I just completely wrong??

Yes, but there are 11 delegates given to the popular vote winner.  There are 25 districts were Bush failed to reach 40% of the vote and then 6 more that Bush lost, but more narrowly. That's 93 delegates for McCain if he gets all of those and no other ones. That leaves 66 delegates for Romney minus the 11, but 77 if Romney wins the 11 because he gets the most votes total. So, Romney loses the CD battle 31-22 (a sort of narrow loss) and he wins overall, but still loses the delegate battle.  You could move some of those 6 CDs were Bush did slightly better to Romney's camp to make it closer, but still have the same result-- McCain with a narrow delegate edge.

[Mr. Morden]

Exactly.  Those CDs where Kerry won by a huge margin presumably have very few Republicans and so very few voters participating in the GOP primary.  But those CDs get just as many delegates as any other.  So as long as McCain has the edge in those overwhelmingly Dem. CDs, he could easily win many more CDs (and more delegates) than Romney even if he loses the popular vote statewide.

[Mr. Morden]

By the way, Georgia (which, on the GOP side, actually has the 3rd most delegates of the Super Tuesday states, after CA & NY) has virtually the same system as CA.  That is, WTA by CD (with each CD having the same number of delegates), with a bonus for the statewide winner.  If you assume that McCain would do better in the Dem.-leaning districts and Huckabee would do better in the GOP-leaning districts, then GA would also be more beneficial to McCain delegate-wise than you might expect given the polls.