Nate Silver, who’s moved his 538 blog to the New York Times, is out with his gubernatorial projections. He’s got Whitman narrowly beating Brown by a 0.4 point margin, 49.2% to 48.8%. He also gives Whitman a 53% chance to win the seat and Brown 47% chance of winning.
Much of this is due to the way he weights his polling data – a recent Rasmussen poll (Whitman 51, Brown 43) and SurveyUSA poll (Whitman 47, Brown 40) are largely responsible for this. The SUSA poll gives a 6 point swing to Whitman between August 11 and August 31.
For the Senate, Silver projects Boxer over Fiorina 49.3% to 47.7%, with Boxer having a 58.7% chance of winning.
The takeaway here is that this race is extremely close, as is the Senate race. It will come down not to persuasion, but to turnout. Every vote counts in November. I know people have been complaining about this or that aspect of the Brown campaign, but the time for that is over. Californians, progressives especially, have to decide whether they want a radical, destructive, elitist right-winger governing them or whether they want to have a chance at making a more progressive California with Brown.
Our office spent the last four evenings clarifying the Governor’s race (stakes, dates, precincts) for our CSEA members, and the next 60 days is about Brown, 24, 25, and reaching 2/3s.
The CalLaborFed is making it easy to get information to union members. I’m pretty encouraged by the strong response we’re getting.
I think this will be a close one, but again it’s just Labor Day and Brown has not been on the air yet. Yes, there have been some union ads on his behalf , but we have not seen any pro Brown ads , only those critizing Whitman. Although there is a lot to citiize, I think people need a reason to vote FOR someone if they are to make the effort to go to the polls.
I have a feeling once Brown starts constrasting views against Whitman’s and ties Fiorina, Arnold, and WHitman’s pre-primary views around her neck, things will change.
Mr. Cruickshank you cheapen Nate’s methodology when you suggest how he weights his polling data is by averaging the Rasmussen and SUSA polls. Nate’s methodolgy is more rigorous and data driven than that. The readers of this blog demand an accurate picture of what’s happening on the ground. Here is the link to Nate’s method for forecasting: http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.n…
Secondly, as an IE Progressive the only time I have seen Jerry Brown was to “prosecute” corruption and hold a fundraiser with a known Republican. Whitman is trying to flip the Dem stronghold of San Bernardino. We have billboards everywhere, in Spanish to boot!!!
We will focus on Boxer, winning 2/3.