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Odds and Ends 11/6

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One more day folks.  Let’s make sure we don’t lose any races because our voters didn’t make it to the polls.  Call, walk, whatever. You know what to do.

Teasers: Another Datamar poll, Arnold has a restraining order against McClintock to keep him 100 miles away at all times,  some journalistic fawning over Arnold, Pelosi push back and more!

  • Datamar (PDF) has another poll out (they just released one on 11/1).  Same stuff really.  Arnold’s lead (54-36_ is still bigger than DiFi’s lead (54-38). No way that happens.
    • Bonds: 1A-1E passing, except 1C, the housing bond. 84 passing
    • 85 (Parental Notification) failing.  That’s a good sign, because Datamar has a likely voter model tilted towards conservatives.
    • 86-89 all below water. 90 is ahead, but just barely this time (46-45). This is with their summary saying it’s about Eminent Domain, so this propably a good sign.
  • LAT: Arnold hid from Republicans down-ticket, Angelides chased around the state. Don’t trust that though, because Arnold has his volunteers getting the vote out for McClintock.  We cannot afford Tom McClintock being our Lt. Gov.  The man is dangerous.
  • There are a series of journalists fawning over Arnold:
    • Carla Marinucci: Arnold is a visionary for acting like a moderate in public; he can really talk the moderate talk. Me: Too bad he can’t walk the moderate walk.
    • SacBee : Down-ballot effect from Arnold’s genius.
    • George Skelton is more reflective.  He looks back at how Arnold won by defining his message and hoodwinking the public with his “moderate” image.
  • One issue business, labor, environmentalists, etc. agree on: Prop 90 is a bad idea.
  • Turnout will be low.  We need to make sure our voters go out and cast their ballots.  We can’t afford a Lt. Gov. McClintock or another four years of McPherson. We need Garamendi and Bowen to win those elections.
  • Who really runs the Legislature in the era of term limits? The staffers.
  • The GOP has been trying this “Where’s Pelosi? We can’t find her.” line.  Um, perhaps they missed 60 minutes two weeks ago, or they don’t attend Democratic campaign rallies.  Um, strange, we can’t seem to find her on FOX News?  Where is she.  Funny part about this? Chris Wallace, yes the one who got smacked down by the Big Dog, rejected John Boehner’s “Where’s Pelosi” line by saying she was out campaigning.  I must admit that I was pretty darn surprised.
  • And off topic from the election: UC-Irvine might build a law school. Great, just what we need in California, more lawyers.
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    Holy Crap! Datamar: 90 Way ahead!

    3 Comments

    The new Datamar poll(PDF) came out today.  Now, my traditional Datamar caveat: I think it’s full of crap.  It continues to show Mountjoy only trailing Feinstein by 11 points at 50-39, Field gives her a 57-29 lead. And Datamar has Arnold with a lead slightly less than twenty points.  The day that a Democratic gubenatorial candidate gets about a third of the vote will be a cold, cold day in hell. (Or, well, a bizarre three way race or something like that.)

    Datamar has some serious issues on its statewide polling.  Here’s my hypothesis:Datamar has a terrible likely voter screen that works really, really well for San Diego County, and probably the OC.  It works really poorly once you get out of those GOP enclaves. For this poll, their breakdown along party lines was 39% Dem, 41% Rep, 10% DTS, and 9% other.  My word, that’s some ridiculous breakdowns.  More Republicans than Democrats? Sorry, I call BS on that one. Here’s a more reasonable breakdown for this state from PPIC’s September statewide survey: 43 D, 35 R, 20 DTS, 2 Other.  I’m sorry, but you have to question the validity of a poll that has more Reps in California than Dems.  Additionally, where are these 9% others that Datamar has? Are they loading up on American Independent Party or something? 

    But, Datamar polled all of the propositions as well.  It has most of them failing, except for a couple of the bonds, Jessica’s Law, and well, Prop 90. (That’s probably not totally right, you should double check the PDF if you’re interested in a particular prop).  According to Datamar, Prop 90 is ahead 56-30.  That’s a huge lead.  Now, the No on 90 Campaign has been largely ignored by the media, and can frequently be mistaken for a good idea.  An idea that just limits how we do eminent domain.  It’s not…check out this guest editorial against Prop 90. I’ll boil it down, instead of Prop 90 being a way to stop developers from taking your land, it’s a way to let developers do whatever they damn well please.

    Now, the question that was asked was this:

    Proposition 90 is the Government Acquisition, Regulation of Private Property Initiative . It will prohibit state and local governments from condemning private property for other private uses. If the election were held today, would you vote yes or no on Proposition 90?

    The ballot description is this:

    Bars state and local governments from condemning or damaging private property to promote other private projects or uses. Limits government’s authority to adopt certain land use, housing, consumer, environmental and workplace laws and regulations. Fiscal Impact: Increased annual government costs to pay property owners for losses to their property associated with new laws and rules, and for property acquisitions. These costs are unknown, but potentially significant on a statewide basis.

    So, how exactly is Datamar’s question represnetative of what the voters will be reading when they see this question?  The answer is, of course, that it isn’t.  As far as I’m concerned the Datamar poll is about as reliable as a poll in San Francisco is for the entire state.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I think Angelides is substantially behind, and I don’t completely reject the theory that Prop 90 is ahead out of hand.  I think it’s very reasonable to take as a working hypothesis that 90 is ahead.  It’s probably good to motivate all the forces that are opposed to this terrible initiative.  One can only hope that the media will be spilling more ink opining against this worm of an initiative.  As far as I’m concerned, the defeat of 90 is up there with the election of Debra Bowen as SoS in terms of importance to our democracy.

    However, you can’t ask this type of question and expect to get any type of reasonable answer.

    So, needless to say, this poll will not make it into my Poll HQ now or in the future.  Upon the next edit to the poll HQ, I will remove all references to Datamar polls.  They are fatally flawed.