Whitman Leads GOP Governor Race in California, But Trails Brown in November Match-Up

Former eBay Chief Executive Meg Whitman leads the Republican pack with 32 percent of likely GOP primary voters saying they would choose her if the election (scheduled for June) were held today. Former Rep. Tom Campbell is the choice of 12 percent and Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner polls 8 percent. Four percent prefer someone else, and 44 percent are undecided.

Forty-two percent said they were not satisfied with the choice of candidates for governor whether it came to the primary or general election, 32 percent said they were satisfied and 26 percent expressed no opinion. Democrats were more satisfied than Republicans by a 38 percent to 25 percent margin.

There are no declared candidates yet on the Democratic side since San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom decided to drop out of the race, but Brown, currently the state's Attorney General, is expected to run.

In a general election match-up, Brown leads Whitman among likely voters by 43 percent to 37 percent with 20 percent undecided. He beats Campbell by 46 percent to 34 percent with 19 percent undecided and Poizner by 47 percent to 31 percent with 21 percent undecided. The margin of error is 3 points.

Voters have a mixed view of Brown with 35 percent seeing him favorably and 36 percent unfavorably and 26 percent saying they don't know enough to express an opinion. The most significant number on the favorability question for the Republicans is the percentage of people who don't know enough about the candidates to have an opinion -- 49 percent for Whitman, 59 percent for Campbell and 63 percent for Poizner.

Right now, PPIC says only 10 percent of likely voters are very closely following news about the candidates, and 33 percent are fairly closely following the news (36 percent not too closely, 20 percent not at all closely).

"Despite all the advertising in this early stage of the campaign,Republican primary voters are more likely to say they are undecided than to favor one of the three GOP candidates," said PPIC's Mark Baldassare. "At the same time, the Democrats' likely candidate falls short of majority support when matched up against the Republican contenders."