This post continues a discussion that began here about the contentious, and potentially disastrous, primary for California Governor. Republicans have finally figured out how to take advantage of the peculiarities of the Top Two primary system, including monomaniacal pursuit of self-interest by Democrats, and are poised to possibly freeze all Democratic candidates out of the runoff in the general election this fall, in which the Top Two vote recipients, regardless of party, will compete.
As before, I suggest that you check this site, 270toWin, to follow its aggregation of polling results.
1. Ides of March Developments
Two new polls have been published in the Governor’s race, and while the news is not great on its face (Republican Hilton is ahead, with Democrat Swalwell and Republican Bianco tied for second, I think that the news is better than that (so long as you don’t mind Swalwell.) Bianco is being helped along by an outlier poll, which was published three weeks ago, from what so far as I can tell is the least credible agency out there. If that poll is downgraded (or even dismissed), then he slips behind. So I’ll report the overall numbers as reported and then my adjusted ones.
As a reminder, this is how things looked about ten days ago, on March 5:
REPUBLICANS
- 15.3% Steve Hilton [age 56]
- 16.3% Chad Bianco [age 58]
GREEN
- 2.0% Butch Ware [age 51-52]
DEMOCRATS
- 14.3% Eric Swalwell [age 45]
- 11.7% Katie Porter [age 65]
- 9.0% Tom Steyer [age 72]
- 4.0% Xavier Becerra [age 68]
- 3.7% Antonio Villaraigosa [age 73]
- 3.0% Betty Yee [age 68]
- 2.7% Matt Mahan [age 43]
- 1.7% Tony Thurmond [age 57]
- 0.7% Ian Calderon [age 40] [has now endorsed Swalwell]
As noted, this shows a likely shutout from the runoff for Democrats. Now, not so much.
UNADJUSTED POLLS, MARCH 15
REPUBLICANS
- 15.3% Steve Hilton [age 56] (unchanged)
- 14.3% Chad Bianco [age 58] (down 2.0, dip of 3% in Emerson poll)
GREEN
- 2.0% Butch Ware [age 51-52] (unchanged)
DEMOCRATS
- 14.3% Eric Swalwell [age 45]
- 10.5% Tom Steyer [age 72] (up 1.5 based on 13% in new Politico poll, first since August)
- 11.0% Katie Porter [age 65] (down 0.7, PPIC poll changed from 21% to 13%)
- 4.0% Xavier Becerra [age 68] (unchanged, though components did fluctuate)
- 3.7% Antonio Villaraigosa [age 73] (up 0.01%)
- 2.8% Betty Yee [age 68] (down 0.2%)
- 2.8% Matt Mahan [age 43] (up 0.1%)
- 1.3% Tony Thurmond [age 57] (down 0.4%)
- 1.0% Ian Calderon [age 40] 1.0% (after weeks of 0%s and 1%s, he finally got a 2%. But stay down!)
2. Is Bianco Getting Stale? (And Was He Ever Really Fresh?)
Here’s the thing, though: Bianco has a very bad trend. As new poll results are added, old ones are replaced, either by a new version from that pollster or from a different pollster with a more recent result. Bianco’s standing is largely based on one single outlying poll by the least credible source. Here are his last seven results:
- 3/11, Politico, 11%
- 3/11, Emerson, 11%
- 2/26, PPIC, 12%
- 2/23, Independent Voter News, 23% (5% over Swalwell in second place, 8% over Hilton!)
- 2/19, Emerson, 14% [no longer included in his average]
- 12/19, FM3 Research, 17% [no longer included in his average]
Blanco’s current 14.3% average turns on that single IVN poll, which looks methodologically sus to me. It will be the next one to fall off of his list. Maybe it’s sound, maybe not — but it sure is discrepant. So the first thing to check is: what happens if we take it out?
Bianco’s average falls from 14.3% to, for now, to 11.3%. That’s going from tied with Swalwell for second place, just a point behind Hilton, to essentially tied with Porter, 0.3% down. That leads to a really different narrative of the race.
Now to be fair, the Republican Party also has an interest in having the two frontrunners in the runoff, so they could promote Bianco in the primary until he rises into a tie. And of course they could also (and we can presume they will) absolutely slime Swalwell.
But here’s the problem for them. They also have an interest in at least one Republican making it into the race, to serve as their standard bearer and bring out their vote. If Porter and Steyer weren’t so close, they might not have to worry about it — but chances are that one of them will rise — while Bianco seems pretty wedded to 11%.
Right now, the odds of two Republicans seems only a little bit better than two Democrats, but 1 and 1 does not seem that far ahead of either. So let’s look at strategic concerns.
3. What Should Various Democratic Candidates Do?
Keep answering those polls, for one thing! Those of us in the political sphere generally feel the strongest about these things, so we may be unduly pessimistic about Thurmond (at 1.3%), Yee and Mahan (both at 2.8%) and the two Latinos (Becerra at 4%, Villaraigosa at 3.8%) staying in the race once they drop to half their current levels. This is a great time for them to be negotiating will all three of the front runners to see what sorts of appointments they might be able to pick up. Later, some choice slots might be filled.
But there’s also the “gut punch” option. As I’ve written before, Steyer had had some hesitancy about the race, and it’s possible that he’d like to send his 10.5% of the voters to another candidate, to close this whole thing off. He doesn’t seem to like Steyer, so that could suggest Porter, who (if she got all of his support) would move up to 20.5% — ahead of Swalwell — and possibly edging him out of the runoff if its D vs. R. (I don’t think that Porter, given her age and temperament, will drop out, and Steyer is 7 years older.) I laid down my marker in the previous post that I think that this is the most likely of all results (even if the odds of it remain below 50%.) We may see things change if and when other lower-tier candidates give up the race and endorse someone. And, of course, there is the possibility of tragedy (these sad days) or scandal changing the equation.
Part of what they should do depends on those responding to polls. But that leaves one other factor. The voters themselves.
4. Is the Obstacle the Need to Feel Heard?
In my circles, the people that I run into online who feel more strongly about their lower-tier candidate not dropping out tend to be women over 30. (Maybe over 40 or 50.) They see a lot of their own stories in Betty Yee — and not so much, interestingly, in Katie Porter — as a woman who has gotten ahead on her own (unlike Porter, the primary acolyte of Sen. Elizabeth Warren), did the work, put up with the sexist lack of opportunity and respect, has earned her chance, has acted honorably, and should not leave the race. I don’t mean to minimize those feelings at all, and if it were Yee among the Top 3 and Porter — or Swalwell! — were at 3% in the polls, I would be pushing for either of them to withdraw and shift their support to, quite likely, Yee. I’m not as enamored of her as her partisans are: she is a competent person, but competence also addresses a given subject area. (She talks about governance as if it is mostly about budgeting; it’s not. If it’s mostly about anything, it’s about coming up with political solutions, evading problems, and bending people to one’s will. I’m not saying that she couldn’t do it, but one good sign is the ability to raise money, with or ideally without becoming compromised.
If I were seriously considering Yee — and I’m not, just because she’s at 3% in the polls and financially her campaign is running on fumes — I’d have questions about fundraising; and her ability to speak powerfully in modes including clear explanations (mostly not about finance and DEI issues), private persuasion, public persuasion, attack mode — and Beast Mode. I’d want to see how close her experiences (largely in managing staff a large staff, but also successfully navigating the vicious politics of the Governors’ office — with its media scrutiny and it’s leaks and its lies, with its lobbyist demands and people demanding that she further both their ambitions and their vendettas against their chosen targets) based on 11 years at the Board of Equalization and 8 years as Controller. She could get by, I’m sure; but could she manipulate the government to get us single-payer, split roll, a wealth tax, stronger renters rights, traffic and environmental reforms, keeping farmers afloat with the federal government seeming to want to eliminate immigrants and replace them with something like indentured servants — all with legislators with quiet deals with lobbies try to derail such an agenda at every juncture — well enough to match those of the requirements for Governor? I give Yee strong marks for integrity — the standard that tells me I don’t have to waste and time reviewing Villaraigosa — but all three of the frontrunners look good on that (yes, even Steyer. His early investments notwithstanding, you don’t survive running a large enterprise and not having people sniping at you from a safe distance without having some significant skills.)
I wasn’t planning to write that much about Yee — but I realize at this point why I have. While I’m writing sincerely, based on my analysis, I am very likely pissing off Betty Yee’s partisans something fierce. Why am I not subjecting Porter (who, perhaps due to her brashness and ability to spit out devastating barrages of facts and numbers, seems not to impress women as being that “feminine”) and Becerra, etc., to the same kind of analysis? Well, actually I am — but the main thing I’m looking at are the numbers. Yee has somehow, consistently, in poll after poll, managed to get support of over 3% in only 3 of the last 14 polls.
If we didn’t have a Top 2 system that was being gamed so well by the Republicans, I wouldn’t care very much: if she got the Democratic Party nomination, I expect that she’d win. But we don’t. We have Top 2.
And yet: the women (and some others) I know don’t want her to drop out: and I think I know why. They want to have cast their ballot for her! They want her actual level of support to be counted! They don’t want to abandon her based on fucking polls — even though I can tell you as a trained survey researcher back in my pre-lawyer days that the system is pretty damned good once you get into the level of people answering questions in those 14 polls and their general professionalism.
One Betty fan told me that she didn’t want Yee to drop out because “look at how many undecided voters their still are!” I think I said something like “but they’re not going to break her way — or they already would be.” The rule of thumb is that undecideds generally vote in the proportions of those who have made up their minds — except that leading candidates are likely to pick up more than trailing candidates. The notion that if there is 30% of the vote undecided, 60% of that vote is going to lift Yee to 21% without the leading candidates raising up their own numbers as well — as a sort of moving target — well, that is certainly will not happen barring scandals or massive deaths among them. (And if that happened, then she could just change her mind.)
The most damaging thing about Yee staying in the race — despite the statistics (including how little she has to spend) — it that Republicans will likely run floods of ads and pitching women voters in particular to vote for Yee as revenge for those pigging Democrats not taking her seriously, not they want her to win but because any vote for Yee is a vote that is not going to one of her competitors. Any fuel that Republicans can add to the fiery discord within the Democratic Party helps them — and their largely anti-woman agenda.
The term for what Yee — and the others — should be doing right now is “suspending their campaign” — something short of definitively withdrawing. (The candidate’s biggest fans can still vote for her; the chances of the race hinging on a small number of die-hards is not that strong. If the lower-tier candidate has a favorite among the other three, they should say so as they suspend. That might be enough to blunt the efforts that Republicans will make to use the low-tier candidates to defeat the higher-tier ones.
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