Opinion: New California Democratic poll results

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Now for the other polling shoe.

Yesterday the Field Poll announced its latest findings on the GOP presidential race in California with Rudy Giuliani holding a large but reduced lead over Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson and signs that the closer Republican voters follow the race, the smaller the New Yorker’s lead gets.

Now, today comes results on the Democratic side with good news for New Yorker Hillary Rodham Clinton and not-so-good news for Barack Obama and John Edwards. She has now enlarged her total among likely Democratic primary voters to 49%, up from 41% in March.

In the same time frame Obama’s support has slipped 9 percentage points from 28% to 19% while Edwards has gone from 13% to 10%.

Clinton’s support among 418 likely California Democratic primary voters appears broad-based with especially large leads among Latinos, older voters and voters with no more than a high school education. Obama runs best among younger voters, African Americans and college graduates. The sampling error is +/- 4.7%.

Clinton is slightly stronger among women (50%-47%) than men, but has large support across state regions from 51% in Los Angeles County to 47% elsewhere in Southern California. She scores slightly higher (52%) in inland counties than coastal counties (48%).

Obama does best in Southern California outside L.A. County (24%) and worst in Northern California (12%). Edwards does best in the San Francisco area (12%) and scores 7% or 8% everywhere else.

California in the summer of 2007 clearly remains a strongly Democratic state with Edwards, Clinton and Obama each beating any of the top four Republicans at the moment. Clinton trumps Giuliani 52%-37%, Romney 55%-35%, Fred Thompson 55%-35% and John McCain 52%-35%. Obama beats Giuliani 48%-38%, Romney 53%-31%, Thompson 52%-32% and McCain does the best, 49%-36%.

Edwards tops Giuliani 47%-42%, Romney 52%-33%, Thompson 55%-30% and McCain is again strong, 48%-38%.

--Andrew Malcolm