California Field Poll analysis - some interesting stuff here

The California Field Poll has just released a survey taken between December 10 and 17 that shows Hillary Clinton’s once 25 point edge in California has declined to 14% over Barack Obama, and that if third place John Edwards were to drop out of the race, it would be even closer. Virtually all of the movement in the poll comes from a drop in support from Clinton from October when she had the support of 45% of likely primary voters to 36% in the latest survey and an increase in undecided Democratic primary voters to 20%, up from 14% previously.

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As for political ideology, Clinton has her narrowest lead with self described liberals (35% to 26%), has an increased lead with “middle of the road” voters (38% to 23%), and an amazing 34% to 6% edge amongst conservative voters who will make up 14% of those voting in the Democratic primary according to Field. Her 20 point lead with liberals has decreased to 11 points, her 32 point lead with middle of the roaders has declined to 15 points, and her lead has probably lengthened with conservative voters in the Democratic primary, which is a small portion of the expected vote and is reflected in a small sample denoted by an asterisk.

It is interesting that Clinton’s lead in union household voters is less (29% to 24%) than with non union household voters (40% to 21%). She has a strong lead with Latinos (42% to 22%), a similar lead with the small sample of Asians/others (44% to 20%)less with White non-Hispanics (34% to 21%), and with a small sample, it appears that Barack Obama has more Black support (38% to 28%). But in each of these racial/ethnic groupings Clinton has lost support and there are more decideds. For instance, in October she could count on 52% of the Latino vote and had a 20 point lead over Obama at 16%, but in this survey she has dropped 10 points, he has increased by 6 points, and undecided voters have increased to 6 points, so that her previous lead of 36 points with Latinos is down to 20 points.

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Field has done something very interesting here and analyzed where Edwards vote would go were he to withdraw from the race before the Democratic primary in California—as has been speculated about if he has a poor showing in Iowa and New Hampshire. The results are that Obama would gain the most of Edward’s share of voters by a margin 40% to 24% in this scenario. Richardson would pick up 11% of these votes—much higher than his 3% in the polls now, Biden 6% and others or not sure account for about one-fifth of these voters.