Last month there was a real shift in the California Senate polling. After the primary Babs Boxer was terribly underperforming her past elections, but she was at least ahead consistently. But starting in August, Carly Fiorina started taking leads.
Some say that the new PPP poll is reason to worry, but I don’t. PPP is a generally honest, reliable pollster in my experience, but that doesn’t mean every poll the firm puts out is right. I don’t think this one is predictive, and I also think Boxer has problems of her own to worry about in the coming weeks.
Yes, I like PPP, but I don’t like the new poll. As I pointed out at Unlikely Voter, the Likely Voter pool that PPP used seems to skew toward the Democrats, and in fact has slightly more Democrats than his Registered Voter poll showed. Given that in most states, PPP is showing an intensity gap between the parties, for California to show no intensity gap, or even a reversed gap with Democrats more excited, makes no sense at all to me.
So this poll alone does not have me worried in the least, and more importantly, Boxer has problems of her own coming. Jim Geraghty at National Review Online is going to give her a bad week. Here is Part One of Five of his exposure of inconvenient truths about Boxer, in which he points out that Boxer has been funneling money to the family of the embattled Maxine Waters.
Geraghty makes it clear that Boxer’s issues only start here, too, by closing with this:
I suppose someone could argue that the Waters family is more morally culpable for this blatant auction of an endorsement. But when it comes to steering campaign funds to relatives, let’s just say Barbara Boxer isn’t one to throw stones. Stay tuned.
I look forward to the rest of this week’s Campaign Spot at NRO.
P.S. Don’t forget that it’s up to us to counter the millions that Planned Parenthood and the unions are willing to spend to defend their pet Boxer.