Angelides Up 7 over Westly in CA-Gov Primary

UPDATE: The latest poll has Angelides up by an even wider margin.

From an email:

TO: Angelides 2006
FROM: Paul Maslin
RE: Update on Polling for the June 2006 Primary
DATE: May 19, 2006

In the past two and a half weeks, Phil Angelides has taken the lead in the Democratic primary race for Governor. As we reported two weeks ago, Angelides returned to dead even with Westly after returning to the air with a new round of television ads. Over the time since then, Angelides has opened up a seven point lead in the race, and now leads with 38 percent of the vote, to 31 percent for Westly and 31 percent undecided.

Angelides has continually led in the race since May 2, and as shown in the following table, he has steadily gained ground while the number of undecided voters has dropped and support for Steve Westly has remained static.

Over the past week, Angelides has posted double-digit gains in the smaller media markets where he began advertising most recently. This replicates the trend we saw a few weeks ago in the larger markets - Angelides posted large gains in the Los Angeles, San Francisco and Sacramento media markets shortly after returning to the airwaves in those areas.

Given these results, it is not surprising that Steve Westly has begun airing negative ads attacking Angelides. Support for Westly has been stagnant or declining in nearly every area of the state for almost a month. As soft and undecided voters continue to receive effective advertising from the Angelides campaign and hear the overwhelming endorsement of Angelides by groups and leaders they know and trust, they are steadily heading toward supporting Angelides for Governor.

The Westly attacks against taxes are some of the worst DLC triangulation tactics ever, designed to help Westly while doing long-term damage to the Democratic brand. This is the same crap we got with Gray Davis (thanks Garry South). Go Phil!