California Voters Back Clinton, McCain, Health Care, and a Balanced Approach to Budgeting in Latest PPIC Poll

[courtesy of The California Majority Report]

The latest PPIC statewide survey is out, and Senators Hillary Clinton and John McCain have reason to smile. With 43 percent support among likely voters, Clinton maintains her lead in California with a 15 point advantage over Senator Barack Obama who rests at 28 percent. Former Senator John Edwards trails with a distant 11 percent. The good new for Obama: he has cut into Clinton's lead by nine points since December. The bad news for Obama: independents are split between the two front runners and women are going two-to-one and Latinos going three-to-one for Clinton.

Meanwhile, McCain's national front runner status is now reflected in California, with McCain topping the PPIC survey with 29 percent. Former Governor Mitt Romney is 12 points back with 17 percent. Former Mayor Rudy Guiliani has plummeted to 10 percent, tying former Governor Mike Huckabee and former Senator Fred Thompson, who recently folded his campaign. Surprisingly, McCain even leads among evangelicals, with 23 percent support. Huckabee and Romney are at 17 and 15 respectively. While conventional wisdom holds that most of Thompson's supporters, who tend to be conservative and evangelical, will migrate to Huckabee and Romney, with a small plurality of evangelical voters now supporting McCain in California, the conventional wisdom may be turned on its head again this year.

Reflecting turnout discrepancies between Democrats and Republicans in earlier primary states, Democrats in California are much more satisfied with their choices this election. 77 percent of Democrats like their choices, compared to only 52 of Republicans.

57 percent of voters also agree that moving up the primary to February 5 was a good idea, with 88 percent of likely voters thinking California's primary will play an important role in the presidential selection. That deafening crunching sound you may hear in the background is the earlier primary naysayers eating crow. Indeed, Californians have never been more engaged in a presidential primary, with 44 percent very closely and another 44 percent fairly closely following the presidential race unfold.

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