California 2016 Presidential Poll Shows Trump Way Ahead With Republicans, Democratic Voters Favor Clinton Over Sanders
With New York in the rear-view mirror, the biggest remaining delegate haul ahead of the summer presidential nomination conventions come with California's June 7 primary.
Last weekend, non-partisan political research firm Gravis Marketing got an early gauge on which Democratic candidate registered Californians are leaning towards. A survey of 846 Democratic voters and 2,088 voters overall shows Democratic Party front-runner Hillary Clinton garnered 47 percent of their vote, six percentage points above Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
More than 80 percent of participants said they are likely to cast ballots, though one-fifth would not have a clear favorite if elections were held today. Gravitas Marketing published their results Tuesday, the same day traditionally left-leaning New Yorkers handed Clinton 139 of the state's 247-delegate total, breaking Sanders' string of seven consecutive primary victories.
Clinton is projected to win outstanding delegates and superdelegates nationwide, but a win in the Golden State, with an ample 546 delegates at stake, would all but assure Democrats of a contested convention.
West Coast Support for Trump
A Capitol Weekly/Sextant Strategies poll found conservative Californians overwhelmingly support Donald Trump, the real estate mogul who just locked up 89 delegates in the Empire State.
Of 1,165 Republicans surveyed, 41 percent favor Trump. Texas Gov. Ted Cruz received 23 percent support, followed by Ohio Gov. John Kasich with 21 percent.
Trump maintains vehement support along the California coast, from San Diego to the Bay Area, much of it coming from Baby Boomers and Silent Generation voters. Those already registered chose Trump over Cruz by 32 percentage points.
One of few bright spots for Cruz came from the 69 percent "strong support" respondents voting for him displayed; 26 percent said they picked the Cuban-American senator solely out of spite for Trump's nomination.
Instead of taking the phone survey method Gravitas Marketing used, this poll collected responses via email addresses in the state's voter file.
Republicans Courting California Delegates
Delegate counts may not mean a whole lot to Clinton by the time the primary rolls around, given her near-insurmountable lead over Sanders, but it may decide whether Trump heads to a brokered Republican National Convention in Cleveland.
California will award 172 GOP delegates, divided by the state's 53 congressional districts that receive three delegates each. Trump is 393 delegates short of the 1,237 needed to win the nominations, meaning that Cruz and Kasich's only chance to contest it rests with a winner-take-all election they trail by a wide margin.
Each Republican candidate is scheduled to address next weekend's California GOP Convention near San Francisco. For Cruz and Kasich, it will be a chance to draw key delegates they need to win over.
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