Looking at Boxer's Situation

There's no doubt Barbara Boxer's in some serious trouble for reelection. But looking inside the numbers on the California Senate race there are some indications that Boxer should survive:

-Our late May poll of the race, which like this week's Field Poll found a 3 point Boxer advantage, found Carly Fiorina leading Boxer 88-4 with folks who voted for John McCain in 2008. That's the largest lead among McCain voters we've found for any Senate or Gubernatorial candidate in the country over the last 4 months and it's an indication that Fiorina really has no room for improvement with her base. She's already got it completely locked up and she's still trailing, albeit by a small amount.

That means Fiorina's going to have to win over a bunch of Obama voters to knock off Boxer but so far she's shown very little appeal to them. On that poll only 4% of Obama voters had a favorable opinion of her to 42% who saw her unfavorably. That's quite a contrast from, for instance, Scott Brown who was seen favorably by 28% of Obama voters right before to his upset win in Massachusetts to 61% who saw him unfavorably.

-Yes, Barbara Boxer is not very personally popular. We found her disapproval at 46% to only 37% approval. But it's important to note that just because voters don't approve of you doesn't mean they won't vote for you. Boxer is currently getting 20% of the vote from people who don't approve of her. 92% of those folks voted for Barack Obama and 3% voted for John McCain and literally 0% of the 43 people in that category who we polled in California in late May had a positive opinion of Fiorina. There are a fair number of folks who don't like Boxer but aren't open to voting for a Republican either.

Last year Jon Corzine's final percentage of the vote was 11 points higher than his approval rating in our polling and a similar dynamic may put Boxer over the top this time.

I don't think Boxer will win by much- certainly don't expect to see her with a double digit margin- but I just don't think Fiorina has that much room to grow and because of that I expect she'll end up hanging on.