Los Angeles Times
By Cathleen Decker
March 27, 2016
Riding
a rebellion fueled by opposition to illegal immigration and pessimism
about the nation's future, Donald Trump leads a scrambling duo of
competitors less than three months before California's
Republican presidential primary, a new USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times
statewide poll has found.
Yet
the party whose nomination he is seeking has fractured because of his
candidacy, with ominous prospects for Republicans if the New York
businessman emerges victorious after the party's
summer convention.
A
quarter of California Republican voters polled said they would refuse to
vote for Trump in November if he is the party's nominee. Almost
one-third of those backing Trump's leading competitor,
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, said they would not cast a ballot for Trump.
Voters who back Trump, meanwhile, are critical of Cruz, with only half
holding a favorable impression of him.
That
division sets up the potential of cascading losses down the ballot for
Republicans already fighting the tide in one of the nation's most
Democratic states, including in a number of contested
congressional districts.
Trump,
passionately supported and deeply reviled in different corners of the
electorate, has extended his reach among Republicans since the last
USC/Los Angeles Times poll was taken in September.
He now has the support of 37% of GOP voters surveyed, up from 24%.
Cruz,
who was in single digits in the last poll behind candidates who have
since left the race, is now at 30%. The third candidate, Ohio Gov. John
Kasich, was invisible last September and
is now at 12%.
But
among the voters most likely to turn out, the poll shows the race
between Trump and Cruz is nearly tied, with Trump at 36% versus Cruz at
35%. The difference illustrates how a low turnout
in the June 7 primary could hurt Trump and boost Cruz.
How
many Californians will turn out remains hard to predict because the
state has not seen a fully contested June Republican primary since 1964.
Also hard to predict is how the overall support
for the top candidates will translate into delegates to the Republican
nominating convention this summer. The state's GOP awards delegates to
the winner of each congressional district, so a candidate could lose
statewide but still pick up a significant number
of delegates.
The
poll shows Trump leading in most areas of the state except the Central
Valley, where conservative voters put Cruz ahead. In Los Angeles County,
the two are nearly tied.
But
the controversial Trump clearly has commanded wide swaths of his party
in California. The survey showed him leading among college graduates and
those without college degrees, and among
almost all ranges of income. There was no distinction between the level
of support from men and women, despite Trump's well-publicized tirades
against women like Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly.
His support draws on voters like Teresa Sumter, who lives in the Modesto suburbs.
“I
don't believe the politicians anymore, and he's not really a
politician,” said Sumter, who is 60 and runs a surgical cleaning crew at
a hospital. “I like what he says.”
Sumter said she had never really cared for Trump before this campaign, figuring him as simply a “rich man.” That has changed.
“He thinks like we do,” she said, listing illegal immigration as one of her prime issues.
“He tells it like it is,” she added. “I don't think he's lying to us.”
Trump's
views on immigration are one of the pillars of his candidacy, but the
subject also accounts for a serious party fissure in California, where
fallout from the 1994 fight over an anti-illegal-immigration
measure has contributed greatly to the GOP's shrinking presence.
Among
those in the poll who said illegal immigration was a “crisis” in
California, Trump won 48% of the vote, to Cruz's 29% and Kasich's 8%.
Among voters less concerned about illegal immigration,
Trump's level of support fell to the point that he won only 27% of
those who didn't consider it a problem.
About
3 in 5 Trump supporters polled felt illegal immigration was at crisis
levels, and 90% described it as either a crisis or a major problem. That
sets Trump's backers apart from California's
voters as a whole, of whom only 23% said they saw a crisis. Among
California's registered Republicans, 44% said they saw illegal
immigration as a crisis.
Trump's
backers also diverge from the rest of the state on the solutions they
seek. Just over half of Trump voters polled said those in the country
illegally should be deported, the position
their candidate has espoused since he entered the race. An additional
28% of his supporters said those immigrants should have a path to
citizenship, and 14% favored a narrower right to work legally in the
U.S.
Among all Republicans in the poll, only a third backed deportations and 2 in 5 favored a path to citizenship.
Californians
as a whole rejected deportations decisively, with only 16% backing that
course and two-thirds favoring a right to citizenship for those
currently living here illegally.
Only
3 in 5 Republicans said they agreed with Trump's views on immigration,
which besides mass deportations include the construction of a giant wall
along the nation's southern border. One
in five Republicans said they strongly disagreed with his positions.
Similarly,
among Trump voters, 69% approved of his proposal for a ban on travel to
the U.S. by Muslims. That view was shared by only 44% of Republicans
overall, and by only 22% of Californians
polled. Even among supporters of Cruz, who has suggested similar
restrictions on Muslim travel, only 42% said they backed Trump's plans.
A starkly negative assessment of the economy and, more broadly, the future, also marked Trump voters.
Among
those who think the nation's best years are behind it, Trump carried
40% of Republicans, to 26% for Cruz. Among those more optimistic about
the country, the two were tied at 36%.
All
told, only 13% of Trump voters felt that the state was headed in the
right direction, whereas Californians overall were split. Cruz voters
were similarly negative, but Kasich's supporters
were more upbeat.
The
impact of those views extended to a hypothetical general election
matchup between Trump and Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton. Trump
received support from only 9% of those who thought
the state was doing well, but 50% of those who thought it was doing
poorly. (Clinton easily defeated Trump and Cruz; Kasich did better but
still fell to the Democrat by 19 points.)
The
breadth of Trump's success in California so far — he led almost all
major GOP subgroups except for tea party adherents and those younger
than 50, both of which sided with Cruz — suggests
he has captured the electorate's fancy not solely because of his policy
positions but because of his attitude, pollster Randall Gutermuth said.
“In
some ways, it's as much stylistic as it is demographic,” said
Gutermuth, of the Republican polling firm American Viewpoint, which
along with Democratic firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research
conducted the poll for the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and
Sciences and the Los Angeles Times.
When
Republicans were asked what kind of presidential candidate they wanted,
three categories explained the success of the antagonistic outsider
profile that Trump has taken on.
One
in five voters said their top priority was a candidate who would
represent change; an additional 15% wanted one who would tell it like it
is, and 11% wanted someone free of the influence
of special interests. In those categories, Trump was far and away the
leader. Among those who wanted a blunt-talking candidate, for example,
Trump carried 64%, compared with 10% for Cruz and 9% for Kasich.
But
Trump's attitude — and his denigration of Mexicans, Muslims, women, the
disabled, even prisoners of war — has exacted a price that hurts him in
a general election and may yet hobble him
in the primary.
Overall,
about three-quarters of California voters polled had an unfavorable
view of Trump, an eye-opening level for a front-runner. Even among
Republicans, only 51% had a favorable impression
of Trump, while 43% had an unfavorable view.
And
the unfavorable views were expressed with vehemence. Two-thirds of
nonpartisan voters, who are essential to any chance of success for a
member of the Republican minority in California,
had a “very unfavorable” view of Trump. Seventy-seven percent of
Latinos, 74% of those under age 50, 67% of women, 61% of men, and more
than 3 in 5 voters of all education and income ranks had a very negative
view of him.
“He's
an egomaniac who does very stupid things,” Barry Kolom, a Los Angeles
optometrist, said of Trump. “He shoots from the hip; he has no filters. I
just think he's a loose cannon.”
Cruz, Kolom said, is “more consistently conservative” and is his default candidate against Trump.
“Unfortunately,”
he said, “a lot of people believe that if you are wealthy, you have to
be smart, and that's definitely not the case.... Honestly, I think he's
pathetic.”
Views
like that make Republican leaders shudder as they ponder the impact
Trump's presence at the top of the ticket could have on down-ballot
races. Those fears are real, according to the
poll. Almost one-third of voters who described themselves as
traditional Republicans said they would refuse to vote for Trump in
November, as did 17% of tea party Republicans.
One
in 5 Republicans said they would vote for Clinton over Trump in a
general election matchup. Fewer would cross the aisle if Cruz or Kasich
were nominated.
The
poll contacted 1,503 registered voters in California between March 16
and March 23. The sampling error for all voters is 2.8 points in either
direction; the margin of error for Republican
voters is 5.5 points in either direction.
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