CA-Gov Poll has Kashkari way way back

A new poll done by Clear Path Strategies for a private client is out. I don't know who the client is and don't know Clear Path, but the two partners used to work at Greenberg Quinlan Rosner. GQR is one of the premiere Democratic pollsters. I can't think of why a Democratic private client would want to poll this race and why they'd want to release it.

Two interesting things about this poll. First, it contains all 15 candidates. This is vitally important to do in California, because every candidate gets votes in a California race. The 15th place finisher in the 2012 Senate race got 1.2% of the votes. And there were 24 candidates in that race. When polls use just 4-5 candidates, they can inflate a candidate's support.

Second, there are no undecideds in the poll. While I've rarely seen a poll with no undecideds, I don't have a problem with one provided they threw the undecideds out. If they didn't give people an undecided choice, then you could get people inflating a candidate they really haven't decided on.

Here are the top 8:
Jerry Brown/Democrat/Governor of California 45.6 percent
Tim Donnelly/Republican/California State Assemblyman 18.3
Glenn Champ/Republican/Business Owner/Engineer 7.3
Andrew Blount/Republican/ Mayor/Businessperson 5.4
Alma Marie Winston/Republican Project Funding CEO 4.1
Neel Kashkari/Republican Businessman 3.8
Robert Newman/No Party Preference Psychologist/Farmer 3.1
Akinyemi Agbede/Democratic Doctoral Student 2.8

This poll has the two Democrats leading the five Republicans 48.4%-38.9%. In the 2010 primary voting Democrats beat Republicans by 2-4%. So while 9.5% is bigger than we might expect, it's a lot less than the 35% Jerry Brown beat the three Republicans by in the Field poll.

Tim Donnelly still has a comfortable lead. What has to be disturbing for Neel Kashkari is that not only does he trail Donnelly and Blount, both of whom were in the Field poll, but he trails some dude and dudette Glenn Champ and Alma Marie Winston. The primary is six weeks away. It's amazing how badly Kashkari is doing.