CA-Senate: Tom Steyer's polling memo

Here's the polling memo that wealthy Democrat Tom Steyer received from his pollster in December. That Steyer did this polling in December, before Barbara Boxer announced her retirement, is telling that he's been enthusiastic about getting into the race for a while. That it's been leaked tells us he'll likely get in. The polling memo doesn't include the horse race question of who the voters currently prefer. That's a question that we're all curious about but it's probably not important to Steyer at this point. He likely knows that he'd be way down in any poll. Not only would that not tell him much, he doesn't want that to get out.

His big question isn't where he is now, but whether the voters are interested in the things he supports and if they'll vote for him if he sells them on it. The survey says yes. Of course the survey appears to not mention anyone else, so we can take the "41% saying they would be “very” likely to favor Steyer" with a grain of salt.

There is a clear opportunity for there to be two Democrats emerging for the November General election run-off. In such a scenario, Tom Steyer’s profile can make him the best positioned candidate to have cross-over appeal, especially with non-partisan voters.

I find this interesting. It's likely that November will be between a Republican and a Democrat and the Democrat will win. So that's not much of an issue. Steyer's people see a possibility of two Democrats running. They say Steyer has cross-over appeal and frankly that sounds somewhat ridiculous. His chief issue is the environment and few Republicans will support him on that. He's been openly antagonistic against Republicans and spent millions trying to defeat our preferred candidates. Of course his opponent might be Kamala Harris, someone else who has little cross-over appeal. It's ironic that two people who dislike Republicans and everything they believe in would need to suck up to Republicans to win the Senate seat.