With two days until Election Day, a new poll shows the Los Angeles County district. Atty. George Gascón slightly reduced the lead of his challenger Nathan Hochman in the race for the incumbent president’s seat.
But Gascón still loses 25 points in this closely watched competition. While that’s an improvement over the 30-point deficit he was looking at in the same Oct. 8 poll, it’s still no better than the 25-point margin he faced in the Aug. 18 poll.
If the election were held today, 50% of likely voters would vote for Hochman, a former federal prosecutor, and 25% would vote for Gascón, a former LAPD deputy chief who rose to power in 2020 on a progressive criminal justice agenda . reform. That leaves 25 percent undecided, according to the poll of 1,205 likely Los Angeles County voters conducted by the UC Berkeley Institute of Government Studies, co-sponsored by the Times.
The vote comes at the end of a period of intense politicking by the candidates and their supporters. Since the results of the latest Berkeley-LA Times poll were released on October 8, Gascón and Hochman have held a series of campaign events across the county, addressed hundreds of voters and faced off in a contentious debate .
Mark DiCamillo, director of the poll conducted online in English and Spanish between October 22 and 29, said the slight narrowing of the gap between Gascón and Hochman should not offer the incumbent president much hope.
“It’s really not that significant a change. Voters remained pretty much where they were before, with a quarter of them not really paying attention,” he said.
Negative views of Hochman have increased slightly since last month’s poll, which DiCamillo attributed in part to Hochman having the “scarlet letter” of being a former Los Angeles County Republican, but his unfavorability still pales compared to the bad vibes voters seem to be feeling. Gascon. Forty-nine percent of likely voters have a somewhat or strongly unfavorable view of Gascón, compared to just 15 percent for Hochman, who also served as a former assistant U.S. attorney general and former chairman of the city’s Ethics Commission from Los Angeles.
“This is mostly a vote on Gascón,” DiCamillo said. “Hochman is the other candidate in this race and he is in the privileged position of running against an unpopular incumbent.”
About 70% of Gascón’s supporters said partisan affiliation played a role in their decision, and it’s possible that undecided voters will turn to the incumbent given that Democrats hold a huge advantage in voter registration. voters in Los Angeles County.
Hochman is running as an independent and has worked to distance himself from his former GOP affiliation, saying he plans to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris in this year’s presidential race.
Jamarah Hayner, Gascón’s chief campaign strategist, said the reduction in the deficit is a sign that his campaign’s ground game is having an impact on the race.
“What we hear when we talk to voters are serious concerns about Hochman’s history with the Republican Party and the likelihood that he will roll back progress on issues like police accountability and wrongful convictions ” she said in a statement. “So every phone call and every door knock counts as we get down to business.”
Hochman countered that the poll results still indicate an electorate frustrated with Gascón. A former two-term prosecutor in San Francisco, Gascón faced multiple lawsuits from his own staff in Los Angeles over the implementation of his policies. He has also been forced to confront the perception that crime is on the rise – even as he points to statistics showing a decline in some categories.
“Los Angeles County residents are fed up with crime and ready to welcome new leadership to the DA’s Office,” Hochman said in a statement. “I understand that voters want a prosecutor like me, with 34 years of criminal justice experience, who will base his decisions solely on the facts and the law and not on a personal political agenda.”
Asked about a list of factors in the DA race, 54 percent of voters chose “the ability to prosecute cases involving violent crimes” as influencing their decision; 48% cited “criminal justice reform.”
But that hasn’t translated into similar levels of support for the outgoing president, whom Hochman has repeatedly called soft on crime. Gascón countered by saying Hochman wanted to return to mass incarceration and forgo police reform and accountability.
Asked if Gascón should have reason to be hopeful on Election Day, DiCamillo said, “Unless the polling world is turned upside down, I would say no.” »
