One week before California throws itself into the presidential contest, John McCain and Hillary Rodham Clinton hold imposing leads in the races for their parties' nominations, but the battles remain extremely volatile, a new statewide poll has found.
The L.A. Times/CNN/Politico poll, conducted by Opinion Research Corp., showed that McCain has vaulted ahead of three other candidates with whom he shared a statistical tie for the Republican nomination just two weeks ago. He carried 39% of likely Republican primary participants, to 26% for Mitt Romney, who also bolstered his standing among California voters. Rudolph W. Giuliani and Mike Huckabee were stalled at essentially the same level as two weeks ago -- 13% and 11%, respectively.
Clinton maintained a 49% to 32% lead over Illinois Sen. Barack Obama among Democrats, despite losing some support in key voter groups. Democratic women continued to power her effort, siding with the New York senator by nearly a 2-1 margin.
The poll was conducted largely before Obama's victory Saturday in South Carolina and the subsequent high-profile endorsements of him by U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) and his niece, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg.
The effect of those events was unclear, but even before the latest developments, the gyrations of the presidential season had California voters uncertain of their loyalties, the poll found. Among those likely to vote in the Democratic primary, 3 in 10 said they could change their minds -- including more than half of those supporting John Edwards, in third place with 11% of the vote. More than 4 in 10 Republicans, as well, said they could end up backing another candidate by election day on Feb. 5.
In an interview conducted after the poll, retired businessman Robert Manahan of Irvine, a Republican, said he was disappointed with Giuliani's faltering campaign, thought Huckabee was not up to the job of president and differed with McCain on several issues, most prominently immigration. That left him tentatively in Romney's corner.
"Probably, I'm not going to make up my mind until I fill out the absentee ballot," he said.
Under the supervision of Times Poll Director Susan Pinkus, the survey questioned 1,820 registered voters from Jan. 23 through Sunday, including 690 deemed likely to cast ballots in the Democratic primary and another 437 likely Republican primary voters. The margin of sampling error was 4 percentage points for the Democratic primary and 5 points among Republicans.
