Four out of every 10 likely voters in California did not know Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown was up for re-election today, an eye-opening statewide study showed.
The research by the polling firm Fairbank, Maslim, Maullin, Metz and Associates also revealed that only one in five voters could identify his opponent, Republican gubernatorial candidate Neel Kashkari, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
"Isn't that astonishing?" said the firm’s David Metz
about the study conducted among 457 likely voters last week.
Explaining that he had posed the question after talking recently to several people about politics, Metz said, "I was struck by how many of them were totally unaware that Brown was up for re-election, so I decided to test it out."
Forty-two percent voters didn’t know Brown was running, while only about 20 percent could name Kashkari as his GOP opponent. Although most Republicans had heard of Kashkari, less than 30 percent of them knew he was Brown’s rival.
"It’s difficult to imagine a similar lack of awareness at the end of the 2010 contest between Gov. Brown and Meg Whitman," Metz said. "Or even in the 2006 election between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Phil Angelides."
Brown holds a substantial lead over Kashkari, largely credited to his support from Hispanic voters,
according to Breitbart, which notes that the Republican is reportedly leading the incumbent by one point with white voters.
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