CA-50 First Polls

San Diego Politics released some preliminary polling results from the CA-50 today. The polls conducted by Datamar (a local company) are basically name recognition and favorable/unfavorable by party affiliation.

On the Democratic side, the grassroots efforts of Francine Busby have established a high level of name recognition and favorability among Democrats in the district.

"The poll show school board member Francine Busby ahead of law student Chris Young in key categories. She is most dominant in the two important categories “Favorable” and “Unfamiliar with Name”. Busby’s “favorable impression” responses dwarf those of Young by a huge margin – 56% to 3%. In the category “Unfamiliar with Name”, Busby’s responses also are far better. Only 20% say they are unfamiliar with the name Busby, whereas 61% say they are unfamiliar with the name Young."

The large Republican field has a ways to go to gain the same level of recognition with Republicans as Busby has with Democrats.

"In the poll released today the combined "Unfamiliar with the name" and "Neither favorable or unfavorable" (neutral) responses exceed the combined "Favorable" and "Unfavorable" responses. In the small “favorable” response category, Morrow was the clear leader at 29% favorable. Following were Bilbray (20%), Kaloogian (15%), and Uke (12%). In the biggest category ("unfamiliar with name"), high percentages of respondents said they were unfamiliar with the names of some candidates. Approximately three-fourths of the respondents were unfamiliar with the names Uke, Newsome, Earnest, and King. Bilbray [former congressman] had the best name identification, with only 21% of respondents not recognizing his name. 31% didn’t recognize the name Morrow [state senator]; 37% didn’t recognize the name Kaloogian [former state assemblyman]."

Not much to hang your hat on here, but Busby certainly appears to have a lock on Democrats. The key will be how hard the Republicans have to go at each other to generate the name recognition necessary to garner sufficient Republican support.

One reason that Republican activists and consultants are calling Greens, libertarians, Communists, vegetarians and anyone else in the district who might steal a few votes from Busby in the primary is their fear that Busby will be the most easily and positively recognized candidate in the district and that she might just win the seat with a 51%+1 victory in the April 11 primary.