Billionaire developer Rick Caruso has moved within the margin of error among registered voters in the race for Los Angeles mayor against Democratic Party favorite Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA) — but trails her by double-digits among likely voters in an electorate notorious for low turnout.
A new poll by the University of California Berkeley Institute for Governmental Studies shows that Caruso trails Bass by just three points, 34% to 31%, among registered voters — within the poll’s 3.5% margin of error. But he trails by 15 points, 46%-31%, among likely voters. The only good news for Caruso is that momentum is in his favor, and the latter gap has closed by six points in a month.
The Los Angeles Times reports:
Bass, backed by most of the elected Democratic leadership in California, has a strong hold on her fellow partisans, who make up the bulk of the Los Angeles electorate. Caruso, backed by tens of millions of dollars from his personal fortune, has a path forward, but one that depends on getting potential supporters who are not frequent voters to show up for a mayoral election with few other major draws on the ballot.
…
The path forward for Caruso, the poll suggests and outside analysts concur, is to push up turnout among voters who so far appear less interested in the race.
That would include many Latino voters, whose engagement in the race so far lags behind other groups. Caruso and Bass are running close to even among Latino voters, while Bass has a large lead among Black voters — she’s one of only two Black members of the Los Angeles congressional delegation — and among white voters.
Bass is emphasizing abortion rights in her campaign — an issue over which local government has no control, but which resonates among core Democratic voters. Caruso, who has spent $62 million of his own money and is going to spend more, has emphasized crime and homelessness, but suffered when a recall effort against George Soros-backed District Attorney George Gascón failed to collect the necessary number of signatures to qualify for the ballot, meaning that the “law and order” vote will have lower turnout.
Less than 25% of the Los Angeles electorate turned out to vote in the 2014 midterm elections, the last time Republicans had strong momentum in a midterm election. Caruso, once a Republican, is now a Democrat.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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