Gascon’s Big Behind: LA Times Poll Has Gascon Down Two-to-One

It was not a good morning for Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon.

Though he almost certainly knew the numbers beforehand, there is something about seeing in print that you are getting clobbered in the polls that really brings the pain home.

A Los Angeles Times/UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies  poll shows that about 20% of voters are planning to vote for him in November.  His challenger Nathan Hochman’s number?  45%

That’s a more than two-to-one lead for Hochman with only about 11 weeks left to go until Election Day.

“I have spent the past year traveling throughout Los Angeles County talking to voters – Democrats, Republicans, Independents from all ethnic and religious groups. They don’t agree on much, but they all agree they feel less safe than they did when Gascon was elected and they want new leadership in the D.A.’s Office,” Hochman said.

The numbers have not changed terribly much in the campaign since January, showing a steadiness in the public’s loathing of Gascon.  

Prior to the March primary, polls showed Gascon’s favorable/unfavorable rating also near that same two-to-one underwater mark and in the primary itself Gascon got 25% of the vote.  That shows his public support has literally not budged in more than five months – if anything, it has dipped even further.

The poll does show about 35% of voters have yet to make a choice, which is also bad news for Gascon as he’d have to get more than 85% of the currently undecided vote to pass Hochman and that’s not happening for two reasons. First, undecideds almost never break one way or the other in that kind of percentage.  

Second, incumbents tend to lock their vote in earlier.  With only 11 weeks to go it is a simple fact that undecideds break towards the challenger.  In other words, if voters have yet to commit to a known quality – or lack thereof, in this case – they will not be doing so in overwhelming numbers.

Of that 35% undecided vote, Hochman can expect – short of his running naked down the freeway during rush hour – about two-thirds of it.  That would put Hochman’s support in the 65-70% range.

The other numbers in the poll are equally discouraging for Gascon.  His unfavorable/favorable number has changed little and mirror the overall poll result – 45% of people have an unfavorable (most of that very unfavorable, in fact) to a favorable rate of 21%

Hochman, who as the challenger is less well known to voters (hence a high “don’t know” response,) has a net positive favorable rating of 35% to 7%

Going even further into the numbers, 60% of those surveyed say LA is less safe than it was before Gascon became DA and only 5% of people say the community is safer now.  Of course, that 5% may be made up of the felons and criminals Gascon has either not charged, helped get out of prison early, or given sweetheart plea deals.

Being the Times, though, the story did have to find an “expert” saying that crime really isn’t up that much at all.  According to state Department of Justice statistics, that statement is false.

The Times also tried to at least partially frame the issue as one of being forward looking or going back to the bad ol’ days of things like jail and such:

For Jody Armour, a law professor at USC, “it’s really a referendum on whose vision of criminal justice and public safety” resonates with the public.

“This election will be a referendum on whether L.A. really wants to embrace criminal justice reform and the spirit of the progressive prosecutor movement that re-imagines safety as being not about longer sentences, because the data shows that longer sentences don’t necessarily make us safer,” Armour said.

I would dare Armour to say “that longer sentences don’t necessarily make us safer” right to the face of a family member of one of the countless people victimized specifically because Gascon did not choose  the incarceration option. One assumes the response would be a string of expletives.

And the Times confirmed one other aspect of Gascon’s campaign:  it is not about crime or LA or safety but, of course, about desperately trying to tie Hochman to Donald Trump:

“Mr. Hochman is gambling on voters forgetting that he remained a Republican until 2022–that’s six years of Donald Trump’s hate and bigotry,” Gascón campaign strategist Jamarah Hayner wrote. “In Los Angeles, that’s a risky bet.”

But that would mean Gascon would have to get that word out successfully, something that his paltry fund raising will almost certainly make impossible.  As of June 30, Hochman had 23 times the amount of money Gascon has in his campaign coffers.  

I’ll take that bet, Ms. Hayner.