New California U.S. Senate Poll Shows Schiff Continuing Large Lead Over Garvey

A new Activote U.S. Senate poll released this week found that Congressman Adam Schiff (D-CA) is continuing to stay well ahead of former baseball star Steve Garvey (R) by a 66%-34% gap, albeit with a huge margin of error attached to the poll.

Previous polls, all done by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC), have found Schiff leading Garvey by between 61% to 64%, with Garvey garnering between 37% and 31%. However, as the Globe has noted, PPIC polls in the past have been far from reliable, including a PPIC poll conducted shortly before the March primary which had Garvey losing to Congresswoman Katie Porter (D-CA) for the second primary slot. Activote has been similarly seen in the same light in the past, especially with their small 400 voter sample sizes and 5% margin of error.

Nonetheless, with few polls on the U.S. Senate race in recent months, campaigns have been desperate for more data, which Activote delivered on Monday. According to the poll, Schiff leads in every demographic amongst voters except for Republican voters. The Activote even found that traditionally strong Republican areas are falling to Schiff. This includes rural voters, with Schiff leading Garvey 59% to 41%, and voter 65 and older, with Schiff also leads 53% to 47%.

The poll also found that centrist voters lean slightly towards Schiff, with Schiff getting a favorable 55% to 45% split with Garvey. 26% of moderate right voters are also reportedly on Schiff’s side, with 9% of voters on the right also siding with Schiff. However, the poll was immediately brought into question by election pollsters and analysts on Tuesday and Wednesday, with many finding the results to be way off base.

“The Activote poll is laughable,” explained Stephanie Lewis, a pollster in Southern California, to the Globe on Wednesday. “But it is important to bring this poll up and show just how off it is, because people could be reading into it. 400 voters is not a decent sample size like you said, a 5% margin of error is huge, even bigger than the PPIC scores. This is not a good poll. But, since it is being used, it needs to be brought out as misleading, even worse than the PPIC polls.

“The Globe has brought up the fact that the race is a lot closer than people think, and that is very much true. Garvey is likely near 40% all said and done, and is definitely leading in rural areas. Add in that margin of error, and you are close to 40%. Funny how that works.

“I keep saying this, but we need a UC Berkeley IGS poll or another one of the accurate places to show where we are at. If UC Berkeley is saying 34%, then yeah, expectations should be lowered. But the polls in the last several months are ignoring many key areas, especially likely voters. Not just calling up people randomly on cell phones, but actually marking down likely voters. That is key.

“At the very least, lowest possible score, Garvey gets around a 35%, similar to where Trump is right now in polls. But again, Garvey is big amongst Latinos, has that outlier Dodger and Padres support bloc, and is taking advantage of people not liking Schiff. That’s really how it is right now out there.”

More Senate polls are expected later this month.