The California Democratic Party is launching a new statewide polling project to assess a wide-open governor’s race.
The California Voter Opinion, Trend and Engagement Research Index will be publicly released on March 24th with tracking surveys released periodically through early May.
The move comes a week after Party Chair Rusty Hicks released an open letter calling on low polling Democratic candidates to consider dropping out of the race to prevent the party being locked out by Republican candidates.
Hicks says the new surveys aren’t meant to shame candidates, but to bring clarity to the race.
"This is simply conducting credible, real-time publicly available information. And if you feel shamed by information and data that’s available, I think everyone has to inquire exactly why."
Only one candidate dropped out before last Friday’s deadline… leaving eight Democrats and two Republicans in the gubernatorial race.
The first index survey will be a two-thousand sample baseline survey of likely voters, while following ones will track 12-hundred likely voters.