Democrats Harris, Sanchez likely to emerge from California’s Senate primary Tuesday
Democrats Kamala Harris and Loretta Sanchez have scarcely criticized one another during their year-long campaign for the open Senate seat in California.
But that would change if, as polls during the past week have predicted, both women emerge as the winners of Tuesday’s primary, the first leg in the race to replace retiring Democrat Barbara Boxer.
A general-election face-off between Harris, California’s attorney general, and Sanchez, who has been a House member for two decades, could become one of the season’s most contentious races, testing party loyalties and political alliances between racial and ethnic groups.
Under the state’s primary system, the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, advance to the general election. Harris has consistently led in public polling since declaring her candidacy 18 months ago. Sanchez has polled a distant, but solid second. A survey released on Friday by the Field Poll showed Harris with 30 percent support among likely voters, followed by Sanchez with 14 percent. An NBC News-Wall Street Journal-Marist poll that came out Thursday put Harris’s support at 37 percent, with 19 percent for Sanchez.
The Field Poll shows Sanchez leading Harris among Latinos 32 to 21 percent and among voters under 30 by 29 to 20 percent. Harris leads in all other categories, including age, geography and other racial and ethnic groups.
Polls also have consistently shown that a large number of voters — between 24 and 30 percent — remain undecided in a race that features Harris, who would be the chamber’s only African-American woman and has some national buzz, and Sanchez, who has the chance to make history as one of the first Latinas elected to the Senate.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/06/06/democrats-harris-sanchez-likely-to-emerge-from-california-senate-primary-tuesday/
