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THE TARRANCE GROUP
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dsackett@tarrance.com

MEMORANDUM

TO: CARLY FOR CALIFORNIA COMMITTEE

NATIONAL REPUBLICAN SENATORIAL COMMITTEE

FROM: DAVE SACKETT

RE: CALIFORNIA STATEWIDE TRACKING ON US SENATE RACE

DATE: OCTOBER 20, 2010

________________________________________________________________________

The Tarrance Group is pleased to present the Carly for California Committee and the
National Republican Senatorial Committee with the key findings from a tracking survey
of voter attitudes in California. These key findings are based on telephone interviews
with N=600 “likely” registered voters throughout the state. Responses to this survey
were gathered October 17-19, 2010 and the confidence interval associated with a sample
of this type is + 4.1%.

KEY FINDINGS

¾ The race for the US Senate in California is an actual dead heat, with both Fiorina and
Boxer standing right at forty-four percent (44%) of the vote. Six percent (6%) of
voters are voting for one of the other candidates, and 5% are undecided.

¾ From a geographic perspective, Fiorina has broken the fifty percent level in the
Sacramento DMA, and now stands with 51% of the vote and a lead of +18 points.
She also has opened up a lead among voters in the Los Angeles DMA, despite
Boxer’s efforts to outmuscle her with a greater number of gross rating points. Fiorina
is also rock solid in the smaller base Republican North country and Central valley
markets.

¾ The big challenge remaining for Fiorina in terms of geography is to establish a

stronger beachhead in the San Francisco media market. Fiorina must work to
minimize the Boxer advantage among voters in this region of the state so that Boxer
cannot come out of this DMA with a big enough plurality to overcome her deficits in
Los Angeles and the other major markets.

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¾ Fiorina has a ten point advantage among men, and has really started to close the gap
among women voters, but still has some work do among women, particularly 55+
women and Independent women.

¾ Fiorina is also in solid shape in terms of her partisan intensity, as she stands with
better than 80% of the vote among Republicans and is on a trajectory to reach beyond
90% by election day. At the same time, Boxer is down at only seventy-six percent
(76%) of the vote among Democrats, and there are 15% of Democrats who indicate
they would vote for Fiorina.

¾ The final battle will be fought among the Decline to State and Independent voters.
Fiorina capture forty-seven percent (47%) of the vote among these ticket-splitters and
leads by 13 points. However, she needs to improve upon this and get her ballot
strength among ticket-splitters up into the mid 50’s.

¾ Boxer has failed to make Fiorina an unacceptable alternative in the final weeks of the
election – as she has always been able to do in the past. Both candidates enter the
last 11 days at parity in terms of their image ratings, with both of them at a pure 1:1
favorable to unfavorable ratio.

¾ It is also important to note that Boxer’s negatives are fully institutionalized to the
point where she has never once broken the 45% level in terms of her ballot strength,
and there are a “hard” fifty-three percent (53%) of voters who believe it is time for a
new person.

CONCLUSIONS / STRATEGIC RECOMMENDATIONS

¾ The final eleven days of the campaign are entirely about weight of message. The
trajectory of the last two weeks of tracking clearly shows that the Fiorina campaign
has been pitch perfect in terms of message, and have a message arc that can and will
close the deal.

¾ The Boxer campaign has also shown that they are now past the end of their message
arc and do not have a playbook for what to do thematically in the last eleven days.
They have already tried to prosecute the messages they believe would render Fiorina
unelectable – worst CEO, right-wing extremist, outsourcing, etc – and none of them
have performed as they needed them to.

¾ Boxer’s only option at this point is pure weight of message, particularly in the Los
Angeles and San Francisco DMA’s, to try and dominate the focus of the ballot
question among the remaining undecided voters on Fiorina enough that they will
hesitate and “scatter” to one of the minor party candidates.

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¾ At the point in time when the Fiorina campaign is able to generate the weight of
message, in the form of gross ratings points, in the San Francisco and Los Angeles
markets, to be able to bring focus back onto Boxer, the campaign will be able to
convert the remaining Independents and undecided voters that it needs to capture a
plurality on election day.

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