Brown pulling away

Jerry Brown's pulling away in his quest to return to the California Governor's office and now leads Meg Whitman 53-42.

Given how many tens of millions of dollars Whitman spent on defining herself to the voters, it's somewhat remarkable how few of them she could get to like her. 55% see her unfavorably to only 36% with a positive opinion. Brown, on the other hand, has had voters warm up to him somewhat over the course of the campaign. His favorability ratio is 48/44, compared to 37/39 when PPP first took a look at the race back in May. His positives have increased by 11 points while his negatives have only gone up by 5.

Whitman has a 14 point lead with independents. But Brown has 86% of the Democratic vote locked up while Whitman is getting only 80% of Republicans. She would have needed more crossover support than that to win this race. Democrats are looking very solid at the top of the ticket in California.

Full results here