The road to redemption for the Republican Party in California may be even rougher than November's statewide electoral drubbing indicated, as a new Los Angeles Times/USC poll shows a deep reluctance among many voters to side with a GOP candidate and broad swaths of the state holding views on government's role that conflict with Republican tenets.
California voters surveyed in the poll repudiated the party's stance on illegal immigration by endorsing a host of positions intended to make it easier for the undocumented to gain legal status. Their support for same-sex marriage outnumbered that opposing any legal recognition by more than 3 to 1. Californians also endorsed an assertive role for government in protecting minority citizens, regulating corporations and helping the poor and needy, and rejected arguments that an activist role for government had harmed the fiber of American society.
The negative overlay both explained and helped determine the fates of the party's candidates in November. As a GOP tide swept the nation, Republicans here lost all statewide offices, with one contest, for attorney general, still unresolved but leaning toward the Democrat. Republicans here also failed to gain any congressional seats and lost a legislative seat.
Strikingly, almost one in five California voters said they would never cast a ballot for a Republican. Among Latinos, that rose to almost one in three. Only 5% of California voters were as emphatically anti-Democrat.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-poll-20101119,0,1562210.story
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