Within the race for Los Angeles County sheriff, retired Lengthy Seashore Police Chief Robert Luna has a formidable, 10-point lead amongst possible voters over the incumbent, Alex Villanueva, a brand new ballot exhibits.

With little greater than a month till the Nov. 8 runoff election, 36% of possible voters polled stated they’re planning to solid ballots for Luna, whereas 26% stated they favor Villanueva, based on the ballot by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Research, which was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Occasions. Possible voters are those that have voted in a latest previous election and who expressed a excessive curiosity in voting in November.

One other 36% of possible voters stay undecided, the ballot discovered — a crucial bloc of unclaimed votes that leaves the race nonetheless up for grabs.

“It’s nonetheless an enormous proportion undecided,” stated Mark DiCamillo, who directed the ballot and has been surveying California voters for many years. Villanueva, he added, “does look like trailing, which is a big discovering. Most incumbents, until there’s a significant scandal or one thing that actually is dragging them down, they often survive reelection.”

Villanueva’s flagging efficiency within the ballot highlights how he has turn into a polarizing determine mired in a gentle stream of controversies throughout his first time period in workplace: Forty-four % of possible voters stated they view him unfavorably and 29% have a positive opinion of him.

Dislike of Luna, in the meantime, is decrease — 33% of possible voters view him favorably, whereas 13% view him unfavorably — however he stays an unknown to many citizens. Greater than half of possible voters — 54% — stated they haven’t any opinion of Luna, and, even amongst those that say they help him, 1 in 5 don’t have an opinion of him, the ballot discovered.

These numbers underscore how the race for sheriff is basically shaping as much as be a referendum on Villanueva.

In his 4 years heading the nation’s largest sheriff’s division, Villanueva has emerged as a brash, unpredictable chief who introduced himself as an antidote to “woke” liberal forces and shattered his company’s ties to the remainder of the county’s authorities by aggressively attacking members of the Board of Supervisors and the watchdogs appointed to maintain the sheriff in test.

Villanueva got here beneath renewed hearth final month when sheriff’s deputies searched the house and workplace of county Supervisor Sheila Kuehl and others as a part of a legal investigation that has been extensively seen as political retaliation in opposition to considered one of Villanueva’s harshest critics. Solely 39% of possible voters polled felt the raids and different public corruption probes opened by the Sheriff’s Division had been official.

A earlier Berkeley ballot performed in August discovered that 31% of L.A. County registered voters polled supported Luna, whereas 27% supported Villanueva, with help for the candidates falling largely alongside political strains. Within the present ballot, Luna’s edge amongst all registered voters has expanded to five share factors. With the marketing campaign now in its last stretch, nonetheless, the hole amongst possible voters offers a extra correct image of the state of the race.

As within the earlier ballot, Luna remains to be favored strongly by liberals and Democrats, whereas the incumbent sheriff is extra common amongst conservative and Republican voters. That’s a weak spot for the sheriff as Democrats considerably outnumber Republicans in L.A. County. The 2 candidates break up nonpartisan voters — with 29% for Villanueva and 32% for Luna.

“Villanueva clearly has better title ID, and loads of voters, significantly Westside or Democratic-leaning, simply know that they don’t like Villanueva,” stated Brian VanRiper, a political advisor who has labored on quite a few Los Angeles Metropolis Council races. “So that they’ll vote for anybody working in opposition to Villanueva.”

Villanueva, in the meantime, has been making an attempt to taint Luna for voters by calling into query his credibility and {qualifications}. At debates and in different public feedback he has jabbed at Luna for being a longtime Republican who registered as a Democrat lately and has alleged {that a} collection of scandals performed out within the Lengthy Seashore Police Division whereas Luna was chief.

At a latest debate co-hosted by the Los Angeles Occasions, Villanueva was requested by a moderator about statements he’s made which might be extensively perceived as disparaging towards the Black neighborhood. Villanueva tried to show the eye on Luna, alleging he had mishandled an incident in Lengthy Seashore, through which a member of the division’s murder unit drew a household tree of convicted killers with a noose across the neck of a Black man.

VanRiper stated Villanueva’s technique was to not take the questions significantly and “simply launch haymakers at Luna — and I feel he executed on that technique.” However, he added, he doesn’t suppose Villanueva satisfied individuals to not vote for Luna.

The ballot discovered that 45% of possible voters who’re Black favor Luna, whereas simply 16% stated they might vote for Villanueva.

Throughout that very same debate, Villanueva painted Luna as somebody who can be a “puppet” for the county Board of Supervisors, which controls the Sheriff’s Division’s funds, whereas Luna blamed the sheriff for inflicting the bitter relationships Villanueva has with different county leaders. Requested in regards to the controversial investigation involving Kuehl, Luna stated he would have referred the case to an outdoor company.

Possible voters had been fairly evenly break up on whether or not they perceived the Sheriff’s Division’s corruption investigations, together with the latest raid on Kuehl’s dwelling, as official or as an act of political retaliation. Whereas just below 4 in 10 possible voters stated the raid was official, 3 in 10 felt it was retaliatory. The remainder stated they didn’t have an opinion or weren’t certain.

In one of many ballot’s most stark findings, a big majority of possible voters who favor Luna thought the raid was retaliatory, whereas a big majority who help Villanueva stated they thought it was official.

Seventy % of possible voters who favor Villanueva thought the probes had been official, whereas 7% thought they had been retaliatory. In the meantime, 62% of possible voters who favor Luna thought they had been retaliatory, whereas 22% thought they had been official.

“You see the clearest distinction in help primarily based on how the persons are viewing … the investigations which might be happening,” stated DiCamillo. “If individuals suppose it’s political retaliation, almost all of them are voting for Luna. That may be a key vulnerability for the incumbent sheriff.”

The brand new ballot numbers usually mirror what was extensively seen as Villanueva’s poor displaying within the June main election, the place he acquired 31% of the vote in opposition to a crowded area of challengers. Luna acquired 26% of the vote, with the remaining votes break up between the seven different candidates, all of whom have since endorsed Luna.

VanRiper stated it’s “extremely unlikely” that the 69% of voters who voted in opposition to Villanueva within the main will flip to now vote for him. And within the normal election, he stated, there will probably be a better voter turnout that can possible skew much more liberal.

“I don’t see a path for Villanueva until the polling is manner off,” VanRiper stated.

The Berkeley IGS ballot was performed Sept. 22-26 amongst 4,293 Los Angeles County registered voters, of whom 3,356 had been deemed prone to vote within the November election. The pattern was weighted to match census and voter registration benchmarks. Due to weighting, exact estimates of the margin of error are troublesome, however the outcomes are estimated to have a margin of error of roughly 2 share factors in both route for the total registered voter pattern and roughly 2.5 factors for the possible voter pattern.