Citizen Like Obama wrote:
That is my concern (however remote the possibility) and why I will be voting for Ms. Feinstein in the primary. I still think Emken will be number 2. She is the one endorsed by the state GOP and most people don't know any of the Republican contenders (including Orly) which means they will probably select the name they see most often (mailers, etc.). Heck the only people in my office who know about her are the people who have listened to me talk about it (and we have about 90% voter turnout so these are people who at least pay some attention to politics).
Name recognition is a powerful thing, especially downballot. (I realize that a U.S. Senate primary ordinarily wouldn't qualify as downballot, but the California Republicans seem to be doing their best to change that this time.) There are a lot of people who throw out mailers unread. There are also going to be people who know that they don't want to vote for Feinstein, but don't know a lot about any of the Republican candidates. There's a decent chance that they'll vote for the name that sounds familiar, especially if they don't quite remember exactly why it's familiar.
There's virtually no polling on this race. The last thing I saw was the early April SUSA one, which showed DiFi at 51% and nobody else over 2%. We're two weeks out, and Emken's website shows her next event as Thursday. If that's her level of campaign commitment right now, I'm going to bet there's not a lot of internal polling going on either.
There's nothing about this primary that would stun me except Feinstein not coming in 1st. I wouldn't be shocked if Emken comes in 2nd. I wouldn't be shocked if Orly comes in 2nd. I wouldn't be stunned if one of the other nominal Democrats comes in 2nd.
I also wouldn't be shocked if the difference between 2nd and 4th is in the low thousands of votes. What's the recount procedure in that case? Anyone know?
I do know that Orly is going to scream and sue if it's not her in 2nd, but that's about it.