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Two great things about this poll:

1)When imcumbents, regardless of party affiliation, find themselves running neck-and-neck with their challenger, that means they're in very deep trouble. For most incumbents, reelection campaigns are mere cakewalks, and they remain well ahead of their opponent throughout the campaign. But if they're running neck-and-neck, what that really means is that a significant percentage of voters have already decided they like Simon more than Davis, but simply aren't willing to "officially switch" in their minds just yet because there's still over three months until the election and they think "Hey, anything can happen" so they publicly stick with Davis. But that "anything" rarely does happen, so in the end most of them will make the "official" switch in their minds and end up voting for Simon on Election Day.

2) All polls have a Democratic bias. I don't mean that in the sense that, say, NPR is biased towards RATS, only that all political opinion polls end up overstating the RAT popularity levels by a few points. Nobody's ever been able to prove exactly why this is, but many (including myself) think this is purely because we're still living under a PC cloud, where millions of GOP voters are unwilling to publicly state their true preference because they're afraid of being ostracized at work, called a "racist" or "bigot," etc. For many of these people, they're so scared they won't even admit a Republican preference to an anonymous person on the other end of the phone who doesn't even know who they called because the polling computer just made up a phone number at random. But then on election day, the go in and vote a straight GOP ticket.

Both of these taken together means Simon almost certainly has at least a 5-8 point lead over Davis at the moment, and quite possibly more.

You're right about the numbers, but I think you're wrong about the reason.

From what I understand, Republicans tend to show up at the polls in greater numbers than Democrats. This is something very difficult to quantify in polls, since everyone says they're going to vote. (Nobody likes telling pollsters that they won't).

In the end, then, in a normal election, about 5% fewer Democrats will show up. So if we had a 50/50 election, the Republican would win 55-45. In this case, we can see that the Democratic candidate is enormously unappealing. So I think we'll see democratic turnout drop by another 5%, so Simon, if the numbers hold roughly as they do, should win by 10-12%.

If the greens gain any kind of traction, it could be even more of a disaster for Davis. They might capture 5% of the vote, and at least 4 of that 5% is going to come from Davis.

So Simon might win by as much as 18 points with all that taken into account.

So what hope does Davis have to win? Well, I find it intriguing that even the pro choice crowd prefers Davis by only 16%. This means that either pro-choice people are unusually comfortable with Simon's neutrality on the issue, pro-choicers are simply not well infomed yet, or many of them are too appalled by the Davis record to make this their primary issue. Pro-life folks support Simon with a crushing 36% majority (meaning 86% support Simon), so I would think Davis' best strategy would be to run some fear-mongering pro-abortion commercials to try and win back his base. The Simon camp should be ready with a response. Something funny. Hmmmm ....

Simon: I realize a lot of you are concerned about the abortion issue. Well, so am I - and so is my wife. I'm pro-life, she's pro-choice. We argue about it all the time, but in the end our response has to be to respect both points of view.
The Governor of California cannot ban abortion, even if it was my fondest wish. And if I tried, my wife would have to kill me. So don't worry about abortion this year, whether you're for it or against it. The law on abortion isn't going to change.
We have more important issues to worry about, things we all agree on. Better schools. A sound budget, instead of a runaway train careening out of control. What we need is someone willing to think past the current crisis to the future.
And that man isn't Gray Davis.
Vote Simon, the thinking person's governor.

It is reassuring that the global warming issue doesn't seem to be helping Davis. I suspect that for every person who applauds the anti-SUV bill, there is someone who's switched his vote to Simon because of it. I notice that women particularly like SUVs, and this might be part of what's closing the gender gap from its traditional levels.