With less than a month remaining before the Nov. 5 election, challenger Nathan Hochman is 30 percentage points ahead of incumbent Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón in a new poll.
If the election were held today, according to the survey from the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, co-sponsored by The Times, 51% of likely L.A. County voters would choose Hochman, and 21% would cast a ballot for Gascón. That leaves 28% undecided.
Hochman has improved his standing since August 18, when the last Times-UC Berkeley poll of the race had the former federal prosecutor winning by 25%.
“It’s not even close,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of the poll. In order to keep his seat, he said, Gascón would have to significantly alter voter perceptions in the coming weeks.
“This now appears to be Hochman’s race to lose. He’s way ahead,” DiCamillo said.
In an interview Friday, Gascón said he “came from way behind in 2020,” and he anticipates doing so again to win by “a tight margin” next month.
“I feel very bullish about the final outcome,” he said. “When people ask me about the polls, I say it’s the poll on election day that really counts.”
While Gascón did lag far behind incumbent Jackie Lacey in a 2020 primary, he received a huge groundswell of endorsements and outside donations in the summer leading up to his general election victory. And at no point did he face polling this dire.
Of those who support Hochman, past president of the L.A. City Ethics Commission and assistant U.S. attorney general, 66% said an “extremely important” factor was the need to “reduce turmoil and bring needed change to the district attorney’s office.”
For Gascón, a former LAPD assistant chief and two-term San Francisco district attorney, 55% of his backers identified “his efforts to increase police accountability” as an “extremely important” factor.
Although 43% of all likely voters surveyed said their overall opinion of Hochman is either “strongly favorable” or “somewhat favorable,” only 23% said the same of the incumbent. About half of those surveyed held unfavorable views of Gascón, echoing polls during the crowded primary earlier this year.
With election day rapidly approaching, many voters remain on the fence about their options: 49% surveyed said they had “no opinion” on Hochman and 26% said the same of Gascón.
Still, the proportion of voters who are undecided has fallen 7% since the August poll. And the majority of voters who chose a candidate since then “are mostly going to Hochman,” DiCamillo said.
The candidates are set to debate each other Tuesday at 5 p.m. in a live broadcast co-hosted by The Times and KNX, and will field questions about key issues in the race.
In a statement to The Times, Hochman said the poll numbers “match what I’ve heard from voters throughout L.A. County over the past year.”
“People do not feel as safe as they did before George Gascón took office and they want a D.A. who will prosecute crime, restore balance and improve public safety,” he said.
The new poll — which has a 3-point margin of error and was administered online in English and Spanish between Sept. 25 and Oct. 1 — asked 908 likely county voters how they feel about “crime and threats to public safety in Los Angeles County.” Those concerns are “a big problem” or “somewhat of a problem,” according to 94% of respondents, while only 5% said they are “not a problem” and 1% were undecided.
That’s bad news for Gascón, DiCamillo said, as it reflects “voter perceptions” that crime is a big problem in L.A. County. “And they’re not crediting Gascón with doing much about it,” he said.
Violent crime has jumped by about 8% from 2019 to 2023 in L.A. County, and property crime has climbed by 14%, according to California Department of Justice data. Police data do show some violent crime trending down in the city of L.A. this year, as Gascón has pointed out on the campaign trail.
Gascón has repeatedly noted that jurisdictions with more traditional prosecutors, such as Orange and Sacramento counties, saw larger violent crime spikes in the same time frame.
But none of that is resonating with voters.
“Voters don’t know data,” said Roy Behr, a political consultant for multiple Democrat campaigns across California. “What they know are anecdotes. And over the last four years there have been a massive number of televised anecdotes with store break-ins or other violent acts that have created the perception of crime run amok.”
Gascón acknowledged that it’s “frustrating” when people blame him for “things I have no control of,” such as police not making arrests in high-profile cases or the actions of city attorneys.
“How can it be my fault that a mansion in [Bel Air] was vandalized?” he asked, referencing an incident in the city of L.A., which has its own prosecutor’s office that handles most minor crimes.
More than 60% of voters polled cited “violent crimes that can result in serious injury or death,” “muggings or robberies on the street or in transit” and “smash and grab thefts at retail stores” among the areas of crime they’re concerned about.
Hochman has seized on viral videos of robberies and incidents such as the break-in at the mayor’s mansion, often connecting highly visible crimes to the air of “lawlessness” he insists Gascón created.
Hochman’s campaign can’t always connect specific incidents to policy decisions made by the incumbent, but that may not matter when people head to the polls. Attitudes on crime seem to be changing more broadly — as reflected in polls showing overwhelming support for Proposition 36, which would impose stricter penalties for retail theft and crimes involving fentanyl.
Recent polling shows 59% of L.A. County voters support the measure, which would in effect replace Proposition 47, a landmark criminal justice reform bill co-authored by Gascón.
In that political climate, Behr said, Gascón’s re-election bid is akin to “running up a cliff.”
“Even if there had been no polling done on the D.A.’s race whatsoever, the Prop. 36 numbers in L.A. County would provide very solid evidence of where this race is going,” said Dan Schnur, a former advisor to Republican politicians who teaches political communications at USC. “It’s almost impossible to imagine a candidate like Gascón winning in a county that’s passing [Proposition] 36 by such an immense margin.”
Despite the fact that the poll results seem to overwhelmingly favor Hochman, DiCamillo cautioned people against writing the contest off at this stage.
“It’s not over,” DiCamillo said. “There’s more to come.”
Schnur, however, was all but ready to declare Hochman as L.A.’s next district attorney.
“If Gascón does pull this out, our great grandchildren will be reading about it in history books,” he said.
