'X' factor in recall: Who will vote?

Laurie Benton says she has never been so aggressively glad-handed, back-slapped, and chatted up by perfect strangers in her whole life.

"I've gotten mailings from five candidates," says the San Fernando Valley homemaker, "fliers on two citizen's initiatives, driving directions to the nearest voting booths, and two guides on how to vote absentee."

Ms. Benton is part of a growing group of Californians - newly registered voters with no party affiliation - who are making it all but impossible to forecast how next week's gubernatorial recall vote will turn out.

In addition to large numbers of first-time or independent voters, the recall process is highly unusual: The campaign time frame is compressed and no other offices are at stake. But two hot-button ballot initiatives are. Together, it's enough to twist pollsters and party strategists into pretzels trying to gauge how the candidates stack up. The first new poll since the major debate last week, for instance, seems to show a big advance for Arnold Schwarzenegger. Fully two-thirds of likely voters will opt for the ouster of Gov. Gray Davis (D), according to the CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll. On the question of who should replace the governor, Mr. Schwarzenegger leads at 40 percent of likely voters, with 25 percent preferring Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante (D) and 18 percent Tom McClintock (R).

Yet these results differ sharply from previous polls by other organizations. How much is due to a post-debate surge for the Republican actor, and how much relates to differing methodologies? The poll drew fire Monday from Davis backers, who in some other recent polls have appeared to be within striking distance of saving the governor's job.

Pollsters themselves say there's no easy answer. Only the final ballot itself will tell.

"The country needs to understand that this election is truly unprecedented in terms of trying to guess which people will come to vote," says Susan Pinkus, director of the Los Angeles Times Poll. "Usually we look to past elections to figure out which voters will come and which candidates they like," says Ms. Pinkus. "This election has so many variables and quirks [that] the pollsters and pundits are likely to be way off the mark."

The state's 2.2 million independents (out of 14.2 million registered voters) are one key unknown in the ballot. There are now more registered voters for the recall than there were for the previous gubernatorial election. Most of some 260,000 newly registered voters claim no party affiliation. "The number of brand-new voters and the growing phenomenon of Independent voters is spotlighting the bizarre ending to this most unusual election," says Elizabeth Garrett, a political scientist at the University of Southern California. "The whole electorate is being energized either by the recall or their favorite candidate, but nobody seems to know who the new voters are or exactly how to go about attracting them."

Because California's recall is a specially called election, coinciding with no regularly scheduled vote on other candidates, no one has a clue as to which voters will show up to vote. Some pollsters wonder aloud if the recall could produce a surprise winner in the same way that Jesse Ventura came out of "nowhere" to win the governorship of Minnesota.

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