New Polling: Sam Liccardo Leads Evan Low by Wide Margin
Liccardo is Clear Frontrunner, Dominates in Fundraising, Endorsements, and Polling
SAN JOSE, CA — Today, Lake Research Partners released a new poll of likely November 2024 general election voters in California’s 16th Congressional District. The poll shows former San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo with a strong +11% lead in the two-candidate race to replace the retiring Congresswoman Anna Eshoo. Previous polling showed Liccardo with a +10% lead in the initial ballot ask, which increased to +12% after additional balanced positive information on each candidate. This new poll follows Liccardo reporting over $1.6 million raised in the second quarter fundraising report on June 30th.
Now Liccardo leads Low by +11% with 39% of the vote, followed by Low with 28%, in the initial ballot ask where only party registration and ballot designations are given. Liccardo leads Low in every region of the district, every major demographic group, across the ideological spectrum from progressive and very liberal to moderate and conservative, and holds a solid lead across party lines.
Liccardo increases his lead over Low to +12%, with 46% supporting Liccardo and Low 34%, after additional balanced positive information on each candidate.
“This new data confirms what our campaign has been hearing at the doors,” Gil Rubinstein, spokesperson for the campaign said. “Voters are hungry for an independent leader that delivers results. Sam Liccardo is that leader, and the voters in California’s 16th congressional district agree. He is the frontrunner in this campaign.”
The poll was conducted from June 24-27, 2024, and surveyed 600 likely general election voters in California’s 16th Congressional District.
Currently, Liccardo has the most Congressional endorsements in the race, with more than a dozen current members of Congress endorsing his campaign. Liccardo is endorsed by the Sierra Club, the New Democrat Coalition, NorCal Carpenters Union, Laborers’ International Union of North America (LiUNA), Defend the Vote, California High School Democrats, and more than 100 state and local elected officials and community leaders. In the primary election, he was endorsed by the Mercury News and the San Francisco Chronicle (general election endorsement decision pending). A full endorsement list can be seen here.
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About Sam Liccardo
Sam Liccardo is running for Congress to focus Washington on the big issues like homelessness, crime, and the punishing cost of living. To a Congress that has been called the least productive in decades, Liccardo says “Let’s Get it Done!” on the problems that matter most to the Peninsula, Silicon Valley, and the Coastside.
As Mayor of San José, the Bay Area’s largest city, Liccardo’s innovative efforts to confront homelessness include pioneering the conversion of motels to housing in 2016, four years prior to California adopting it as a statewide model. He piloted the development of quick-build prefabricated housing communities that were constructed at a fraction of the time and cost of traditional apartments, helping thousands come off the streets. Liccardo also launched a successful program that employs unhoused residents cleaning the city in exchange for housing and pay (“San José Bridge”). Though San José long struggled with growing homelessness, it became one of the very few California cities to reduce street homelessness in Liccardo’s final year in office, 2022.
Under Liccardo, San José resolved chronic deficits, reduced city debt, and improved its credit rating, particularly through a 2016 ballot measure that saved taxpayers $3 billion over three decades. He took on the gun lobby and crafted a first-in-the-nation requirement for gun owners to pay annual fees to support violence-prevention programs and to purchase liability insurance. He launched San José Clean Energy for the city’s one million residents which now procures 95% of its electricity from renewable and GHG-free sources. Liccardo also led a series of successful ballot measures to preserve open space and hillsides, rebuild city streets and other infrastructure, and provide hundreds of millions in funding for housing affordable to vital workers such as teachers, nurses, firefighters, and police officers. Liccardo led efforts to expand BART and was part of the regional coalition that supported the successful efforts to electrify Caltrain.
Prior to his service in elected office, Liccardo prosecuted felony crimes of sexual assault and child exploitation in the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office, and also served as a federal prosecutor in the Southern District of California. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School, Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and Georgetown University. His published works have appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and other national publications. He and his wife, Jessica García-Kohl, live in San José.
About California’s 16th Congressional District
California’s 16th is an open Congressional District that covers parts of Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, home to Silicon Valley. The district covers all or part of the cities of Menlo Park, Los Altos, Woodside, Pacifica, Half Moon Bay, Atherton, Pescadero, Portola Valley, Campbell, Los Altos Hills, Los Gatos, Monte Sereno, Mountain View, Palo Alto, San Jose, Saratoga and Stanford.