On June 3, the Field Poll released this California U.S. Senate primary poll. The results: Kamala Harris 30%, Loretta Sanchez 14%, Phil Wyman 4%, Tom Del Beccaro 4%, Greg Conlon 4%, Duf Sundheim 3%, Ron Unz 3%, Gail Lightfoot 3%, other Republican candidates 2%, all other candidates 6%, undecided or not voting 27%.

Among the listed candidates, Harris and Sanchez are Democrats. Gail Lightfoot is a Libertarian. All the others mentioned are Republicans.

In April and May, news organizations sponsored two U.S. Senate debates, and invited only Harris, Sanchez, Del Beccaro, Sundheim, and Unz. They based their decision to invite just these five candidates on polls that only mentioned these five candidates. Naturally, those polls said those five candidates had the most support; the result was pre-ordained. It is amazing that the new Field Poll shows that three candidates who were not invited have equal or greater support than some of the candidates who were invited. One would have thought that the publicity from those two televised debates would have put the included candidates above all others, but that is not true.

Although the Independent Party of Oregon had a government-administered presidential primary last month, that primary will not determine whom the party nominates. The party will choose its nominee in July, with a mail ballot to all its registered members. Instant runoff voting will be used. Oregon permits fusion, so the party is free to nominate someone who is also the nominee of another party.

See this article. The article says the party would not be free to nominate someone who sought the nomination of a major party and lost the presidential primary, but based on precedent, that is not correct. In 1980 John Anderson ran in the Oregon Republican presidential primary and was still permitted to be listed in November as an independent candidate. However, it is unlikely that anyone who ran in the Democratic or Republican presidential primary in Oregon would want to be listed on the November ballot as the Independent Party’s nominee in any event.

The Hill has this piece by Jill Stein, on general election presidential debates.