A new poll shows criminal law attorney Nathan Hochman with a sizable lead over Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón in the race for the incumbent’s seat.

If the Nov. 5 election were held today, 45% of likely voters in L.A. County would vote for Hochman, while just 20% would vote for Gascón, according to the new survey from the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, co-sponsored by The Times.

As the election approaches, 35% of likely voters say they are still undecided. That gives the candidates fewer than 80 days to educate those undecided voters about their platforms and records in hopes of swaying opinions.

But as of now, there is “broad-based support for Hochman across nearly every subgroup,” according to Mark DiCamillo, director of the poll, conducted between July 31 and Aug. 11.

Gascón’s image among voters is largely negative, with 21% offering a favorable opinion and 45% an unfavorable opinion, while 34% had no opinion. By contrast, 35% offered a favorable opinion of Hochman, just 7% held an unfavorable opinion and 57% had no opinion.

Although the poll results show Gascón faces an uphill battle to reelection, Hochman is still unknown to many. Fifty-seven percent of the 1,136 likely L.A. County voters surveyed said they had “no opinion” on him, versus 34% for Gascón.

A former federal prosecutor and president of the L.A. Ethics Commission, Hochman has years of relevant experience. Democrats have attempted to paint him as a Republican, and although he’s an independent in this year’s race, he was a GOP candidate for state attorney general in 2022.

Many seem to blame Gascón for the sense that crime is spiraling out of control, even as some statistics contradict that narrative.

In the new poll, 60% said they felt public safety in the county had declined over the last three years, while only 5% said it had improved. Of those who said it had improved, 28% said Gascón’s policies contributed “a great deal,” while 53% of those who said public safety had declined said Gascón’s policies contributed “a great deal” to that decline.

That does not portend well for Gascón, according to DiCamillo.

“Of those who have an opinion on Nathan Hochman, they weigh in and have a positive image of him, which is a good place to start if you’re unknown,” DiCamillo said. “Whereas Gascón has a negative image. In polling, in my experience, one of the hardest things to do is to overcome an accumulated negative image. It requires something major.”

The election will help determine the future of criminal justice and law enforcement in L.A. County.

For Jody Armour, a law professor at USC, “it’s really a referendum on whose vision of criminal justice and public safety” resonates with the public.

The new poll, which had a margin of error of 3 points, provides insights about how voters are thinking about the race as election day draws near. Voters will head to the polls four years after the Black Lives Matter and police reform movements ushered in left-leaning district attorneys in communities across the country, including Gascón.

“This election will be a referendum on whether L.A. really wants to embrace criminal justice reform and the spirit of the progressive prosecutor movement that re-imagines safety as being not about longer sentences, because the data shows that longer sentences don’t necessarily make us safer,” Armour said.

That message doesn’t appear to have gotten through to many voters surveyed in the new poll. By some metrics, crime has fallen in L.A. over the course of Gascón’s term and over the last several decades.

For instance, in the city of Los Angeles, violent crime had dropped nearly 7% year-over-year as of October 2023, with 1,650 fewer violent incidents reported to police by Sept. 30, 2023, as by the same date in 2022, according to LAPD data. Petty thefts were up 14% on the period, but other property crimes, as well as homicides, robberies and rapes, were down in the city.

But crime has risen by some other measures, as Gascón’s opponents are quick to point out. For instance, L.A. County saw 212 homicides last year, compared with 195 in 2022, an increase of 8%, according to the Sheriff’s Department.

Just one-tenth of voters surveyed in the new Berkeley IGS poll said Gascón would do a better job addressing organized retail theft and “smash and grab” robberies — a hot-button issue in L.A., which has seen a rash of the brazen crimes in recent years. For Hochman, that number was 38%, roughly the same percentage who thought he would do a better job prosecuting cases involving violent crimes compared with Gascón.

That doesn’t surprise Hochman, who spoke with The Times about the survey on Thursday.

“This poll is consistent with everything we’ve seen since the March 5 primary,” Hochman said. “Poll after poll basically shows L.A. voters are tired of crime, and they feel less safe today than they did when George Gascón took office in 2020. And they want a D.A. who will enforce the law fairly and make them feel safe again.”

Gascón’s campaign did not make him available for an interview about the poll, instead providing a brief statement via email.

“Mr. Hochman is gambling on voters forgetting that he remained a Republican until 2022–that’s six years of Donald Trump’s hate and bigotry,” Gascón campaign strategist Jamarah Hayner wrote. “In Los Angeles, that’s a risky bet.”

Michael Trujillo, a veteran campaign consultant and senior advisor to an anti-Gascón independent expenditure committee, said he believes the Berkeley IGS poll shows that Hochman is striking a chord with voters.

“I think Nathan Hochman has to make the case to Democrats in the county why he’s the best choice,” Trujillo said. “And as of today, I think he has a very good chance of doing that in light of D.A. Gascón being weak countywide.”

Gascón’s time as district attorney has been marked by problems. Twenty prosecutors have accused him of workplace retaliation, and he has been named in more than a dozen civil suits, most of which were filed by his own employees.

And earlier this year, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta announced 11 felony charges against Diana Teran — a top Gascón aide who oversaw ethics and integrity at the D.A.’s office — alleging she illegally flagged the names of several sheriff’s deputies for inclusion on a database of officers accused of misconduct. State prosecutors dropped three of the charges against Teran this month, and she has denied wrongdoing.

If Gascón hopes to reverse the trends reflected in these latest poll numbers, according to Armour of USC, he needs to change the narrative.

“Part of the D.A.’s job description will be not just coming up with good criminal justice policy that his office enforces, but communicating to the public a very clear picture of what is happening with crime and punishment in L.A. County,” Armour said. “He has to see his role as much as a good communicator who is clearly laying out the facts as a good administrator.”