Arnie Well Ahead in Race for California

Arnold Schwarzenegger has streaked ahead of his rivals in the campaign to become governor of California, according to the latest opinion polls.

They show that the actor and bodybuilder is running well ahead of the field in advance of next Tuesday's recall vote. In the final week of the campaign, the main players were crisscrossing the state and spending millions on television and radio advertisements to influence waverers.

The impetus seems to be with Mr Schwarzenegger, who is seen by the Republicans as the man to help them re-establish the party in a state that has been predominantly Democratic in recent years.

The latest CNN/USA Today poll suggests that 63% of the electorate will vote to recall the Democrat governor, Gray Davis, with only 35% opposing the recall. The same poll suggests that Mr Schwarzenegger is the choice of 40% to replace Mr Davis, with the Democrat lieutenant governor, Cruz Bustamante, on 25%, and the conservative Republican Tom McClintock on 18%.

The other two main contestants, the Green party's Peter Camejo and the columnist Arianna Huffington, were stuck in the low single figures.

A spokesman for Mr Davis described the poll as "a joke" yesterday, citing other polls that have showed Mr Davis's support increasing to 47%. In previous polls, Mr Bustamante had been just ahead of Mr Schwarzenegger.

While the Republican hierarchy has been pressing Mr McClintock, a state senator, to leave the race so that the field would be open for the actor, Mr McClintock yesterday reiterated his determination not to quit, although his campaign team is conceding that he may have to settle for second place.

Mr McClintock is the only one of the main candidates who has promised not to raise taxes and has a conservative position on abortion, guns, immigration and gay rights.

One of the reasons for the wildly fluctuating polls is that there has never been a recall election for governor in the state. Voters are normally faced with a simple choice between two official candidates from the two main parties, rather than a field of 135 as in the current election.

What is unclear is whether Mr McClintock's supporters will shift their votes to Mr Schwarzenegger as polling day approaches or whether Democrats will cross party lines to vote for the actor. However, 900,000 have already cast absentee ballots.

The Green party candidate, Peter Camejo, who has performed well in the televised debates, was acknowledging yesterday that some of his supporters might shift their votes to Mr Bustamante to thwart Mr Schwarzenegger. Meanwhile, Ms Huffington was in San Francisco promoting her environmental agenda.

"This is now hand-to-hand combat," said Mr Schwarzenegger at a campaign appearance in Redding, in the north of the state. "We are not in the trenches. This is war."

His strategy, devised by former aides to the last Republican governor of the state, Pete Wilson, has been to reach the voters through TV commercials and on chat shows rather than in direct confrontation with his competitors. So far, the strategy, backed by the biggest budget of any candidate, appears to be paying off.

Mr Davis received some consolation in winning the endorsement of some of the state's most powerful newspapers. The Los Angeles Times, the San Jose Mercury News, the Sacramento Bee and the Oakland Tribune all urged a "no" vote on the recall, albeit with little enthusiasm for the governor himself.