Campbell, right, with Schwarzenegger

Just two weeks after the California Republican Party was rocked by the revelation that its anointed candidate for governor, former eBay executive Meg Whitman, did not register to vote until she was 46 years old, a new statewide poll finds Whitman tied with former Rep. Tom Campbell, who until now had trailed in his race against Whitman and state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner.

The poll results are most dire for Poizner, who came out aggressively against Whitman during the state Republican convention two weeks ago over her failure to vote for 28 years after she became eligible. In a straw poll among delegates at the convention, Poizner took 78 percent of the vote, trouncing both Whitman (14 percent) and Campbell (8 percent).

While the straw-poll results represented the wishes of the party elites, a new Field Poll indicates that rank and file Republican voters see the race differently:

The poll of registered voters, released Thursday, shows Campbell and Whitman in a statistical dead heat. Whitman, former CEO of the online auction giant eBay, was ahead with 22 percent of the vote. Campbell, a former Silicon Valley congressman who was once Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s finance director, had 20 percent — within the margin of error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points. Poizner had 9 percent.

The poll holds a glimmer of hope for Whitman. Nearly half of Republican voters have yet to make up their minds.

On the other hand, the state GOP has been shedding moderate voters for years. Now only 31 percent of California voters are registered Republicans [PDF], while 44.6 percent are registered Dems and 20 percent are registered as “decline to state” independents.

The problem for this year’s crop of GOP candidates, as in previous cycles, is that conservative and moderate registered independents cannot vote in the Republican primary. This leaves the three Republicans — all of whom come from the Silicon Valley, a liberal bastion — at the mercy of the state’s GOP extremist base.

Whitman has tried to woo the ultra-right by associating herself with Mitt Romney, the Mormon ex-governor of Massachusetts whose 180-degree flip-flops and robotic performance in the 2008 presidential campaign wowed no one in California, and with John McCain, who lost to Pres. Obama by over 23 points (61 percent to 37.2 percent) in the state last November.

In an effort to pander to the bigots in her base, Whitman also shocked her former Silicon Valley colleagues by coming out strongly against gay marriage last year. Both Campbell and Poizner support it.

Whitman also won the endorsement of former GOP Gov. Pete Wilson, who has become the grand old man of the GOP, despite a track record that also includes hobbling the Republican Party by permanently alienating the state’s burgeoning Latino population with his aggressive campaigning in 1994 to pass Proposition 187, the anti-immigrant initiative, as well as his endorsement of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, one of the least-respected politicians in the state.

In stooping to go after voters in her party’s extremist base, Whitman, were she to win the primary, would have to emulate Romney’s flip-flops on social issues in order to make a sharp leftward correction to win moderate independents in November. Executing this sort of reversal on key positions is nearly impossible for seasoned pols — and there is little evidence so far that Whitman, a political novice, could pull it off.

On the Democrats’ side, Attorney General and former Gov. Jerry Brown, who has not officially entered the race, has a 20 point lead over San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, 47 percent to 27 percent. Last week, former Pres. Bill Clinton — who won a brusing campaign against Brown for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1992 — flew into the state to endorse Newsom.

The poll also shows Republicans losing in November 2010, no matter which Dem wins the primaries next June:

The poll, however, was not good news for Republicans. In theoretical matchups, Brown and Newsom beat all three GOP candidates by substantial margins. The closest Democratic-Republican matchup was between Newsom and Campbell, who trailed the San Francisco mayor by 5 percentage points — 38 percent to 33 percent.