Forget her millions, what Meg Whitman is really going to need to win the governor’s seat in California are white male votes, writes Jane Junn at Politico. That’s because regardless of party affiliations, it seems that white men tend to lean more conservatively in big elections. Below, Junn makes her case:

Whitman is attracting more support among men than among women by a margin of 4 percentage points and by double that margin among white male voters, according to the most recent USC College/Los Angeles Times poll. Her advantage is particularly strong among white Democratic males. A statewide poll by the Public Policy Institute of California, released last week, shows the same pattern of stronger male support for Whitman.

[snip]

But the fact that Meg Whitman is a woman has not hurt her among male voters — especially whites. While Latinos, blacks and Asian-Americans are all relatively strong backers of Brown, he and Whitman are now tied among white voters, according to the USC/Times poll. When both gender and race are taken into account, white men emerge as Whitman’s strongest supporters. Another piece of evidence: Men are more likely than women — by 8 percentage points — to express unfavorable opinions of Brown.

Read Jane Juns’s full analysis at Politico.

All this, coupled with Whitman’s overfilled coffers, could be the nail in the coffin for democratic rival Jerry Brown. As Julianne Hing reported earlier, neither Brown nor Whitman give people of color much hope that they can do the job well.

Whitman, who has attempted to court the states Latino voters with her Spanish-language ads, previously claimed that she’d cut down on sanctuary cities and block undocumented immigrants from enrolling in public schools. She also promised to send more National Guard troops to patrol the border — until Gov. Schwarzenegger beat her to it.

California voters go to the polls on November 2.