Meg Whitman may have bought a horse race with her early ad blitz.

The former eBay chief executive has left Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner in the dust, according to a Field Poll released today that gives her a 63 percent to 14 percent lead among likely voters in the Republican Primary.

And in the big sweepstakes, the poll shows that she’s closed the gap with the presumptive Democratic nominee Jerry Brown. Whitman’s 46 percent to 43 percent lead among likely voters in the general election is within the poll’s 3.7 percent margin of error, but past Field Polls showed her trailing Brown.

The attorney general is favored by nearly two-thirds of Bay Area voters but doesn’t have a majority in any other region of the state, according to detailed poll results published by the Sacramento Bee. Whitman has a 51 percent majority in Southern California, but falls short of a majority in both Los Angeles and San Diego counties.

Brown, who was the state’s youngest governor and now hopes to be its oldest chief executive, leads among younger voters, but Whitman’s ahead in his demographic … senior citizens.

— Jim Sweeney