The Field poll delivers some bad news for Senator Barbara Boxer:

California voters are giving U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer some of the lowest approval ratings of her career, as the three-term Democrat is in a statistical dead heat against first-time GOP office-seeker Carly Fiorina, according to a new Field Poll released today.

Boxer leads Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO, 47 to 44 percent. … Boxer’s slight numerical lead masks potentially serious problems for the senator, starting with how 52 percent of the respondents hold an unfavorable view of her. At the same time, her job approval rating is among the lowest that Field has measured for her since she was first elected to the Senate in 1992. …

She is vulnerable,” Field Poll director Mark DiCamillo said. “This is very ominous for her.”

One of Boxer’s more vexing problems, analysts say, is that opposition to her is not just about her. She has become an avatar for broader voter frustrations about the struggling economy, President Obama and the growth of the federal government.

After many election cycles in which Republicans wasted money and political capital on the premise that California was “in play,” there is finally a year in which it really is. At the very least, the Democrats will need to spend gobs of money defending the seat, money that would otherwise go to races in Indiana, Illinois, Florida, etc. And it might just be the year in which Californians decide that they are not well served by one of the most predictably far-left senators.