Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, center, hugs former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger following the CNN Republican presidential debate in September 2015. | AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill Poll: Schwarzenegger voters for Trump in California

California Republicans who backed a wealthy celebrity candidate named Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2003 are almost three times more likely to back another, Donald Trump, in the June 7 primary, a new California Field Poll released Thursday shows.

“It looks like a lot of the same voters, and a lot of the same message,’’ Field Poll director Mark DiCamillo told POLITICO California.

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With a mother lode of 172 GOP delegates at stake, the primary figures to be critical and hotly contested. The poll indicates that Trump is positioned to win the largest share, leading Texas Senator Ted Cruz by seven points.

The poll showed Trump to be the choice of 39 percent of the state’s likely GOP voters, with Cruz at 32 percent, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich in third at 18 percent. Currently, 11 percent of state GOP voters are still undecided or will vote for other candidates, the poll showed.

The poll was taken from March 24 to April 4 among 1,400 registered voters in California, including 558 Republicans considered likely to vote in the primary. The margin of error is plus or minus four points for the overall sample.

Though Schwarzenegger and Trump are markedly different on policy issues like immigration, DiCamillo said that the poll shows some surprising parallels. Like Schwarzenegger, who vowed to “blow up the boxes” and rid California of insider politics in the historic 2003 recall election that ousted Democrat governor Gray Davis, Trump has appealed to GOP grassroots voters as “the outsider promising to put things right, to make America great again,’’ said DiCamillo. “It’s the same appeal ... to a lot of disaffected voters,’’ he said.

The poll also found wide regional variations in support for Trump and Cruz. Those geographic differences among California Republicans will matter on June 7, DiCamillo noted: a total of 159 delegates to the Republican National Convention, or three delegates in each of the state's 53 congressional districts, will be awarded, with the remainder a bonus for the statewide winner.

In two key regions, the Field Poll showed Cruz with 40 percent leading Trump at 29 percent and Kasich at 18 percent in Los Angeles County; Trump leads the Bay Area with 39 percent, Cruz at 32 percent and Kasich at 23 percent.

DiCamillo said that the poll revealed “a significant gender gap” among GOP voters in California. Trump leads Cruz among men by 17 percent; Cruz is favored over Trump among women by four points.

The poll also revealed what DiCamillo called deep divisions within the state's GOP rank-and-file. Nearly four in 10 California Republicans (38 percent) say they would be dissatisfied or upset if Trump is their party's nominee, almost equal (34 percent) to the number of Republicans who make the same claim about Cruz, the poll showed.

The stark divisions were also evident when Republicans were polled about the possibility that Trump, who has won the lion’s share of the popular vote to date, falls short of capturing the necessary 1,237 delegates needed to secure the nomination. A slim majority of Republicans, 52 percent, said the party should award the nomination to Trump, but 48 percent would support nominating somebody else.

Still, in a general election in California, the poll showed both Trump and Cruz would lose by wide margins in November if engaged in a head-to-head with former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. Clinton would beat Trump 59-31 percent, the poll showed; against Cruz, Clinton would win by 55-32 percent.