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Schwarzenegger Rises in Polls
The public has become deeply pessimistic that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature can work together since a massive public works plan failed to make the June ballot, according to a new poll. While the Legislature's approval rating has fallen to 25 percent - its lowest point since 2000 - the survey released Thursday by the Public Policy Institute of California shows the governor's popularity has improved slightly. In January, Schwarzenegger proposed a $222 billion, 10-year plan to improve the state's highways, levees, schools and public transit systems. It relied on $68 billion in borrowing that required voter approval over a series of elections. The Republican governor had hoped to place the first bonds before voters this year, but the Democrat-controlled Legislature couldn't agree on a measure in time to make the primary election ballot. The bond measure was Schwarzenegger's top legislative priority for his re-election year.
Story Continues Below The poll's findings show Schwarzenegger is not getting the blame for that failure, said Mark Baldassare, who conducted the survey in the week after the deadline passed. "I think that people have a strong sense that the Legislature can't get anything done and that it's hard to get anything done in the state," he said. Democrats disputed Baldassare's conclusion, saying their own polling shows voters are not focused on the public works proposal enough to judge who is at fault. "This is based on a presumption that they actually know what was going on in the Capitol, and they don't," said Gale Kaufman, who advises Democratic Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez. When Schwarzenegger proposed his plan in January, 41 percent of likely voters said they thought the governor and Legislature would be able to work together this year. That fell to 31 percent in the latest poll. The Legislature's approval rating among adults surveyed in the poll also fell by 4 points since January, when 29 percent of all adults said lawmakers were doing a good job. Meanwhile, Schwarzenegger's approval rating improved slightly from last month, bringing him to about where he was in January when he outlined his rebuilding plan and released a budget that included more money for education. The survey of 2,002 adults and 1,008 likely voters was conducted over a seven-day period starting March 15. The margin of error for the total sample is plus or minus 2 percentage points. For the smaller sample of likely voters, it is plus or minus 3 percentage points.
© 2006 Associated Press.
Editor's note:
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics: Inside Cover Stories
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