Everything I read about this recall election suggests that Californians are looking for someone to blame for the economic mess and for the general malaise in these United States. Davis makes the perfect fall guy.
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CA Poll Suggests Pessimism
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Aug. 21) - Three of four likely voters in the Oct. 7 recall election think California is heading in the wrong direction, a marked increase in the pessimism that is driving efforts to remove Gov. Gray Davis, a poll released Thursday shows.
Were the recall held now, 58 percent would recall the Democratic governor, up from 50 percent last month. Another 36 percent would keep him and 6 percent are undecided.
Twenty-three percent of those surveyed said they would replace Davis with Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger and 18 percent would choose Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante. None of the other 133 candidates topped 5 percent in the Public Policy Institute of California poll. A third of the voters were undecided.
A Field Poll released Saturday showed Bustamante with support from 25 percent of voters to Schwarzenegger's 22 percent.
The latest poll found most voters are worried about the economy and upset about the budget lawmakers passed this month to reduce a looming $38 billion deficit.
The widespread funk has helped pound Davis' approval ratings to new lows: 72 percent disapprove of his job performance. State lawmakers fared even worse, with 78 percent of those surveyed annoyed at the lawmakers' budget and tax decisions.
The narrowest of majorities supports the two initiatives that also will be on the recall ballot: Proposition 53, which would earmark a portion of the state budget for infrastructure projects, and Proposition 54, which would bar governments from using race, ethnicity or national origin to classify students, employees or contractors.
The telephone survey of 2,001 adult residents was conducted Aug. 8-17 in English and Spanish. It has an error margin of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Among those surveyed were 1,540 registered voters, and 993 likely voters, a smaller sample that raised the error margin to a possible 3 percentage points.
AP-NY-08-21-03 1227EDT
Copyright 2003 The Associated Press. |
