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To: SOROS who wrote (4240)	4/29/2003 10:01:30 AM
From: 4figureau	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 5423

Three out of four Californians say times are bad Monday, April 28, 2003 Nearly three out of four Californians believe the state is enduring bad economic times, the most pessimistic assessment in almost a decade, according to a new Field Poll. The survey, released Monday, reveals a state made gloomy by two years of bad news, from the bursting of the high-tech stock bubble to worries about terrorism to an energy crisis that resulted in sky-high utility rates and rolling electrical blackouts. When the Field Poll asked the same question just two years ago, 64 percent of those surveyed said California was enjoying good times, almost a mirror image of the new results, poll Director Mark DiCamillo said Sunday. "It kind of shows the ebb and flow of opinion on these very basic questions," DiCamillo said. In the new survey, which was conducted during the first six days of April, 73 percent of those surveyed said the state is experiencing bad times, and only 13 percent said that times are good. Those were the worst numbers recorded by the Field Poll since 1994, when 84 percent of those questioned said times were bad. The gloomiest area of the state is the San Francisco Bay area, once the home to high-flying Internet companies that made overnight millionaires of their founders, but often later went broke. In the Bay Area, 89 percent of those surveyed said times are bad, compared with 75 percent in the rest of Northern California, 69 percent in Los Angeles County and 64 percent in the rest of Southern California. The Bay Area funk is a stark difference from California's previous economic trough, during the early and mid 1990s, DiCamillo said. "Then the Bay Area was the economic engine pulling the state out of the recession," DiCamillo said. "This year the Bay Area is the caboose." Compared with people in the rest of the state, Bay Area residents are more likely to view the job market as tougher than usual, to believe the California economy will get worse instead of better and to have experienced a layoff in their household in the preceeding 12 months, the new poll shows. But the unhappy views did not always extend to individual cases. Asked about their personal financial situation, 39 percent of those surveyed said they are better off than they were a year ago, 35 percent said worse off and 26 percent said the same. DiCamillo said pollsters often find that people are more positive about their own situations than about the larger society. "It's a phenomenon of public opinion that I've seen many times before," DiCamillo said. As for California's economic future, residents were divided: 35 percent said things will improve, 35 percent said they will stay about the same and 25 percent said tougher times are coming. People were most optimistic in Los Angeles County and most pessimistic in Northern California, according to the poll. For questions concerning personal knowledge of layoffs and the status of the job market, pollsters questioned 1,006 adults. The other questions were asked of a random subsample of 504 adults. The poll has a margin of error of 3.2 percentage points for the overall sample and 4.5 percentage points for the smaller sample. sfgate.com