This "Times" poll is definitive. Don Meredith is singing. The party's over. I think the Indian money was too much for people to stomach.
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THE TIMES POLL
Majority Now Favors Recall; Schwarzenegger Leads Rivals
Davis loses ground with key voters. For the first time, the actor outpaces all other candidates as he makes double-digit gains among the GOP, independents, women.
By Michael Finnegan
Times Staff Writer
October 1, 2003
A solid majority of likely voters favors removing Gov. Gray Davis from office in the recall election Tuesday, and Arnold Schwarzenegger has surged ahead of his rivals in the race to succeed him, according to a new Los Angeles Times poll.
By 56% to 42%, likely voters support ousting the Democratic incumbent, a sign that Davis has lost ground in the closing phase of his battle for political survival. Support for Davis has slipped among key parts of his political base — Democrats, women, moderates and liberals among them — since the last Times poll in early September found 50% for the recall and 47% against it.
Summing up the view of many voters was poll respondent Gladys Taub, a North Hills Democrat exasperated by the state's giant budget shortfalls.
"Gov. Davis has been doing a terrible job, and I just want to get rid of him," the 62-year-old paralegal, who plans to vote for Schwarzenegger, said in a follow-up interview. "Look at the state our state is in. If I ran my home that way, spending a whole lot more money than I was taking in, I'd wind up bankrupt. I'd wind up on the streets."
Tapping that public anger is Schwarzenegger, whose campaign against "business-as-usual politics in Sacramento" has boosted his popularity as voters weigh alternatives to Davis. The Republican actor is favored by 40% of likely voters, followed by Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, a Democrat, with 32%, and state Sen. Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks) with 15%.
The shift in voter support toward Schwarzenegger is dramatic: Since the last Times poll, he has made double-digit gains among Republicans, independents, whites, senior citizens, women and other major voting blocs. The early September poll had Bustamante in the lead with 30%, followed by Schwarzenegger at 25% and McClintock at 18%. Bustamante had also led Schwarzenegger in an August poll, 35% to 22%.
Over the last few weeks, several events have occurred that may have caused voters to shift their positions. Schwarzenegger has run millions of dollars in television advertising, and the major candidates held a televised debate that roughly two-thirds of likely voters in the poll said they watched.
Voters who were dissatisfied with Davis — and with career politicians in general — seemed to have concluded that Schwarzenegger was a viable option, said Susan Pinkus, director of The Times Poll. "If you're going to vote for the recall, you have to have somebody in mind to replace the governor," she said. "Before the debate, there was no one that they felt they could vote for."
Schwarzenegger's emergence as front-runner in the replacement race comes as he and Davis are each framing the election — with growing acrimony — as a two-man contest.
Each is running TV spots attacking the other. Schwarzenegger accuses Davis of mismanagement and calls on voters to dump him. Davis defends his stewardship of California and tries to raise doubts about Schwarzenegger's fitness for public office.
A key part of Davis' strategy is to persuade recall supporters to switch their votes from yes to no for fear of a Schwarzenegger victory. The poll shows the narrow reach of that approach: 6% of recall backers said they might switch their vote if it looked like Schwarzenegger would win.
Angela Rodriguez, 29, a Democrat and a technology company manager from Bakersfield, is one of them. She plans to vote for Bustamante, but prefers Davis to Schwarzenegger. So if it looks like the Republican will win, she will switch her vote on the recall.
"He's a good actor, but that's not good enough," she said. Davis, she added, "can't screw up anything more than he's already screwed it up."
Overall, the poll found that the central theme of Schwarzenegger's candidacy had struck a chord with likely voters: Rather than finding him frightening, they see him as the candidate most apt to curb the influence of special interests in Sacramento.
"I look at him as maybe like a Kennedy, where he really wants to do something good, because he's not in it for the money," said Jim Rego, 58, a Castro Valley independent who owns a gas station outside Oakland.
Rego faults Davis for the state budget mess and sees Schwarzenegger as "a guy who can run a business, balance the books." He typically votes for Democrats; Schwarzenegger will be the first exception since Rego went for Ross Perot in the 1992 presidential race.
"I was disgusted with the way the country was going then; we're worse off now than we were then," he said.
Although Schwarzenegger has accepted campaign money from donors with business before the governor's office — despite a pledge not to do so — most likely voters say that would make no difference in whether they would vote for him.
Many likely voters do harbor reservations about the former champion bodybuilder. Only 8% think Schwarzenegger has the best experience for the job of governor, well behind Davis, McClintock and Bustamante. Also, only 8% believe that Schwarzenegger seemed more knowledgeable than his opponents in last week's debate in Sacramento.
But that seemed to matter less than other qualities. A broad swath of voters see in Schwarzenegger an aptitude they have found lacking in Davis since the 2001 energy crisis: leadership. On the question of who would be a strong leader, Schwarzenegger is ahead with 36%, followed by McClintock at 21%, Davis at 18% and Bustamante at 16%.
"He's not going to be pushed around by people," said nurse practitioner Karen Keller, 62, a Republican from Lakewood. Since the last Times poll, a wave of independent voters has shifted toward Schwarzenegger, moving away from both Bustamante and, more decisively, McClintock.
While Schwarzenegger's support among independents has rocketed from 14% to 44%, McClintock's has plunged from 28% to 8%. Bustamante's has dropped slightly, from 24% to 21%. Bustamante made up for that loss by gaining some support among Democrats.
The Times Poll, supervised by Pinkus, interviewed 1,982 adults statewide Sept. 25-29. Among them were 1,496 registered voters, including 815 deemed likely to vote in the recall election. The margin of sampling error among likely voters is plus or minus 3 percentage points for the full sample; it is larger for subgroups.
For Davis, a key challenge in the final days of the race is to bolster support among Democrats. Despite his aggressive efforts to woo union members, Latinos and other traditional blocs of the party, the survey found 27% of Democrats supporting the recall, up from 19% in the last poll.
Among liberal Democrats, support for the recall grew from 1-in-10 to 2-in-10. Among moderate Democrats, support climbed from 30% early last month to 35%. Union members, a key to Davis' success in prior elections, also tilted further in favor of the recall, from 51% in the last poll to 54% in the most recent.
Other signs of trouble for Davis: 54% of women back the recall; early last month, 54% of women opposed it. Support for the recall also grew among the elderly, who typically turn out to vote in large numbers. While voters 65 and older were evenly split on the recall in the last poll, they now favor it, 54% to 46%. Even Los Angeles County voters, crucial to the success of any Democrat in a statewide election, have swung in favor of the recall, 53% to 46%. Early last month, they opposed it, 58% to 38%.
Support for the recall also remains overwhelming among Republicans and conservatives: nearly nine in 10 of each favor the governor's ouster. Among whites — more than two-thirds of the electorate — 62% favor the recall.
"I just pray that guy gets thrown out on his ear, because he is the kiss of death for this state, there is no question," said former lumber company owner Tom Skuse, 50, a Rancho Cucamonga Republican.
Among Skuse's biggest complaints is the governor's approval of a bill to give driver's licenses to illegal immigrants.
"We're going to hand out licenses to people who can't even speak English," he said. "Come on. There's something wrong here. You don't think that was a vote-buying deal?"
Davis resisted signing the measure last year, citing public-safety concerns. But after approving it this year, he has used it as the cornerstone of his appeals to Latino voters, most recently in a Spanish-language television ad he started running Tuesday.
Yet the poll suggests that the tactic may have backfired.
Among likely voters, more than three out of five oppose the driver's license bill. Moreover, 43% of likely voters say a candidate's support for it would make them less likely to vote for that person, although 41% say it would make no difference.
Latinos are now split on the recall, 49% for it and 48% against, which represents a slight movement on behalf of the governor.
Schwarzenegger, who opposes the driver's license measure, has sought to use the issue against Davis, which may account for a slight slide among the Republican's Latino support — to roughly one in four voters. McClintock has also spoken out against the measure. Bustamante supports it.
With the license controversy raging, immigration has risen to be the fourth most important problem that likely voters say the governor should address. First is the budget; second, the economy; and third, education.
"I'm tired of subsidizing illegals," said Burbank Democrat Denise Cochran, 43, an acting teacher who supports the recall and sees the driver's license law as "incredibly dangerous."
"I'm paying through the nose," she said. "I'm tired of it. All these schools we're building are because the illegals have their children here. I want their children to be educated, but somebody has to pay these bills."
For Bustamante, the poll results are bleak. Only 41% have a favorable impression of him, while 58% view Schwarzenegger favorably and 62% see McClintock in a positive light.
Bustamante's millions of dollars in campaign donations from casino-owning tribes — the subject of an unfavorable court ruling and a host of Schwarzenegger ads — appear to have damaged his public image. Four in 10 voters say those contributions make them less likely to vote for Bustamante, although 54% say they make no difference.
Oakland Democrat Lark Coryell, 50, a brand-identity consultant, said Bustamante seems to offer little improvement over Davis. "They both strike me as very slippery," she said.
For McClintock, the poll shows widespread admiration but erosion nonetheless. He is well ahead of Schwarzenegger and Bustamante on whether he has the character and integrity to be governor; three out of four voters say that he does. Voters say McClintock did the best job in the Sacramento debate.
But nearly half of likely voters say McClintock is too conservative to have a realistic chance of winning. Moreover, Schwarzenegger, a moderate, has picked off much of McClintock's base of support among conservative Republicans. As McClintock's support in that group dropped from 40% to 31%, Schwarzenegger's jumped from 45% to 64%.
That shift appears to reflect a sentiment, shared by the state GOP establishment, that a Republican governor who supports legal abortion, gay rights and gun control — anathema to many party loyalists — is still preferable to a Democrat.
"My preference is McClintock," said Keller, who cited his "pro-life" stand as evidence that he shares her values. "But I understand if the vote is split, we can get something worse, like Bustamante, which would be as bad as Gray or maybe worse."
She plans to vote for Schwarzenegger.
Jill Darling Richardson, associate director of The Times Poll, and Claudia Vaughn, the poll's data management supervisor, contributed to this report.
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