Field Poll: Poll Shows Nov. 8 Election Opposed
Nearly three out of five registered voters in California think that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger should call off the special election he has set for November, according to a Field Poll released Thursday.
While 57 percent of voters want the election canceled, Schwarzenegger also saw his approval rating slip to an all-time Field Poll low of 36 percent.
But the good news for Schwarzenegger is that his bad news, as measured by the poll, may have bottomed out. The 36 percent figure represented a drop of only one percentage point from the previous Field Poll released in June - despite waves of bad publicity over the governor's since-abandoned $5 million magazine deal as well as coverage of Schwarzenegger's relationship with a masseuse who was not his wife.
"He's not in a free fall anymore," Field Poll Director Mark DiCamillo said. "You look at the two previous polls, there was significant decline. Now, it's stabilized. He's kind of reached the bottom."
While his personal political hemorrhaging may have stopped, the governor still needs something of a transfusion to save his pet project - the Nov. 8 special election.
In the fall's balloting, Schwarzenegger is asking voters to give him more budget-cutting power, to place legislative redistricting in the hands of retired judges and to make public school teachers work five years instead of two before they get tenure.
The poll released Thursday was taken Aug. 19 through Monday, one day after Schwarzenegger announced that negotiations with legislative leaders had failed to resolve his issues.
According to the poll, California voters continue to be turned off by the concept of the special election. Fifty-seven percent of registered voters oppose the idea of the Nov. 8 special election and want him to call it off, the survey said.
When told the cost of the election, even more voters - 63 percent - oppose the balloting, the poll shows.
"The public has never been on board with that," DiCamillo said. "The public is saying call it off."
Schwarzenegger's camp, however, believes the public will have a different take on the special election - not to mention its gubernatorial figurehead - once the campaign starts next week.
Campaign spokesman Todd Harris attributed Schwarzenegger's popularity decline to the "tens of millions of dollars" his Democratic and union-based opponents have spent this year on television advertising, and he took heart in the atrocious ratings the public continues to bestow upon the Legislature.
In Thursday's Field Poll, only 27 percent of registered voters gave the Legislature a thumbs up (a 3 percent climb for the lawmakers from the June survey).
Harris' comments Thursday suggest the Schwarzenegger side can't wait to rumble, in spite of the public's negative reaction to the special election in the Field survey.
"It's pretty clear based on the survey this is going to be a campaign between a reform-minded governor and a do-nothing Legislature controlled by special interests," Harris said. "The public rightly blames the Legislature for the fact there has not been reform in Sacramento, and I think voters understand that as long as the Legislature remains a wholly-owned subsidiary of the union bosses, we will never have reform unless the voters pass it themselves."
Gale Kaufman, the political consultant who is coordinating opposition to Schwarzenegger's package for labor unions and Democrats, viewed the numbers as evidence of a public's disappointment in a leader who let them down.
"Voters started off with a lot of enthusiasm and excitement over this governor and a hope that he'd be different," Kaufman said. "Now you hear people saying he's just another politician."
As for the special election, Kaufman said voter opinion is clear - "they don't like it, so I think the next thing you'll see is them taking that anger and voting with it."
The poll found disapproval of Schwarzenegger's job performance and opposition to his special election pretty much tracking side by side among the California's political subdivisions.
Democrats don't like him or it, registering a 73 percent disapproval rating, with 78 percent asking for the election to be called off. Sixty-seven percent of Republicans approve of Schwarzenegger, and 62 percent want the election to proceed.
Schwarzenegger's approval rating among nonpartisans and third party members, meanwhile, slipped precipitously - to 28 percent (down from 35 percent in June). And they are holding their noses at the special election to the tune of 61 percent.
And it is the special election, poll director DiCamillo said, that is turning nonpartisans against Schwarzenegger.
"The thing about the political psyche of nonpartisans - the reason they tend to be nonpartisan - is they recoil against extreme partisan politics going on in America," DiCamillo said.
"One of the main reasons Schwarzenegger was elected was that he brought a message that we don't need extreme partisanship. In the first year, that played out, and the public rewarded him. But now that has totally shifted, with a return to confrontation and extreme partisanship and the ad wars that have cropped up in reaction to what he brought about."
The poll was based on a random sample of 1,301 adult California residents, of which 891 were registered voters. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.