Poll: Arnold's Popularity Plunges

California Governor's Approval Rating Dips To 45%

(AP) 
Reed Dickens, spokesman for Citizens to Save California — a committee organized by Schwarzenegger supporters to back his initiatives — said the poll results showed the influence of big spending by the unions on a statewide media blitz criticizing the governor and his ideas.

"This is very early and we are being out spent in a major way," he said, estimating unions are spending $3 million a week on TV and radio ads.

Baldassare said that Schwarzenegger has proved in the past to be capable of changing voter sentiments, but the challenge now will be much harder now.

The slide shown in the new poll is similar to that measured in the Field Poll over recent months: In September, the Field Poll measured approval for the governor at 65 percent with disapproval at 22 percent. In February, the survey found 54 percent of voters favor his job performance with 35 percent disapproving and 11 percent had no opinion.

The new Public Policy poll found 55 percent of likely voters supported the governor's ballot measure to lengthen the time it takes teachers to gain tenure. The poll found, however, that 44 percent support Schwarzenegger's measure to impose a cap on state spending.

The governor's redistricting measure was not part of the poll.

Another major focus of the survey was gauging voter attitudes on a variety of education issues. Baldassare said the perception of most residents is that California's schools are underachieving.

The poll found that just 19 percent of residents believe progress has been made since 1982 on education issues while 31 percent said the school system has declined in quality.

Schwarzenegger also drew criticism for his education policies: 51 percent disapprove while 28 percent approve and 21 percent are undecided.

The solution to many of the problems, education officials and some lawmakers have said, is more spending. On Tuesday, Senate Pro Tem Don Perata proposed new taxes to increase spending for schools by $4 billion a year.

The poll, however, found that while residents are concerned about funding for schools — new taxes are not popular. Seventy percent of voters are opposed to raising the sales tax while 60 percent said they oppose extending the sales tax to goods and services not currently taxed such as legal and accounting services. A strong majority — 60 percent of residents — said they supported raising income taxes on the state's highest wage earners to support schools.

The poll was conducted among 1,405 likely voters during the two week period ending April 17. It has a sampling error of 2.7 percentage points.