Posts Tagged: Field

Poll: Close divide on death penalty

The attitudes of voters. Illustration by Niroworld, via Shutterstock.

by MARK DICAMILLO posted 11.04.2016

Field-IGS Poll: Nearly a quarter of likely voters in the poll (23%) said they were intending to vote Yes on both death penalty measures, even though they have opposite aims. This may partially be due to confusion about the intent of Prop. 66, or simply that some voters want to change the status quo of how the state now handles death penalty cases, regardless of how it’s done.

CA120: The mystery of the unknowns

Image by Tim Foster, Capitol Weekly

by PAUL MITCHELL posted 05.10.2016

California’s 2014 primary election had its fair share of surprises, but none was greater than David Evans, a virtually unknown candidate for state controller who was just seven-tenths of 1 percent away from beating both Betty Yee and John Perez to capture the coveted second spot and move on to the general election. This was a shock to political insiders, most of whom had never heard of him.

GOP voter support for Ted Cruz has surged in California over the past three months and the Texas Senator has now moved into a statistical tie with businessman Donald Trump for the lead in this state’s Republican presidential primary. Cruz is the first choice of 25% of likely GOP voters in the latest statewide Field Poll, while Trump is backed by 23%.

Field Poll: Three Democrats –- former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti –- receive the largest proportions of early voter support. Greater than four in ten voters say they would be inclined to vote for Villaraigosa and Newsom, and nearly as many say this about Garcetti (36%) if they were to be candidates for Governor in 2018.

The latest statewide Field Poll finds that fewer than half of likely voters in California’s June 2016 Democratic presidential primary (47%) are now intending to support former Secretary of State, U.S. Senator and First Lady Hillary Clinton for President, a decline of nineteen points since May. Over this same period Democratic voter support for Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has increased nearly four-fold from 9% to 35%.

On the eve of a dramatic Capitol hearing, the backers of legislation to allow dying people to end their lives with physician-supplied drugs abruptly sidetracked the bill Tuesday at least until next year so they could try and to round up more votes. Just hours before the committee hearing, which was to include public testimony from dying people in support of the bill, the decision was made to not bring the measure up. The last-ditch maneuver means SB 128 by Sen. Lois Wolk, D-Davis, could be pushed back until 2016.

Changing Proposition 13, the landmark, tax-cutting ballot initiative that California voters approved in 1978, is the goal of a constitutional amendment aimed at next year’s ballot. The plan by two Senate Democrats – Holly Mitchell of Los Angeles and Loni Hancock of Berkeley – would allow commercial and business properties to be regularly reassessed for tax purposes, with an exemption for properties worth less than $500,000. Under current law – Proposition 13 – those properties are only reassessed when there is a change in ownership.

Parched Californians back cuts in water use

The dry bed of Ivanpah Lake in San Barnardino County, which had been filled by the 2004-05 rains. (Photo: Ed Berlen)

by Mark DiCamillo and Mervin Field posted 05.19.2015

Field Poll: By a nearly three-to-one margin (65% to 23%) Californians support Governor Jerry Brown’s call to require urban water districts to reduce their water use by an average of 25% statewide. Support for the Governor’s plan is broad-based and bipartisan, and spans all major subgroups of the state’s adult population.

Legislature’s image on the mend?

State Capitol, Sacramento. (Photo: David Monniaux)

by CHUCK MCFADDEN posted 03.09.2015

Is the California Legislature making a comeback? The poll numbers would certainly indicate it is, but lawmakers shouldn’t start popping the champagne corks. In fact, the legislature hasn’t had this much love since October of 2004, when 40 percent of likely voters approved and 46 percent disapproved of the legislature’s performance, according to the PPIC.

Survey: Brown’s ratings high, but “big projects” questioned

Gov. Jerry Brown at ceremonies in Fresno launching construction of California's bullet train. (Photo: Associated Press)

by MARK DICAMILLO and MERVIN FIELD posted 02.24.2015

Governor Jerry Brown continues to receive strong approval from voters in California. The results of the latest Field Poll find nearly 56% of the state’s voters approving of Brown’s performance in office, while 32% disapprove. When asked to consider three negative statements that have been made about the Governor, a 57% majority agrees with one of them – “favors too many big government projects that the state cannot afford right now.”