Jerry Brown's rating may be better than it looks

[alp227]

Source: SF Chronicle

A new survey shows that Gov. Jerry Brown has the second-lowest first-year approval rating of any California governor in a half-century, "but that's as good as he could possibly hope for in a bad situation," said Field Poll director Mark DiCamillo.

The poll of 1,000 registered voters being released today shows that 47 percent approve of Brown's performance, 36 percent disapprove and 17 percent had no opinion. Only former GOP Gov. Pete Wilson had a lower approval rating after his first year in office - 45 percent in a September 1991 Field Poll. The margin of error in today's poll is 4.5 percentage points.

Analysts say Brown inherited an intractable budget mess in Sacramento, a bleak economic climate and a Republican minority in the state Legislature that is steadfastly opposed to any tax increases.

The poll found that only 22 percent of the respondents approve of how members of the Legislature are doing their job - and that's more than twice as high as it was in September 2010.


Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/12/05/MNE61M8996.DTL

---

Brown's approval rating among independents was 48%.

[No Elephants]

1. 1000 people polled? Not impressive.

[former9thward]

2. It is very impressive for a state.

Usually they poll about 1000 people nationwide to get poll numbers.

[No Elephants]

3. No, it may be a large number for a state that is large in comparison to what

they usually do, but that does make it an impressive number. At least not to me.

If you are impressed by 1000 supposedly accurately representing the opinion of all Californians, so be it. I'm not. That's what makes a horse race.

[left on green only]

4. Turns out - for convenience sake

the sampling was done on one Saturday afternoon at the Fashion Island Shopping Mall in Orange County. You know, the one where they have a popular Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet that only serves right wings. Sorry, slap my face, but I just couldn't resist taking a shot at one of my two "fav" social "sciences" - polling and statistics. :sarcasm: