By large margins, California voters want to retain the two-thirds legislative vote requirement for budgets and the state's initiative system that allows voters to pass laws, according to a new attitudinal survey conducted by students at the University of California, Riverside.
Voters also oppose layoff of teachers to narrow the state's budget deficit, and blame the Legislature, more than Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, for the state's chronic fiscal difficulties.
Undergraduate students in the political science class, "Mass Media and Public Opinion," interviewed a 276-person sample of registered California voters between May 11 and May 24 and said the results have a margin of error of plus or minus 5.9 percent at a confidence level of 95 percent.
Despite the relatively low number of respondents, the differences reported are so great that they remain statistically significant, said David Crow, who teaches the class. The course covers all aspects of survey design, including sample selection, questionnaire development, data collection, data analysis, and statistical hypothesis testing.
"The survey is a general assessment of the political climate of California based on fiscal issues," said Crow, associate director of UCR's Survey Research Center. "It also gave our students a chance to study survey research methods through experiential learning."
The two-thirds budget vote, which has been in the state constitution in one form or another for most of the last century, has become a point of partisan contention with Democratic legislative leaders and their allies vowing to ask voters to change it, arguing that it gives the Republican minority too much power over the budget.
The full survey results are available here.
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