July 28, 2006

No Slam Dunks For Bond Measures

If you apply the conventional wisdom about a California ballot measure– that anything polling below 60% in the early days could face trouble– then the infrastructure bonds on the November ballot are a long ways away from a sure thing.

That’s the news in this morning’s Field Poll.

The poll finds that none of the four bonds placed on the ballot by the Legislature and Governor Schwarzenegger, totaling some $37 billion, are at or above the magic 60% threshold. In fact, three of the bond proposals are below 50% support.

In the best shape, according to Field, is Prop 1B– the $19.9 transportation bond, with 54% of those surveyed approving. In order of support after that: Prop 1D ($10.4 billion education bond, 48% support), Prop 1E ($4.1 billion flood protection, 47% support), and last place going to Prop 1C ($2.8 billion affordable housing bond, only 33% support).

For each bond, there are also a number of voters who remain undecided (1 in 4 voters asked about the housing bond are in this category). And several seem to have lost support since Field asked the same questions in May, with the biggest drop in support for the flood protection bond (from 58% support to 47% support).

The campaign team for these bond measures is still being assembled, and will reportedly be a bipartisan effort by some of the state’s most successful political consultants. For now, it seems they have their work cut out for them.

The full poll will be online later this morning here.