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Davis' support plunges "If this were a typical race," Field said, "and you had Davis against another candidate, and let's say the other candidate was preferred overwhelmingly to you but you still had the campaign to go and you had money, you could say, 'OK, I'm not well liked and my numbers may be down the tubes, but there's still the other guy. Maybe something could happen to him. ... Then I might have a chance.' " Davis is weak throughout the state, according to the poll. Voters in Los Angeles County, typically a Democratic stronghold, want him recalled by a margin of 55 percent to 36 percent. In the rest of Southern California, the pro-recall margin skyrockets to 66 percent to 30 percent. Davis appears politically healthy only in the San Francisco Bay Area, where 43 percent of voters want Davis recalled. For the rest of Northern California, it's yes on the recall by a margin of 64 percent to 30 percent. "This isn't like an initiative, where opinions change," said Mark DiCamillo, Field's polling partner. "This is about a governor people have had pretty strong opinions on for five years. Voters don't like his policies. They don't like him. Forty-two percent favor his resignation. Twenty-three percent of his own party want him to resign. These are very bad numbers." For James Warkentin, a 52-year-old out-of-work industrial engineer from Sacramento who participated in the poll, Davis and his policies have hurt too many people. So he's voting yes on the recall and will pick Republican businessman Bill Simon, who lost to Davis last November, to replace him. "The economic problems in California have been aggravated by what he's done, and that's the reason we need to get him out," said Warkentin, a registered Republican. "There's too many people out of work ... I think just having someone else in there would do a lot in terms of the attitude and perception of our state. California is perceived around the country as a high-problem state, and a lot of that is because of Davis." But a number of Democrats who were surveyed said they thought the recall was a waste of taxpayer money and sour grapes from Republicans who want to undo last November's election victory by Davis. "I can't say I'm a great Davis supporter, but I feel the problem with the California economy is not totally his fault," said Charlotte Stafford of Manteca, a retired manager at Pacific Bell. "A lot of it has to do with the problems with the energy crisis where Bush and Cheney said, 'California, you're on your own,' and wouldn't do anything about it. If you want to recall someone, recall Cheney and Bush." Regardless of the respondents' political leanings, however, it's clear from the poll results that most people think the recall is hurting California. More than half of those surveyed said the recall was a waste of taxpayer money, and 54 percent agreed that "the recall election has become a joke, making California the laughingstock of the nation."
But in yet another portent of political disaster for Davis, 65 percent of all likely voters agreed that "electing a new governor will move California in a new direction."
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