RIDER COMMENT: Bottom line(s)  

 

1.  According to a recent Field Poll, an amazing 64% of California voters want to vote again on state spending for the CA High Speed Rail (HSR) project.  Just 30% opposed such a vote.  

2.  If the vote were held today, 59% would reject the HSR bonds, while only 31% would approve it.  

Let's vote!!

 

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http://capoliticalnews.com/2011/12/08/field-poll-voters-would-derail-high-speed-rail/  

 

 

 The people were lied to by the amateur Arnold–or was he just reading a script handed to him? Did he know that he lied about the potential costs and ridership of choo choo’s? Did he not know he had no money to operate the trains and the poor of California would have to subsidize the 1% to use his toy–which eventually would cost $200 billion to build? 

 

Field Poll: Voters would derail high-speed rail

Central Valley Business Times, 12/06/11

• Previously approved bond issue would be rejected today

• Voters want Legislature to put it to a new vote

California’s proposed high-speed rail system, which is supposed to lay its first tracks in the Central Valley next year, would be rejected by state voters if it were on the ballot today, according to a new statewide survey by the Field Poll.

California voters report a high level of awareness of the state’s high-speed rail project, that if completed would link Southern California, the Central Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area.

But they don’t like it because they see it as too expensive, the new survey says.

Following the California High-Speed Rail Authority’s announcement last month that the projected costs would be more than double its previous $43 billion estimate and that another ten years needed to be added to its original ten-year completion timetable, a greater than two to one majority of voters (64 percent to 30 percent) now would like the legislature to call a re-vote on the project.

The poll finds that if such a re-vote election were held, Californians would reject the $9 billion bond package by a wide margin – 59 percent to 31 percent, with 10 percent undecided.

The Field Poll was completed by telephone Nov. 15-27 in English and Spanish. See methodology notes below.

More than three fourths of registered voters statewide (77 percent) say that they have seen, read or heard about the rail project. The project was launched when voters narrowly approved a $9 billion bond package to finance its construction in the November 2008 election. Awareness of the project is high among Democrats, Republicans and non-partisans.

Voters in this survey were then asked their opinions about recent calls for a public re-vote on the measure, in light of recent major revisions made to both its cost and timeline for completion.

In this setting, almost two in three voters (64 percent) say they support the legislature calling for another public vote on the project. Just 30 percent are opposed, while 6 percent have no opinion. There is strong sentiment for holding another vote across all partisan subgroups and irrespective of how voters may have voted on the project in the 2008 election, the Field Poll says.

By an almost two to one margin (59 percent to 31 percent), voters say they would now reject the bond package if it were re-submitted to them for another public vote.

Republicans and non-partisans are most opposed to the bond package, with 73 percent and 61 percent, respectively, lining up on the No side. A plurality of Democrats are also rejecting the bonds, but by a narrower 49 percent to 40 percent margin.

Voters who report having voted “Yes” on the original bond proposal in the 2008 election still favor passage of the bond package, but by a relatively narrow 53 percent to 37 percent margin.

Those who originally voted “No” are nearly unanimous in their continued rejection of the bond package (96 percent opposed). Those who either didn’t vote three years ago or don’t recall how they voted oppose the package two to one (57 percent to 28 percent).

Methodology

The findings are based on a Field Poll survey completed Nov, 15-27 among a random sample of 1,000 registered voters in California. In order to cover a broad range of issues and still minimize respondent fatigue, the questions in this release were asked of a random subsample of 515 voters.

Interviewing was conducted by telephone in English and Spanish using live interviewers working from Field Research Corporation’s central location telephone interviewing facilities. Up to six attempts were made to reach, screen and interview each randomly selected voter on different days and times of day during the interviewing period.

Interviewing was completed on either a voter’s landline phone or a cell phone depending on the source of the telephone listing from the voter file. In this survey 775 interviews were derived from landline sample listings and 225 from cell phone listings. After the completion of interviewing, the overall registered voter sample was weighted to Field Poll estimates of the characteristics of the registered voter population in California by region, age, gender, race/ethnicity and party registration.

Sampling error estimates applicable to the results of any probability-based survey depend on sample size, as well as the percentage distribution being examined. The maximum sampling error estimates for results based on the random subsample of voters asked these questions have a sampling error of +/-4.4 percentage points. The maximum sampling error is based on results in the middle of the sampling distribution (i.e., percentages at or near 50 percent). Percentages at either end of the distribution (those closer to 10 percent or 90 percent) have a smaller margin of error. Findings from subgroups of the overall sample have somewhat larger sampling error levels.