California Business Roundtable

Californians Support The Governor’s Proposals on the Budget and Education

The California Business Roundtable and Pepperdine University today released results of their second survey in a series designed to track Californians’ views on issues affecting jobs and the economy. This survey asked Californians their opinion on a number of budget-related issues after the Governor’s May Revise including how best to use the budget surplus, funding priorities and the Governor’s education funding formula.

For full results of the poll, click here. To see how voters view the state’s economy over time, click here.

“Californians support the Governor’s proposals on budget and education,” said Rob Lapsley, President of the California Business Roundtable. “It’s clear from this poll voters want to pay down our debt and have no appetite for creating new state programs or for new long-term spending commitments.”

Among the survey’s findings:

• Most Californians still view jobs and the economy as the most important issue facing California
• Most Californians believe our first priority should be to use surplus money to pay down the state debt and our second should be to invest in K-12 education;
• Californians want to spend budget surplus money by:
• 34.7% one time expenditures,
• 42.4% restore funding to programs cut during the recession,
• 6.8% new programs and services;
• With respect to taxes, 78.1% of Californians believe taxes are too high;

“While Californians seem to be leaning toward fiscally conservative spending practices, they want good-quality public schools and seem willing to spend state resources to do so,” said Dr. Michael Shires, Pepperdine University School of Public Policy. “When asked how to spend the budget surplus sending additional revenues to K-12 education scored second only to paying down the deficit.”

When asked about education funding:

• 54.5%, including 68.3% of Latinos support the governor’s proposed education funding plan to allocate additional money to school districts with higher populations of high-needs students;
• 56.4% support the Governor’s current budget proposal to send an additional $2.9 billion to California schools, including $1 billion in one-time funding to help schools implement recently adopted academic standards.

About the methodology: The Pepperdine University School of Public Policy and the California Business Roundtable conducted a mix-mode – Internet and Smartphone – survey for the purpose of measuring voter attitudes on key issues in California.

The survey was fielded by MFour Mobile Research – a public opinion and market research firm.

The survey was distributed to 803 registered voters from May 23-25, 2013. Voter registration status was determined via self-identification. A Spanish language version of the study was provided to 51 respondents.

Respondents completed the survey either through MFour’s online survey platform or MFour “Survey’s on the Go®” smartphone survey application.

A sample size of 803 produces a margin of error of +/- 3.5% at the 95th percent confidence interval. Survey administration and reporting was conducted in accordance with the Council of American Survey Research Organization (CASRO) standards.

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View the Full Results:

• Crosstabs
• Topline
• Tracker